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Home » Fitness » The Best Fitness Tracker for Every Kind of Exercise – GQ Magazine

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Fitness trackers have come a long way since your grandma power-walked hot laps around the local mall and checked her pedometer every time she cruised by Hot Topic. But well say what everyone else in the fitness industry wont: tracking steps is useless. Its a meaningless metric. When was the last time you counted steps? The answer is never.

Now fitness trackers will tell you the actual distance you traveled each day with a quantifiable numbermiles (or kilometers if youve fled this lousy country for our friendly northern border)which feels far more tangible than hitting the arbitrary 10,000 steps benchmark. And now fitness trackers are practically glorified smartwatches with everything from wrist-based heart rate and GPS to sleep tracking and various exercise modes (swimming! yoga! cycling!). We like the Garmin vivosmart HR+ because it does, well, pretty much everythingonly more accurately than other trackers, and with a ridiculously long battery life. Oh, and its waterproof to 50 meters for all you dudes who joined your local YMCA after the Olympics to channel your inner Phelps.

4 Reasons We Love the Garmin vivosmart HR+

1. The pinpoint GPS: A trusty GPS is a necessity for runners who want solid intel on how far and how fast theyre trucking. (Plus the built-in heart rate monitor lets you know when your heart rate spikes.) The vivosmarts GPS was as accurate as my running watch, Nikes running app, and a bike computer, whereas the others we tested were typically off by about .15-ish miles per each mile. Doesnt seem like a lot, but if you run six miles youre going to (a) think you ran nearly seven and (b) think you ran fast as hell (which you did not).

2. The battery is legit: Even when I used the Garmin vivosmarts GPS daily for long runs (up to 90 minutes), the watch lasted lasted four full days on a charge. And it juices up fully in about 30-40 minutes (the Apple Watch needs more than two hours). The Garmins battery life is a huge advantage if youre into sleep tracking and want to know how that second Manhattan affected your sleep. (Spoiler: not well!)

3. The wrist-based heart rate is super accurate: For years, wrist-based heart rate monitors were more finicky and unreliable than the goofy straps sweaty shirtless dudes wear in your local park. It would spike inexplicably. Or drop low when you were hammering up a hill. But the vivosmart is as good as any old fashioned heart rate monitorin fact, we went for a run wearing the vivosmart and one of those straps. And, to our surprise, the vivosmart was pretty much exactly the same, give or take a few heartbeats.

4. You get numbers you can use: If you really want to learn more about your body, the vivosmart is your shepherd. It collects an insane amount of datafrom sleep patterns to your heart rate climbing the stairs to your officebroken down easily and exhaustively in Garmins Connect app. You can sync that data with third party apps like MyFitnessPal (a glorified food diary and scientific calorie counter), and whatever futuristic wireless scale you have (if you obsessively track your weight). The Connect app and the vivosmart can give you a comprehensivealbeit Orwellianunderstanding of your daily activity.

Two More Fitness Trackers We Like

The Charge 2 matches the vivosmarts resum, with sleep tracking, stair counting, GPS (though its less accurate than the Garmins), and wrist-based heart rate monitoring. But it comes in a few more colors (seafoam green, navy, rose gold). If you dont swim (its not waterproof) and the mundane Garmin black bores you, the Charge 2 is a great pick.

Most fitness trackers have all the panache of a calculator watch. If you want one with all the capabilitiesmorning sun salutations, bike commuting, distance traveledwithout the Star Trek prop vibes, your only real option is the Apple Watch. The Nike+ version is the sportiest, but you can easily snap on fancier bands (maybe something in an Herms?) for work. Bonus: mid-workout you can check in on Twitter for a quick reminder that the world continues burning before our eyes.

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The Best Fitness Tracker for Every Kind of Exercise - GQ Magazine

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Home » Fitness » The Best Fitness Tracker for Every Kind of Exercise – GQ Magazine