Coros has today unveiled its latest GPS watch, the Nomad, billed as ‘a watch purpose-built for outdoor adventures’ – and it looks set to rival the likes of Garmin’s Instinct 3.
Despite being a relative newcomer, Coros has caused quite the stir in the fitness wearables market over the past six years, thanks to its ability to cram a lot of tools, tracking capability and battery life into often comparatively cheap running watches.
At £319, the Coros Nomad joins the brand’s line-up as a more affordable offering to the Vertix 2S (£599) and Apex 2 (£349), with more of an adventure-first, rugged design than the Coros Pace Pro (£349).
What everyone’s reading
Key features include dual-frequency GPS, a variety of outdoor sports modes, real-time weather and safety alerts and topographic maps – a key feature that’s lacking from Garmin’s Instinct. That said, you’re trading Garmin’s bright, AMOLED display for a MIP one with the Nomad.
The watch itself has a dual-layer aluminium and polymer bezel and a hardened mineral glass screen. It’s also water resistant up to 50m and available in three colourways: green, brown and dark grey.
Coros Nomad – key specifications
- Screen size/type: 1.3 inches, 3rd Generation Memory-in-Pixel touch screen
- Weight: 41.5g/61g with silicone band/49g with nylon band
- Battery life: 50 hours (All-Systems), 34 hours (Dual-Frequency), 22 days (Daily Use)
Battery life is billed as lasting up to 50 hours in All-Systems GPS mode and up to 22 days in standard use.
When it comes to training features, there seems to be plenty on offer here: Coros’ Running Fitness Test, Training Load, Training Load Recommendation, Recovery Timer, Effort Pace, Resting Heart Rate and more. The Nomad also comes with sleep monitoring, all-day stress monitoring, notifications and safety alerts. Plus, it’s compatible with a range of third party apps.
The Nomad features Coros’ new Adventure Journalling tool.
For runners, there are four sports modes to choose from: Run, Indoor Run, Trail Run and Track Run. There are also Hike and Walk modes, various cycling, climbing, water and snow sports modes, aerobics modes like Yoga, Stair Climb and Indoor Cardio and triathlon.
Finally, the Nomad introduces Coros’ new Adventure Journaling tool, which enables users to use voice commands, tag locations, add photos and transcribe voice-to-text memos within an activity – sort of like a digital journal or scrapbook. It’s certainly a unique feature that we haven’t seen on any other GPS watch and, once our test sample arrives at Runner’s World HQ, we’ll certainly be putting it through its paces.