[melling]

Can someone describe the other benefits of a Garmin over an Apple Watch for jogging? I use my Watch for light jogging, monitoring heart rate, pace, and distance.

Recently, I’ve been trying to increase days, and will up my mileage in a couple months, after I lose a little more weight.

[kikkoman23]

I have the Garmin 230 and like others have mentioned, the battery life, always on, and its supposed to be a bit more accurate GPS wise than the Apple watch. But I'm not sure if it matters too much unless you're training and really need to be spot on, but know there will always be little differences between any gps watch.

I run with both watches just to compare distance, etc. but one of the main reasons I got the Apple watch 2 was for the GPS and ability to store up to 2GB of music. This way I can stream my music while running onto my Jaybird 2 wireless headphones. Another cool and funny thing is that while running one day, with the Nike+ app, when I hit a certain distance, Kevin Hart started talking and cheering me on. I thought that was pretty neat and kinda motivating. I'm sure they have other celebrities doing that as well, but just a little something.

I also noticed on Apple watch, the Nike+ app doesn't have metric for Avg. Pace, it does show Current Pace, Distance, and Time. Every mile it will speak and tell you your Avg. Pace. But there is the Workout app on the watch that does allow you to see up to 5 metrics for Current Pace, Avg. Pace, Heart Rate, Distance, Duration, Active Calories, Total Calories. For me I like to have Current Pace and Avg Pace shown together along with Distance and Duration.

Now with the Apple watch 3, I do like being able to leave your phone behind in case an emergency does come up and someone needs to contact you, but I can also see how a random non-important call can throw off your run/workout session.

[gamblor956]

Garmin has best-in-class GPS and wrist-based heart-rate monitors.

The Apple watch...it has a GPS and heart-rate monitor. They're fine if you just want a general idea of how fast you're going (to an accuracy of +/- 30 sec/mile pace) or heart rate (to an accuracy of +/- 10 hbpm).

If you are tracking trends, this inaccuracy is fine since it's the trend that matters. But if the actual numbers matter, go with the Garmin (or Polar, or Suunto) and leave the iWatch at home.

[smakkadoula]

Here's one benefit: Accuracy.

If you're looking for a more accurate reflection of your fitness, or if you're getting more serious with your running for example, you'll want something that is accurate.

I recommend reading the reviews from DCRainmaker. The reviews are extremely thorough and he covers just about every fitness watch out there.

[abritinthebay]

Having used both: I have no idea. The Apple Watch is at least as good in everything the Garmin does.

[js2]

I sometimes run races of up to 24 hours. The Garmin will record an activity that long, and longer if you charge it during the activity. This is an extreme case, but the Apple Watch can’t do either of these things.

My Garmin connects to a foot pod. This gives more accurate cadence info than from your wrist. It also gives more accurate instantaneous pace and more accuate distance if you’re running somewhere that GPS is insufficient.

There are high tech accessories that track additonal metrics that work with the Garmin, such as the Stryd foot pod.

The Garmin display is always on. I prefer this to the Apple display.

The Garmin uses its physical buttons for all operations of the watch which means I can use it no matter how sweaty my hands are or whether I’m using gloves.

The Garmin battery lasts 7-10 days.

Garmin Connect syncs my runs to Strava and Smashrun. I can also download all my runs to rubiTrack.

Those are a few of the reasons I prefer my Garmin.

[abritinthebay]

Everything other than always on & battery life is quite possible with an Apple Watch.

I’ve tracked things for 8-10 hours and had 50% left so I can see if working for you, even in your admittedly extreme use case.

I feel like you’re being rather unfair to it and other than always on & the hardware buttons you mentioned, it sounds like my original statement is true for the vast majority of people.