Garmin 6x Sapphire vs. Coros Vertix 2

Added these:

Garmin Fenix 6x Sapphire
+ Reliable heartbeat measurement over the day outside of activities

Coros Vertix 2
- Some gaps in heartbeat measurement over the day outside of activities

I have the pace on my vertix 2, and it's working fine. OHR during the day is really not reliable. During runs, it's not too bad, but I wouldn't call that very reliable. Battery life is better than on my 6x solar, significantly. 

Maps with the touchscreen are great, but the theme needs to be changed. It's lacking contrast, and much less info than on my Garmin. 

GPS with dual frequency is much better than on the Garmin in most situations. 

It's a solid watch for a first version with this new GPS chipset. I'm not sure if it will replace my Fenix though. 

Do you use metric pace? Minutes per kilometer? That's what I do. It doesn't work for me.

Heart rate has been pretty bad on the Fenix at times too.  I had to buy a strap.  The strap does include running dynamics which will require a Coros pod to get them on that side of the house.

On music, the Fenix does have direct connections to the major players.  Coros is just a file system, which would be fine for me because I listen to podcasts, but not many of us have any direct access to music anymore.

The one thing that interests me about the Vertix 2 are strength workouts.  The Garmin app and the watch interface is a pile of definitely not diamonds.  Rep counting is usually wrong.  The interfaces to build workouts, app or web, are terrible.  

I find setting up running intervals by heart rate in the Fenix awkward because they use the wrong language for over / under a heart rate in the app.

I believe that Coros only has an app?  You post makes me think there is something, just not a very good something?

My Air Pods Pro don't work with the Fenix.  I had to get a second set of headphones. 

I would imagine 3rd party integration would largely require something like RunGap whereas Garmin has the market size to have some integrations already built.

No walk workout type on the Coros.  Probably get around this by using Hiking or something.

I'll probably think of more, if I do I'll try to add them.  I've never used Coros, but the strength piece at least made me think about it, but the screenshots for them aren't great either.

Added these to the list:

Garmin Fenix 6x Sapphire
+ Community forum where you can share experiences and bug reports
+ Running course proposals (automatic routing)
+ Pretty good running route planner within the webapp
+ Lap time via voice
+ Pretty OK for serpentines

Coros Vertix 2
- No community forum at all
- No running course proposals
- No running route planner
- No lap time via voice
- Cuts serpentines at least when not using dual frequency​_

I'm going to add these findings to the initial posting:

Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire
- Sometimes very bad optical HR measurements
- Sometimes, there is a severe battery drain - ConnectID-Apps? Watchfaces?
+ You can operate the watch under almost all conditions
+ Firmware upgrade takes roughly one minute, upload of the firmware to the watch happens in the background

Coros Vertix 2
- Sometimes very bad optical HR measurements
- Sometimes, there is a severe battery drain - Firmware 2.59
- Unable to stop a run when it is very cold (OK after warming up the watch)
- Firmware upgrade takes up to 20 minutes (10 minutes and more), upload of the firmware to the watch happens in the foreground

Not knowing anything about the vertix 2 myself, just going off your list of pros and cons, it seems like the only things better than than the Fenix are the battery life, charging speed, and OHR during activities.

Battery life and charging speed are two things I've never really had problems with - It lasts several weeks, so any additional time beyond that is nice but not necessary. And I'm fine with it taking an hour longer to charge my watch the one or two times a month that I have to charge it.

And personally, the OHR during activities isn't a big thing for me really, since I always use a chest strap during activities where I care about that, and always will, regardless of how good the OHR is on any watch.

Thanks for the good writeup, I found it helpful since I'm not familiar with Coros stuff. Definitely will be sticking to my Fenix though.

I appreciate the write up!  I have an Enduro and have been trying out the Vertix 2.  Thought I'd share some of my feedback;

• Battery
  • Vertix 2 beats the Enduro by a little bit.  Last full cycle the Vertix 2 was at 26% and the Enduro was at 18%.  Not exactly fair b/c out of the box the Enduro is doing continuous HR monitoring and the Vertix 2 is taking HR every 10 minutes.  With no body battery like feature, there's not real reason to set the Vertix 2 to continuous HR although you could if you wanted to.
• Screen
  • Enduro is better for two reasons.  First, gorilla glass DX is easier to read than sapphire.  If I had a sapphire Fenix 6 they'd be more comparable.  The big difference though is the backlight/colors/contrast.  If you remember the blue/bad backlight vs the good backlight debacle on the F6, the Enduro has the 'good' backlight and the Vertix 2 has a 'bad' backlight.  Running at night with both it really stands out how much better the Enduro's screen is.
• Size
  • Vertix 2 is shorter lug to lug and a little smaller in diameter.  Vertix 2 is thicker.  I find the Vertix 2 wears better, but they're close.  Vertix 2 is 62g vs Enduro at 64g both for the watch head only.
• Features
  • Body Battery, Stress, Breathwork, Sleep Score.  Vertix 2 doesn't have anything like these, and I find them all useful and seemingly accurate.  I do prefer the EvoLabs metrics on the Vertix 2 over Garmin - so things like training load and running performance.  The Coros stats just line up better for me, they're located more centrally in the app and some nuances I just like better.  This is probably something that will vary person to person. 
  • Vertix 2 has the ability to take a 1 min HRV test.  This is cool, HRV is something I've been tracking for a few years now.  Garmin's Health Snapshot will do that as well, plus more, but it's only on the Venu 2 and 945 LTE (beta) now.  
  • SPO2 - don't care about this, but Garmin has more options.
  • Maps - don't care about this, but Coros has a map overlay at least.  Not nearly as good as the Fenix, but better than nothing.
• HR Accuracy
  • Both work well for me.  I'm a pretty easy candidate for good optical wrist HR.  No real difference.
• GPS Accuracy
  • Vertix 2 wins easily.  I use 'All Frequency' mode which connects to I believe 5 different satellite systems at once.  This is not the dual frequency mode.  Tracks are pretty amazing.  I run in neighborhoods, no tall buildings but a lot of mature trees.  Overall pretty easy GPS conditions.  Enduro is pretty wobbly, does some weird zigs and zags at times.  Overall I'm seeing the Enduro ends up being short on distance compared to the Vertix 2.

That's all I can think of for now.  Coros is doing a lot of cool things, and I think that's great.  Competition is good.  The short verdict here is the screen is the big deal for me and the Enduro screen is better.  That's a hard one to get around.  On the other hand, the pretty GPS tracks are nice to look at.  Not sure if it's a big deal in the grand scheme of things but it's cool.

@jasoncd: I'm using the all frequency mode as well but for me, I don't see a real improvement over the Fenix. The tracks of the vertix are "smoother" but not better. EVO lab doesn't work at all, it is stuck at 9% always telling me to do more runs. But I'm running every day for 4 weeks with the watch now. So I guess it is broken. I think I will return the Vertix2.

Hi

I'm interested in Vertix is there Nordic walking activity ?

Thanks