235 vs spark cardio music

Follow up

Well the bike ride really makes me think that the 235 is the better of the two on hr. It was more consistent with what I've observed with chest strap. The features on the 235 kill the Tom Tom watch, so all in all I'm very happy. The GPS was off .2 of 16 miles,I think the tomtom delayed it's GPS .

I personally do not understand on-hand HR while biking.

Sooner or later you will definitely mount the watch on the handlebar - that is soooo more convenient
At least for a simple reason that you will be able to see the data always (and especially when you need it most - while going hard (in a steep climb for example).
That is when you buy a "traditinal" HR strap.

You can connect (as far as I know) external HR strap to 235, not sure about tom-tom.
Although if you do a lot of biking I'd personally won't buy 235, but go with 230 (unless you need 24x7 heart rate monitoring of course that is great).

Nice to hear a comparison from someone owning both... Disappointing to hear the FR235 seems to work better. Was thinking about moving to the TomTom spark cardio afterall, but apparently when TomTOm moved to their own OHR they made the same mistake Garmin made (I already own the TomTom Cardio multisport which only sporadically had issues instead of sporadically working like the garmin does for me...)

Did two normal runs with the FR235 and don't trust either (first was 7.5k at 4:07min/km which gave me an avg hr of 114bpm, I wish. The second was a way easier pace, 10k at 5:05 min/km which gave me an avg of 161bpm, which was way higher then my effort felt...), think I might wear the TomTOm cardio the next few runs again for comparison.

Just did a reset after the second run as well, just in case, so maybe that helps with something as well the next run. Of, watch is tight on my wrist, leaving a nice imprint, and about an inch above the wrist bone.

235

I personally do not understand on-hand HR while biking.

Sooner or later you will definitely mount the watch on the handlebar - that is soooo more convenient
At least for a simple reason that you will be able to see the data always (and especially when you need it most - while going hard (in a steep climb for example).
That is when you buy a "traditinal" HR strap.

You can connect (as far as I know) external HR strap to 235, not sure about tom-tom.
Although if you do a lot of biking I'd personally won't buy 235, but go with 230 (unless you need 24x7 heart rate monitoring of course that is great).

Spending the extra$ on the 235 is a no brainer if you can swing it. I will use a hrm at times, but what great flexibility to be able to use both. I'm happy that the 235 outperformed the tomtom from my experience.

I ended up returning the 235 and getting the TomTom Spark Cardio with music and am happy with my choice. I find the OHRs to work well on both watches, though the TomTom doesn't seem to have cadence lock issues nor the 'stuck at 66' issue. But when the Garmin was working, I didn't find it more accurate than the TomTom. There are definitely more features on the Garmin, that may or may not work. I found it to be a very buggy watch - much more so than the TomTom. With the price difference, I went with TomTom. I didn't really care about the music on the TomTom, but I actually have used it a couple of times when my phone had low battery.

I had the Garmin for nearly a month and the last straw was, after my HRM had been working fine, it all of a sudden had frequent and severe issues. Just not worth the extra money.

On the TomTom, the sleep tracking is dismal with the info it provides, and while interesting, wasn't a requirement for a watch. I enjoyed the VO2 Max feature on the Garmin, but I don't think it was particularly accurate. And the current pace is terrible on both of them (which was the initial reason I wanted to switch to a Garmin from my TomTom Runner) so no difference there.

ETA: Also, yes, you can connect an external strap to the TomTom as well as the Garmin, though different straps. TomTom uses BT rather than ANT? I haven't actually tried it because the optical works fine for me.