From Enduro 1->Vertical->Enduro 2->Race
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Long story made short - I have been involved in endurance sports for around 45 years. I have a long history with sports tech, starting with the Polar Accurex, and have had a number of watches from Polar, and then Garmin. For much of this time, my training has been heart rate based. Now I am primarily a runner, but was a road cyclist for many years.
Battery life and basic functionality are important to me. When I got the Vertical, the maps were a revelation and were my most used feature, however, I got tired of re-pairing heart rate sensors, the painful lugs on the watch (they press into my wrist when the watch slips down) and wanted accurate nightly HRV. The latter I use more for confirmation that I’m sick, rather than anything else. However, I don’t find that it’s sensitive or responsive enough on either Garmin or Suunto for determining overtraining situations. I find many of the other training metrics to be unnecessary and a way to keep people upgrading.
After some time spent using the Enduro 2, I got very familiar with its pain points, which include the huge size (always catching my sleeves), and the horrible, horrible maps experience. In addition to fairly poor visibility (colors, symbology, map rendering), the map is just too slow. The compass update rate is abysmal, and any turn-by-turn directions obscure the area of the map you are trying to view. And trying to remember where a particular option is buried is also difficult – the watch has become very complex. I also like the Suunto TP-based training load, which I felt was better than Garmin’s implementation. I felt that it gave a better indication of when I might be overtrained than the HRV metrics provided by either watch.
Which brings us to the present. After a particular frustrating trail run with the Enduro 2, I noticed that the Race was on sale, so I ordered one. I was also very much regretting selling my Vertical.
The switch from Vertical to Race has eliminated a few pain points present on the Vertical, with no downsides. The battery life is similar to the Vertical, which I did not expect. I have the watch set to gesture mode, and it displays a simplified watch face with just the time. I like the shape of the crown better, since the watch feels a bit smaller on the wrist now. I feel that the common UI shared with the Vertical and Race has been very much tailored to AMOLED (text is now readable, watch faces look great). And before I had this watch, I was not an AMOLED fan. Before settling on the Enduro 2, I tried that EPIX Pro, for which battery life was mediocre, and the watch had a lot of trouble responding to gesture mode after a few days of use. A reboot would fix it, but it was a big annoyance for me. Anyway, the AMOLED display on the Race has made a huge difference for me in readability, and has been really great when under tree cover (I do a lot of trail running in forested areas).
One of the highest compliments I can pay to this watch is that I don’t think about it much. It just does its thing, and doesn’t require constant fiddling. It does the essentials very well. I am very surprised at just how well the AMOLED implementation works for me. Yes, there are some pain points still – I think the lugs should be smoothed out a bit, multiple Bluetooth sensors of a single type should be supported and heart rate estimates improved. Secondary would be a seamless implementation of a user-defined training calendar. So these are things that I hope for in the future.
Anyway, I do wish to compliment the team on this watch. I know it came out a while ago, but I still think its competitive. It’s hard to achieve technical elegance and simplicity, and the Race has done that. So kudos to the team
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@DrSilverthorn Wow, great insights - thank you! What are your display settings for activities? Because especially running in the woods with maps is something I still have problems with the Race S
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@VoiGAS I don’t have any special settings to speak of. I find the map display readable on low brightness setting.
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@DrSilverthorn So with lift to wake? The Screen get brighter when you look at the watch? I guess I will try it again, currently I deactivated it
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@VoiGAS yes
