Your life on your wrist

A SOPHISTICATED GPS/Glonass multi-sport watch that lets you keep track of your sports activities while having fun and staying fit, the new Garmin Fenix 3 is a rugged, capable and smart training timepiece with stainless steel EXO antenna for accuracy. It has a 1.2-inch colour Chroma display that is readable even in sunlight and an LED backlight that allows you to view your data in the dark.

And like any good fitness watch, it can be Bluetooth-linked to your smartphone to alert you of new emails and other alerts.

It’ll time your lengths as you pound the pool and is made to be under water that’s as deep as 100 metres.

The highlight of the Fenix 3 is its excellent battery, which lasts up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode, 16 hours in GPS mode and several weeks in watch mode.

Sleek though still fairly heavy, it supports several watch faces. Its default analogue watch face makes it so like a real watch that my friends wanted to know how a timepiece with analogue hour, minute and second hands could show sports numeric data.

The Fenix 3 is available in three models: grey with black wristband and silver with red wristband – both with high-strength, scratch resistant crystal – and the premium sapphire model with a stainless steel band and sapphire lens.

Each model features a protective stainless steel bezel and buttons, and reinforced housing for durability.

The Fenix 3 features lVO2 Max (oxygen in-take measuring) and Recovery Advisor when it is used with an optional heart rate monitor. It also has ANT+ connectivity so can easily be connected with a heart rate monitor device or the Garmin Foot Pod, which is used to monitor your distance and cadence when indoors.

Best of all, the watch is compatible with Garmin’s Connect IQ, meaning you can download customised apps, widgets, watch faces and data fields to enhance its functions. A lot of free data fields are available to download to suit your taste, and include specialised metrics for runners and cyclists.

To use the Connect IQ function, you must first use Bluetooth to link the Fenix 3 to your smartphone then download and install Garmin Connect mobile. 

You also need to register an account with the Garmin Connect network to use for recording and monitoring your fitness and sport activities.

You can use Connect to synchonise your sports data on the watch to your Connect account or you can use a provided USB charging/data cable to sync the data with a PC or notebook computer, using the Garmin Express app.

Despite its sophisticated functions, the Fenix 3 is intuitive to use with five buttons that you’ll quickly grasp when to press. 

The button at the top left turns the backlight on and with more pressure turns the watch on or off.

Below it is another button for scrolling through widgets, menus, and messages. It can be used to dismiss a short message and notification and if you hold it down, it will bring up the main menu.

The bottom button on the left also scrolls and lets you view the clock from any page.

The top button on the right starts or stops an activity and selects an option in the menu, while the bottom one returns you to the previous page and records a lap or a rest during an activity.

Before using the watch to record your fitness activity, you need to set your user profile, updating gender, birth year, height, weight, heart rate zone and power zone settings on the Mobile Connect app. The watch uses this information to calculate training data and calorie burn.

Switching the activity tracking status on has the watch keeping a record of your steps and automatically creating a daily goal based on your previous activity levels. As you move during the day, the Fenix 3 shows the progress you are making towards your daily goal.

The Move Alert function reminds you to keep moving and after one hour of inactivity tells you to get a move on.

You can also use the watch to track your sleep but it’s so large that it won’t be comfortable to wear in bed.

And if you select a training plan that has built-in workouts from Garmin Connect, Fenix 3 will give you the goals for each workout step and for distance, times and calories.

Press the start/stop button and use the up and down cursor to access sports options. These include climbing, hiking, trail running, running, running indoors, cycling, biking indoors, pool swimming, open water swimming and triathlon as well as the less useful, at least for Thailand, cross-country and downhill skiing and snowboarding, The find phone function can also be located on this menu.

The Fenix 3 incorporates sophisticated Garmin running watch feedback on your running form by reporting multiple metrics. When used with the HRM-Run monitor, it reports your cadence, vertical oscillation and ground contact time. These metrics are called running dynamics, and they affect your running efficiency and performance.

With the swimming function, the Fenix 3 tracks your distance, pace, stroke count and more.

I found that the GPS reception really fast, taking no more than one second to connect to the GPS satellite and pinpoint the current location, making the watch ready to rack my walk, runs and swimming.

In one of my tests, I walked from Paradise Park to The Nation’s office and the GPS accurately recorded the 3.25-km route and also reported my average page in minutes per kilometre and the estimated calories I had burned.

In another test, I used it to track a five-km run in my neighbourhood. The GPS received the signal fast and properly recorded the location. The watch alerted me at every kilometre covered with average minutes per km while the main screen displayed the time lapse and the number of kms run. I was pleased to learn that I had achieved an average pace of 7:13 minutes per km.

I also took the watch for a 20.15 km bike ride, which took me one hour and 1:27 minutes at an average speed of 19.7 kph and burned a measly 431 calories. 

During both the run and biking tests, the Fenix 3 also reported average temperature. 

If you want to use the Fenix 3 for pool swimming, you must first know the length of the pool – check the Settings option to change swimming app’s pool size. The default setting is 25 metres, which is the standard length of swimming polls. If you want to do widths instead of lengths, adjust the length accordingly.

I tried the watch at a local health club with standard 25-metre pool but only managed a couple of lengths with a pause in between. The watch told me that I made 32 strokes and completed it 1.19 minutes.

Sporting activities aside, you can use the watch as GPS navigation device to navigate you to a destination. Its outdoor navigation features a 3-axis compass, altimeter and barometer, TracBack and Sight’n Go functions.

You can either save your current location for navigating back to it later. Or you can enter your destination's coordinates in latitude and longitude value to navigate to it.

Sight ’N Go functions lets you point the Fenix 3 to an object in the distance, lock in the direction and navigate to the object.

During the navigation, you can select an activity, like hiking, running, and biking as well. The navigation panel also shows a map with location names and symbols.

The Fenix 3 in silver or grey costs Bt15,490 and Bt17,490 for the bundled version with a heart rate monitor. The special sapphire model goes for is Bt18,990 (watch only) and Bt20,490 for the bundled version. It can be purchased at authorised IT and gadget shops as well as department stores nationwide.

 

Key Specs

- Display size: 1.2 inch

- Display resolution: 218 x 218 pixels; transflective MIP colour

- Battery: Rechargeable 300 mAh lithium-ion

- Battery life: Up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode; up to 20 hours in GPS training mode; up to 6 weeks in watch mode

- Water rating: 10 ATM

- Built-in memory: 32 MB; available 23 MB

- Waypoints/favourites/|locations: 1,000

- Routes: 50

- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, ANT+, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS/GLONASS

- Dimensions: |51.0 x 51.0 x 16.0 mm

- Weight: Silver/Dark: 82 g