Watch review: best GPS watches for 2023

A good GPS watch can be an invaluable training tool. Here are our testers’ favourite new models and updates for spring and summer 2023.

Garmin Forerunner 965

47 mm
$800

Who it’s For: Serious road, trail and ultrarunners looking for sophisticated navigation features, great functionality and battery life

Battery Life: 75 hours in GPS mode, 30 days in smartwatch mode

The 965 is an update to the 955 series, and an excellent training aid for the serious runner with a packed race calendar. It has the added benefit of the super-bright, always-on AMOLED touchscreen/5-button display (there are multiple brightness settings, so don’t be concerned that it’s too bright). Use the buttons or the touchscreen or a combination of the two—the only things you can’t do with the touchscreen are start and stop an activity or hit the lap key. This is Garmin’s largest watch, with a 1.4-inch display, available with a titanium bezel and three band colours. (People with smaller wrists might find it a bit big.)

The 965 has multiband GPS and does it all, from activity tracking (including switching between triathlon activities with one press, plus it’s waterproof to 50 metres) to sleep and recovery insights to daily suggested workouts (based on your upcoming races), training readiness, HRV status, body battery energy monitoring, menstrual and pregnancy tracking, built-in full-colour maps for streets and trails (with routing and turn-by-turn navigation), customizable triathlon and multisport profiles, Climb Pro, Running Dynamics for form analysis, the Next Fork navigation feature, race widget, race predictor, pulse oximeter, incident detection, Garmin Pay, phone-free music storage, smart notifications, wrist-based running power and more. Updates to the software include training load ratio and chronic load, for those who can’t get enough training insights. Really, there isn’t much that this watch can’t do for the serious runner who loves to pore over the numbers.

The 965 offers up to 31 hours of battery life in GPS mode or up to 23 days in smartwatch mode.

Buy Now

Coros Apex 2 Pro

46 mm
$699
[A]

Who It’s For: marathoners, trail runners and ultrarunners looking for great navigation tools and the best battery life available

Battery Life: 75 hours in GPS mode, 30 days in smartwatch mode

Last November, Coros launched two new watches in the Apex series: Apex 2 and Apex 2 Pro, which are very similar—the base Apex 2 doesn’t have multiband GPS or as much battery life, and has a smaller screen. (They are also very similar to the more expensive Vertix 2.) New features since the regular Apex and Apex Pro include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, a new optical heart rate sensor, blood oxygen sensing and more storage (32 gigabytes for the Pro).

The Pro offers unbeatable battery life for marathoners, ultrarunners and multisport athletes: 75 hours (more than three continuous days) in GPS mode and up to 30 days in smartwatch mode—almost twice as long as the Apex 2 in smartwatch mode and considerably more in GPS mode (still far longer than any other watch in our review)—though note that if you’re using continuous multiband GNSS plus dual frequency, battery life is reduced to 25 hours. Some reviewers note that GPS accuracy is “just OK” (though much improved over previous models).

The Pro is a durable watch with a titanium bezel, a touchscreen plus three buttons and a scratch-resistant sapphire glass screen, with multiband and dual-frequency GNSS support and a redesigned GPS antenna—plus it’s waterproof to 50 metres. Besides the usual training, recovery and sleep tracking features for 28 different sports (including training and recovery status, training load, race predictor and access to training plans and workouts in the Coros Training Hub), it also has free offline global landscape and topo maps (though no turn-by-turn navigation; route-planning is coming soon), distance to your destination, track the sun’s movements, storm alert, nutrition alert, checkpoint feature, course elevation profiles and course deviate alert. HR tracking is very accurate. You can send up to 10 course maps from Strava to your watch via the Coros app.

The watch also has offline music storage (but not streaming), plus GoPro and Insta360 camera control.

Available in a grey, green or black case and mutliple band colours.
Buy Now (Black)

Suunto 9 Peak Pro

43 mm
$700 (stainless steel) or $900 (titanium version)
[B]

Who it’s For: Serious runners and multisport enthusiasts

Battery Life: 40 hours in performance (GPS) mode, 70 hours in endurance mode, 21 days in smartwatch mode

Though it looks very similar to the 9 Peak, the Suunto 9 Peak Pro is a significant update, with many new components, including a more powerful processor, new GPS chipset and heart rate sensor. It delivers training features for 97 different sports (snorkelling, anyone?), with more customization options than before, in a three-button/touchscreen format; it also offers music controls (but not storage). It also has an altimeter, barometer and compass, plus breadcrumb-trail routing (but no maps). New features include wrist-based running power and Strava Live Segments.

