Garmin has been in the fitness watch business for more than a decade and the market looks a lot different now than it did two years ago, never mind 10 years ago. Today, the company introduced its newest flagship Forerunner GPS watch with activity tracking and analysis as well as a limited amount of interaction with your smartphone.
The Forerunner 920XT is a follow on from 2012’s 910XT and boasts a 205 x 148 pixel display that shows your heart rate, as well as activities like running, walking biking, and swimming. Garmin’s watches traditionally targets the more hardcore athlete, and this year’s flagship Forerunner is no different.
The 920XT helps perfect running form by reporting cadence, vertical oscillation, and ground contact time. Garmin has thrown in a metronome feature as well as audible alerts to help guide you, and the watch also measures your swim metrics including pace, stroke count, stroke rate and SWOLF score (which adds strokes per length and time per length to measure consistency and/or efficiency).
Garmin’s advanced heart-rate monitoring includes a real-time indicator of recovery as well as an overall indicator of recovery time once you’ve finished exercising, so you know how long you should wait before you hit the pavement again. Lastly, the watch connects to your smartphone to offer notifications for email, texts and other alerts as well as automatic uploads to Garmin Connect
Pricing reflects the high-level of analysis provided by the Forerunner 920XT, with the device ringing in just shy of $450 USD. The 920XT hasn’t yet appeared on Garmin’s Canadian online store, but that could due to the fact that the watch isn’t yet available in the US either (processing time for US orders is currently 3-5 weeks).
