Running power - Stryd, Garmin and Coros Pace II

I too would like native Stryd support

I think we all would, they have it for bike. I’m sure it does not matter if there is no standardised approach, we just need it to be consistent, good or bad

As the watches cannot know whether you run on a perfect road with ultra-lightweight shoes or in deep mud, rough ground, small waves not detected by the altimeter, sand or even snow with your heavy GTX trail shoes, I am sceptical about running power. In contrast to cycling with a power meter there are no reliable data to calculate, so running power is just a rough estimation and I think there are better ways to steer an efficient training.

Do you mean that there are better metrics that really deals with the different running conditions you mention or do you mean that all metrics are worthless?

Not sure what you mean by “native”, but Garmin does have these:

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/741afa11-0250-48e2-86b5-14bd47e29391 (requires HRM-Run, HRM-Tri, or a Running Dynamics Pod)

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/18fb2cf0-1a4b-430d-ad66-988c847421f4 (requires Stryd)

That said, it would be great for Garmin to offer a wrist-based solution like Polar and now Coros. I don’t believe Suunto offers.

Here’s DCR’s hands on with the Pace 2: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/08/coros-pace-2-hands-on-a-199-multisport-watch-with-running-power.html 

Impressive in that it’s consistent with Stryd (and makes it a very tempting alternative at 1/3 the price and weight of an F6), which is currently the most consistent: https://www.outsideonline.com/2413011/running-power-meter-comparison-study

Stryd is natively supported on ALL Coros models now. It was announced alongside the Pace 2, but all of their watches were firmware update to do the same thing. 

If you own the coros pod (which reported power alongside Garmin like running metrics) you'll still get those if you use it in conjunction with Stryd, though I'm curious if you could bypass the advanced running metrics from the Coros pod altogether if you are using Wahoo's newest Tickr-x strap (which includes advanced running metrics).

This announcement has me kicking myself because I bought a Apex Pro (and Coros pod) earlier this year after having enough with the FR 945. 

I absolutely loved the Apex Pro, but it lacked Stryd support and 3rd party app support of note beyond Strava. Now with Stryd integrated into the Coros ecosystem, I'm thinking of selling my F6 PRO and going back.

The battery life on the Apex Pro is astonishing, easily getting 10 days with training indoors (it was winter when I owned it) and at least two outdoor activities using GPS around 45 mins per week.

Dealing with janky SW on Garmin all the time and still NO native Stryd support is kind of absurd. Sure, not everyone owns a Stryd, but many of us do and having to use multiple ciq apps to get it to work is silly at this point.

Not saying it is right or wrong, but Garmin’s whole model with third-party accessories and integrations tends lean towards using ConnectIQ apps.  This makes things more flexible as the support can be added to many watches, including older ones, without having to update firmware.

That said, I completely agree that Garmin should improve their support for running power meters.  It is possible to pair them with the watch already but then you cannot do anything with it natively.  They can easily (?) add support for a separate FTP and power zones for running and support for displaying, alarming, and setting workout targets for the running power zones.  If they did that, I would be very happy.

As for supporting all of the rest of the special metrics that Stryd calculates, I would be ok with still requiring a ConnectIQ app to see those on the watch since those are vendor specific.  I use RunScribe, not Stryd, and I would be ok again with running the RunScribe ConnectIQ app to see those metrics on the watch.  The reality is that for me power is the only thing I care about on the watch; everything else I look at later.

Maybe have a look at Stryd...it can correct for all the conditions you mentioned except deep mud. To be fair, I don’t run in deep mud though. 

Not worthless but only estimations. If you always run under similar conditions, the data may be useful. Cycling with a power meter is a different story, but nothing like this exists for running - even a Stryd does not know if you run in deep snow.