Coros Apex 2 Pro Review: For Practical Outdoors People

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I can’t be the one one that has this drawback. When I’m snowboarding, I’m shifting. I sit all the way down to clip in, and flip myself over to face up. I fall off kickers, unclip to hike again up and shoot the chute, and drop into the half-pipe whereas scream-singing to Jon Secada. When I check monumental, costly Garmin watches, I usually unintentionally hit the facet buttons or touchscreen with my shenanigans, stopping or beginning recordings unintentionally.

Coros watches lock. You maintain down the center button to begin recording your exercise, then maintain it down once more for 3 seconds to cease the recording. Smart! This is one among various small however a lot appreciated options that make Coros watches a few of my favorites proper now, even in comparison with costlier sports activities watches from different manufacturers.

The firm has hit on one thing that almost all producers haven’t: People who like sports activities (me particularly) don’t at all times care about seems to be. A giant, vivid, crisp display screen doesn’t imply as a lot to me as not having to cost my watch each evening. I’d fortunately pay a lower cost for a watch that’s extra comfy, handy, and simpler to put on.

Lab Rat

The Apex 2 debuted late final 12 months and is available in a fundamental or Pro model. I examined the Pro, which is $100 extra, barely larger, and has dual-frequency GPS for extra exact place monitoring. And it has my most well-liked nylon strap, which doesn’t entice sweat like silicone straps do. Measuring 46.5 millimeters throughout, the Pro is larger than the bottom mannequin, however not as massive or heavy as Coros’ Vertix 2 (50.3 mm).

Dual-frequency GPS positioning is necessary as a result of Coros now employs EvoLab, a customized sports activities science platform and a direct competitor to Garmin Connect. (It’s free to make use of with all Coros watches, in contrast to Fitbit Premium.) The firm has savvily focused severe runners with celeb ambassadors like Des Linden, Kilian Jornet, and Eliud Kipchoge. Moreover, you may solely unlock EvoLab by monitoring highway operating classes. If you’re interested by progressing as a runner, packages like EvoLab are higher than what you’d get with the Apple Watch. Sure, Apple now measures a bunch of helpful operating metrics, however it nonetheless doesn’t offer you an actionable big-picture overview.

Photograph: Coros

It took me about two weeks of operating three to 4 occasions per week (and sleeping common hours, which I’m not nice at) to unlock EvoLab. Once I did, I scrolled by way of its proposed coaching plans, that are, in a phrase, good. (You can have a look at examples of coaching plans on-line.) I’m presently engaged on my pace growth, which helps you run sooner, and extra simply, by rotating longer cardio runs at a simple tempo with quick, arduous anaerobic intervals.

One of my exercises has me operating quick 0.1-mile repeats with 0.4-mile recoveries. That means I run at my threshold tempo for 0.1 mile after which jog for 0.4 mile. The Apex 2 Pro pings me when it is time to begin my quick phase, pings me when I’m not inside my focused pace vary, after which pings me to cease and return to restoration tempo. To put this technological feat into perspective, I can run 0.1 mile in concerning the time it takes you to learn this paragraph. In that point, the Apex 2 Pro sends dozens of indicators as much as area and again, quick sufficient to direct me in actual time. 

It’s not practically as correct as a coach standing at a observe with a stopwatch, however it’s much more handy and cheaper. For extra operating metrics, you may as well add the Coros Pod 2 ($99), which is barely costlier than the comparable Garmin operating pod. When it got here to monitoring my pace and coronary heart price on my routine runs, I didn’t discover any discrepancies between the Apex 2 Pro and the Apple Watch Ultra, which additionally has dual-frequency GPS positioning. Maybe the Apex 2 Pro was barely slower to lock on to GPS after I began a run.

Wrist Navigate

Probably one of many greatest causes to personal a Garmin is its navigational capabilities. If you are in any respect like me, an impulsive and scatterbrained outside individual with no sense of route, it is invaluable to have easy-to-use maps even when your telephone has no sign. Here, there’s merely no comparability. Garmin began out as a navigational firm, and even now, its maps and software program are simply a lot simpler to make use of. 

The Apex 2 Pro is way more durable to make use of for navigation. There are preloaded panorama maps which might be comparatively simple to see and scroll by way of on the LCD display screen, however it’s a must to obtain topographic maps. I particularly observed this whereas snowboarding. I could have turned the exercise recording on and off unintentionally on the Garmin Epix, however Garmin has ski resort maps preloaded on all its watches for all of the resorts close to me—I by no means needed to do something! You’ll need to manually obtain topographic maps on the Apex 2 Pro, which comes with 32 GB of storage. That’s about sufficient for 10 or so routes saved as GPX information. Since there’s no integration with music companies, you’ll have to share that area with MP3 information, should you nonetheless do this type of factor. 

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