The best training watch I've ever tried is the first Coros with a modern display
ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Coros Pace Pro is available now in Black, Grey, and Blue for $349
- The watch provides flagship features at an affordable price with a brilliant 1,500-nit AMOLED, light weight, long battery life, and a fast processor
- The plastic band hardware feels cheap, subscription music is not supported, and there are limited wellness metrics.
In 2018, Coros launched the Pace GPS sports watch and set the bar for long battery life and features at $300. Ever since, the company has offered a range of watch options with competitive pricing for most of its offerings and an expanding training ecosystem that arguably is the best available.
Today, Coros announced its new Pace Pro GPS sports watch. I’ve been wearing it for about a week while running, rowing, walking, sleeping, and working. The Pace Pro is the first watch from Coros with a vibrant, colorful 1,500-nit AMOLED that many people have come to expect (since Apple, Google, and Samsung offer similar displays). The 1.3-inch display has a resolution of 416 x 416 pixels — it looks fantastic.
Also: The best sports watches you can buy: Expert tested
The 46mm diameter watch weighs just 49 grams with the included silicone band, and there are nylon band options that match each watch body color. While I did not test out the nylon option, it reduces the overall weight to just 37 grams. The plastic hardware on the silicone band feels thin and inexpensive, so it is not my favorite band option.
When Coros first reached out about testing the Pace Pro, I was curious how it stacked up to the Pace 3 that I tested in 2023. The Pace 3 had a lower price of just $229 and remains one of the best running watch options available for most people. The extra $120 gets you a larger display, a faster processor, expanded internal storage capacity (32GB vs. 4GB), vastly more battery life, and offline global mapping.
Navigation is clearly a focus of the Pace Pro since mapping experiences are much better with AMOLEDs and more storage is needed for storing maps, which you can zoom in and move around using the digital dial and touchscreen. Supported navigation features include back to start, checkpoints, turn-by-turn, and location saving. You can create and sync routes to the watch in the Coros smartphone app.
You can also add music to the watch, but there is no support for subscription music services, so you’ll need to find MP3 files to download and load. My test files played flawlessly through a Bluetooth headset. Connections to external Bluetooth sensors, such as the Coros heart rate strap, are also supported.
Since I’ve only been wearing the watch for about a week, I cannot fully judge the battery life yet. Coros claims up to 38 hours of GPS tracking with 20 days of typical smartwatch usage.
Like all AMOLED watches, turning on the always-on display significantly reduces the battery life, with a reported six days when this mode is enabled. The 345mAh battery is significantly bigger than the Pace 3’s 236mAh battery.
Also: Coros Apex 2 Pro review: Cheaper sports watches are getting good
Coros also made an interesting design change: there’s a small dongle that snaps on to the new charging port and then connects to a USB-C cable. A keychain holder is included to help keep you from losing the small dongle.
I like the idea here, since past Coros cables tended to fall out of the charging port on a regular basis. Still, I’m not sure a small dongle will get lost less frequently than a full cable.
25 sports and activities are available on the Pace Pro, with a custom activity option for you to create your own activity to track. Health and fitness features like sleep, stress, recovery, HRV, and resting heart rate are available. You won’t find women’s health tracking or mindfulness features on the Pace Pro, as it is more focused on training and performance.
Coros provides an amazing Training Hub online and free training plans with coaching advice as well. Even if you are not actively training for a specific race, you can find and participate in off-season training plans in order to maintain a reasonable level of fitness.
ZDNET’s buying advice
The Pace Pro improves upon the Pace 3 with the most obvious difference being the brilliant AMOLED. It’s also similar to the Apex Pro, with that watch using more expensive sapphire glass and titanium materials. The Pace Pro offers the same software experience and advanced training features, so it is a compelling offering for most people, and it has not let me down over the past week.
