garmin virtual partner fenix 6

Nick Harris-Fry is a journalist who has been covering health and fitness since 2015. Another new addition to the Fenix range also focuses on performance. Please refresh the page and try again. The Fenix 6 Pro is a good-looking watch that youll want to wear everywhere. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Most runners will probably be well served by a cheaper watch, but its undoubtedly fair to say if you want the best available, its the Fenix 6 Pro. The Solar Intensity widget and dedicated watch faces on the Fenix 6 Pro Solar show how much sun its getting at any time, and I found that the dial would be three-quarters full when outside even on cloudy days. Depending on the size of the Fenix 6 youre buying, youll need a QuickFit20 (opens in new tab),22 (opens in new tab)or26 (opens in new tab)watch band (89.99-269.99). The battery life of the Fenix 6 watches varies across the range but is uniformly very good. Nick Harris-Fry Wearing a Fenix 6 Pro on one wrist and the 6 Pro Solar on the other Ive noticed a percent or two less drain on the Solar on days where I was outside for a decent chunk of time. TheGarmin Forerunner 945is the only watch that can match the Fenix 6 for features, though the latter has a more upscale, less sporty design. While this is 200 more than the standard steel version, the titanium Fenix is lighter at 72g vs 83g. Six stats on a screen is a good place to start here (eight if you opt for the Fenix 6X Pro), because its something Ive wanted on a Garmin watch for some time. The screen and device are the same size as on the standard 6 Pro, with Garmin accommodating the panels by making the black dial around the screen thinner on the 6 Pro Solar. Its great, and exactly what Id hoped for when Garmin said the screen size was bigger on the new watches. The watches all get the in-depth training analysis previously only available on the Forerunner 945 and Marq Athlete. BA1 1UA. The other smart feature on the 6 Pro, however, remains something of a flop. The cheaper Fenix 6 models lose music and maps, but since theyre only 70 cheaper and youre already spending over 500, its worth the extra money especially to get the maps, which are brilliant. fenix The Fenix 6 Pro is a great-looking watch and you can easily switch out the sporty silicone strap it comes with for leather, nylon, metal or titanium versions. Coach is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. One of those stats can be a colour-coded heart rate gauge so you can see which zone youre working in easily. The same was true when I later used PacePro for a marathon, once again on undulating terrain. My main fear with PacePro was that it would be useless as soon as GPS tracking went slightly off-track, which happens in pretty much every race. Well, on most of them its now 1.3in (33mm) on the 6 and 6 Pro and 1.4in (35.5mm) on the 6X Pro, but still 1.2in (30.5mm) on the 6S and 6S Pro. fenix Those numbers take a hefty hit if you use music down to six hours on the 6S, ten hours on the 6, 15 hours on the 6X but even so, turn off the tunes and you should always be able to make it to a charger in time. There was a problem. The Fenix 6 Pro is a full triathlon watch and also tracks a multitude of other sports, though the detail provided is fairly light once you extend outside running, cycling and swimming. Garmin Pay is still only available through a few banks Santander is the only UK high street bank on the service and third-party services. You are also told how far ahead of or behind your overall target you are. Its not something Polar, Coros or Suunto offers as yet, and smartwatches from Fitbit, Apple, Samsung and the like dont get close to the quality of sports tracking offering by the Fenix 6 Pro, or even Garmins cheaper sports watches with music. Its a feature that essentially creates a smart pacing band and will be at its best on undulating courses, but it will also be brilliant for pacing a negative split the best way to nail a PB in flat events. Coach is supported by its audience. As a result I opted to link up a chest strap heart rate monitor to the watch for all my runs after a couple of weeks. Sign up for workout ideas, training advice, the latest gear and more. Swimmers will also be able to use the optical heart rate tracker on the watch, which is a first for Garmin, which has turned off heart rate tracking in swimming modes in the past across all its watches. I can foresee potential problems if the route of your run strays from the PacePro plan at all, but even then you can just switch back to your normal run screen. Garmin has had a virtual race pacer mode on its watches for some time, which used an overall target time and distance to keep you on track, but breaking it down into individual splits with PacePro makes it far more useful. Based on that info youll get advice on whether your training is balanced or not, and how you can improve it. You dont have to be in blazing sunshine for the panels to charge. If youre leaning towards the Forerunner 945 because it is so much lighter than the steel Fenix 6 Pro, the titanium Fenix gives you another option (sorry to complicate your decision further). Should you do so, youll get a wealth of information about your everyday activity, along with alerts to move if youve been sedentary for too long (you can switch these off, if youd like to) and celebratory graphics when you hit your steps or floors-climbed goal. The Fenix 6 Pro can create looped routes for you when in a new place based on distance and direction, or you can just head off into the unknown and get it to work out a route home on the fly once youve had enough of exploring. By This feature sets individual split targets for each mile or kilometre of your run based on that information. Garmin still hasnt embraced sleep tracking in the same as way as Polar and Fitbit, whose devices offer a huge amount of detail on your nights rest.

