Why You Should Consider a Coros Watch Instead of a Garmin (2026)

There’s also onboard music storage for MP3 files (who owns those anymore?). But there’s no third-party apps. If contactless payments and streaming tunes are non-negotiables, stick with Garmin.

However, when it comes to sports tracking and training analysis, the Pace 4 packs the same tools you find on all Coros watches, right up to the top-tier Vertix 2S ($699). It measures everything you need to get serious about your training and supports most sporting goals, whether you’re just starting cycling, running Couch to 5K, or preparing to race a marathon.

Coros offers tools like structured workouts, useful information about whether your workouts are productive, peaking, or maintaining, what your fatigue level is, and recommended recovery times. It also has more in-depth features like Virtual Pacer, marathon training plans and fitness benchmarking with VO2Max and Lactate Threshold estimates.

Photograph: Kieran Alger

Beyond workouts you get all the usual suspects: activity, move alerts, sleep score and stages, plus stress, heart rate variability, and menstrual cycles—a good smattering of the holistic health stuff. The heart rate readouts weren’t 100 percent infallible—but show me an optical that is. For the most part, it performed well up against the leading chest straps. It struggled sometimes during interval runs, when I shift gears quickly. But that’s common for wrist sensors.

Unfortunately, it does come up a little short on navigation. There’s breadcrumb navigation, but you’ll have to go a little up the Coros food chain to the Pace Pro ($299) if you want offline maps. But otherwise, in my testing, the Pace 4 handled everything from covered forests to tricky urban routes as well as pricier rivals like the Garmin Forerunner 970 and Apple Watch Ultra 3, even if Garmin’s mapping and navigation tools offer more depth.