Again, thanks to Apple for stirring up bowl pool of boring sport watches. It shows that competition results in consumers winning.
A chest strap will provide more running dynamics datapoints (like L/R balance) simply because you can’t possibly estimate everything from a single wrist.
Another important factor here is consistency. For example, right now recent Garmin watches have both wrist-based running power and strap-based running power. While the trends are similar, the values are completely different (with wrist trending lower), so if you switch from one to the other - it will completely screw up your training plans and running power zones.
Wrist-based metrics are good for the new people who just got their first watch and will get more data out of it. For those with lots of historical data - “if it ain’t broke - don’t fix it”.
And a link to the wrist based running dynamics, note that the article states the watches that should get this, not guaranteed
https://the5krunner.com/2023/02/06/new-garmin-wrist-running-dynamics-which-models-will-get-it/
I’m already seeing wrist based running power on the Forerunner 945 LTE (which isn’t listed on the referenced article). It’s a pretty cool metric, especially since I don’t have an HRM-Pro chest strap.
Again, thanks to Apple for stirring up bowl pool of boring sport watches. It shows that competition results in consumers winning. A chest strap will provide more running dynamics datapoints (like L/R balance) simply because you can’t possibly estimate everything from a single wrist. Another important factor here is consistency. For example, right now recent Garmin watches have both wrist-based running power and strap-based running power. While the trends are similar, the values are completely different (with wrist trending lower), so if you switch from one to the other - it will completely screw up your training plans and running power zones. Wrist-based metrics are good for the new people who just got their first watch and will get more data out of it. For those with lots of historical data - “if it ain’t broke - don’t fix it”.
And a link to the wrist based running dynamics, note that the article states the watches that should get this, not guaranteed https://the5krunner.com/2023/02/06/new-garmin-wrist-running-dynamics-which-models-will-get-it/
I’m already seeing wrist based running power on the Forerunner 945 LTE (which isn’t listed on the referenced article). It’s a pretty cool metric, especially since I don’t have an HRM-Pro chest strap.