The quality and array of features on the 6 Pro and the relative lack of them among the flagship watches offered by Polar and Suunto means that the only real competition for it comes from within Garmin. It makes things much more convenient than plugging in to transfer music. You can also do this with Deezer accounts or transfer your own playlists of music you own using the charging cable and the Garmin Express programme. The Fenix 6 series from Garmin offers the best range of features youll find on any sports watch, marrying excellent tracking and detailed training analysis with smart features like music storage and navigation using built-in colour maps. Bath Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, England and Wales company registration number 2008885. The 945 is also due to get the PacePro feature introduced on the Fenix 6 in time, so really, choosing between the two will mostly come down to weighing up which design you prefer the larger screen of the 6 Pro and the 80 you can save by opting for the 945. For example, if you want to run a half marathon at an average of five minutes per kilometre, you might be told to run the first kilometre in 4min 50sec knowing that the second one will be 5min 10sec because theres a hill in it. Heres why you can trust us. Opt for the most expensive watch in the range the 6X Pro Solar and you can also get an extra 10% of battery life thanks to the tiny solar panels on the watch face. Garmin has introduced music to several of its running watches and done so very successfully, largely because it has a partnership with Spotify so Premium users can sync music to the watches wirelessly. The variable split targets are a great way to keep your focus and let you know whats coming up in the next kilometre or mile. As for new features, its PacePro that really stands out as something thats likely to become invaluable for many runners on race day. Thank you for signing up to Coach. The steps goal is also automatically adjusted depending on past activity, with the idea that it stays challenging but within reach. The best all-round sports watch available, with an appealing design and top-class features including maps and music on top of excellent sports tracking and training analysis. In my race I ended up going quite a bit faster than my original overall target, but even then I checked each PacePro individual split to see if I was facing some uphill sections, or was expected to pick up some time on downhills. Its worth asking whether you actually need all those features, because something like theForerunner 245 Musiccovers all the essentials, even including music and breadcrumb navigation, for 299.99. When the Fenix 6 series first launched only the top-of-the-line (and very expensive, even for a Fenix) 6X Pro Solar had solar panels on the watch face. Another sports mode that gets a little more attention is strength workouts, with the Fenix 6 Pro courting your reps for you and even identifying which exercise youre doing in the gym. He is also the chief tester for fitness trackers and running watches, treadmills and exercise bikes, and workout headphones. There are more than 20 options in total, split across several models, with each model offering different combinations of features. This feature does depend heavily on accurate heart rate tracking, however, and so far Ive had mixed results on that front. You can also have a graph on the watch face that shows how much sun the watch has been getting for the past six hours. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). PacePro is designed to help you pace your runs to take into account the hills on your course, your overall target pace and whether you want to do the second half of your run faster (known as a negative split). This review focuses on the 6 Pro and the features covered apply to any Pro variant in the range. For cyclists you can pair up power meters and other sensors with the watch (over Bluetooth and ANT+), while swimmers get a host of sport-specific stats likeSWOLFand stroke rate. This was because its not all that accurate in the water, and that caveat still applies with the Fenix 6 Pro flailing your arms in and out of water is not ideal for getting a fix on your pulse at the wrist. Before considering anything else, you should decide which of the Garmin Fenix 6 range is right for you, which may take some time. However, having the course loaded seemed to improve things on that front the PacePro splits and distance markers in my race matched up as close to perfectly as I could expect. The Forerunner 945 is the 6 Pros main rival, then, and its lightweight, slim design will appeal to ardent runners and triathletes, especially because its optical heart rate tracking is more accurate than the Fenix 6 Pros, perhaps because of the lighter design.