The 9 Peak Pro doesn’t have multiband GNSS, but GPS accuracy is pretty good.

The display interface is somewhat more readable than the 9 Peak’s (and responds more quickly), but readability could still be better. A plus for those who care: Suunto is partners with more than 200 third-party apps.

This watch’s sleek appearance belies its durability, and it can just as easily be worn with business attire as with running gear. (It’s also waterproof to 100 m.) There are four stainless steel and two titanium models.

And if environmental sustainability in your watch matters to you, the Suunto 9 Peak Pro is designed and manufactured in Finland with 100 per cent renewable energy; it claims to have the lowest carbon footprint (7.5 kg CO2e) of any smartwatch on the market, fully offset with verifiable carbon units.
Buy Now (Stainless Steel)

Garmin Forerunner 265

46 mm, 42 mm
$620
[C]

Who It’s For: Serious runners, age groupers and data nerds

Battery Life: 24 hours in GPS mode, 15 days in smartwatch mode

The new Garmin Forerunner 265 takes over where the 255 left off, with a major update: it has the super-bright AMOLED full-colour, durable touchscreen display introduced in the Garmin Epix last year (a big plus when you’re running in bright sunlight), plus multiband GPS (meaning you get a more accurate pace and results), yet it’s just a little more than half the price of the Epix. (As with the new Forerunner 965, below, for almost all functions you can use either the buttons or the touchscreen, or a combination of the two.)

Besides tracking more than 30 different sports profiles (including triathlon), the 265 has all the functions of the 255, including training readiness, which was introduced last year in the Forerunner 955, and is new for the 265. It also has daily suggested workouts, women’s health tracking and the new PacePro function, which helps you pace yourself toward your goal time on a specific course. It also has features like the race predictor, as well as the track running feature, for accurate lap/distance counting, plus incident (fall) detection and Garmin Pay. You can customize the watch face to show up to six data fields per sport.

The accuracy of Garmin’s wrist-based heart rate monitoring has improved steadily in recent years, and with these newer watches, it’s accurate enough that you can reasonably ditch your chest strap.

Morning Report, which analyzes your sleep, recovery and Training Readiness, is here, along with Garmin’s race widget, introduced last year, to help you plan and train for the specific races on your calendar. The Training Readiness feature will tell you how well recovered you are for your scheduled workout, based on HRV status, your sleep history, recovery time, acute load (previously called 7-day load) and stress history. (Training Readiness may be the most useful of the watch’s numerous training metrics.)

It also offers wrist-based running power, if that interests you (i.e., no pod required—just be aware that running power is not standardized across brands; you can also disable it) and wrist-based running dynamics (which provides gait-analysis-type insights, such as vertical oscillation and ground contact time), plus phone-free music storage (including Spotify).

In case it’s important to you: you can’t get an ECG on the 265.

The 265 gets up to 15 days of battery life in smartwatch mode, or up to 24 hours in GPS mode. For those looking for a smaller watch, the Forerunner 265S has a 42 mm face. (And, oddly, it has slightly longer battery life than the bigger watch.) Charging is now via USB-C, and it charges in a little over an hour.
Buy Now

Polar Ignite 3

43 mm
$480
[D]

Who it’s For: Casual runners and fitness enthusiasts

Battery Life: 30 hours in GPS mode, five days in smartwatch mode

The new Polar Ignite 3 is an excellent tool to support the all-around fitness enthusiast, occasional runner or multisport athlete. It will track more than 150 different activities, as well as sleep, heart rate and HRV tracking and recovery insights in a watch with a bright, high-res AMOLED touchscreen display (with one button) and good battery life—up to 30 hours in GPS mode with full HR tracking, which is 10 hours longer than the previous version, or up to five days in watch mode.

The Nightly Recharge feature reflects data from HR, HRV and sleep tracking to help you know when your body is ready for your next workout. It also has running, walking and fitness performance tests, so you can observe your improvement over time. And it now has the Back to Start feature found in more expensive models, which allows you to retrace your steps to your starting point if you get lost.

Enhancements over the 2 include multiband GPS (which means it’s more accurate than before), and the watch’s high-speed CPU processes data twice as fast as the previous version, with seven times the memory of the 2.

This watch also has music controls, is designed with esthetics in mind and is super light (it weighs only 35 g). It looks so good, you’ll never take it off.

This story originally appeared in the May/June 2023 issue of Canadian Running