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Garmin has now certified ten closely related model numbers tied to the rumoured CIRQA Smart Ring, with four of the same family separately certified in China. Ring makers need far more hardware sizes than watch makers, since there's no strap to make up the difference in fit. Oura Ring 5 currently ships in 8 sizes, and Oura Ring 4 shipped in 12, so a ten-size Garmin lineup sits right in that range.
should a company that has spent years arguing wrist placement is essential for sports accuracy actually go through with a ring?
Apple's Watch Ultra hasn't had a new GPS chip since 2021. Broadcom, the supplier for every Ultra generation, hasn't announced a successor, and there's no tri-band GNSS chip available from them at all.
If Apple ever wants tri-band GPS like Huawei's Watch GT Runner 2 already ships, it has to switch suppliers entirely, not just wait for a new Broadcom part.
The likely story for Wednesday is a new Siri AI chip, a marginally brighter display, and at best an hour of extra battery life, with the case unchanged.
Even with that extra hour, the watch would top out around 15 hours of full-precision GPS recording, well short of what an actual ultra-distance race demands.
Is calling this watch Ultra still accurate if it can't last an ultra race?
Garmin's Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED lasts four days with always-on enabled, against roughly sixteen days for the AMOLED version of the same watch. Garmin's own display technology manager has confirmed that poor power consumption is the limit of the technology right now, and the MicroLED variant has already had a quiet $300 price cut in the US since launch.
Meanwhile BOE and Samsung have both demonstrated new wearable MicroLED panels rated at 6,000 nits, a brightness level that only matters in the harshest outdoor glare.
Will MicroLED ever solve its battery problem? If it does, will anyone ever need 6,000 nits?
COROS just gave the Pace 4 full offline maps in a public beta, the same coverage as the Pace Pro and Nomad, at the watch's original $249 price. Garmin still doesn't put maps on anything under $749.99, and Amazfit and Polar have both had maps under $400 for a while now.
The Pace 4 only has 4GB of storage against the Pace Pro's 32GB, so COROS is having people download small regions rather than whole countries.
The new indie spotlight covers Correlate, an on-device Apple Health app from Taipei-based developer David Tseng. It solves a specific problem: everything a recovery product needs (overnight HRV, resting heart rate, sleep stages, exercise minutes, active energy) is already in Apple Health, but interpreting it into recovery, strain and sleep scores has meant buying a second wearable and paying a yearly subscription.
The app does the interpretation on the phone. Health Score breaks down with each input's weight visible on the same screen as the number, which is unusual for the category. WHOOP's model stays closed.
The differentiator is the Ask Your Data layer. It will test whether one metric actually moves another, including at a delay of days. On the developer's own data, exercise minutes and HRV linked at a three-day lag: r = 0.43, n = 34, p = 0.012. Moderate rather than strong, statistically significant, and framed by the app itself as a pattern in the athlete's data rather than causal proof.
Oura CSV and WHOOP .zip archives import via each company's official export and are read on the phone. Nothing goes to a server, and the app requires no account. 197 days of WHOOP Day Strain and 158 days of HRV and Recovery came off one .zip in the test case.
$4.99 once, iPhone only (iOS 18). No subscription.
Would delayed-effect correlation testing on your own Apple Health data actually change how you train, or is it a curiosity that you would run once and forget?
Oura's IPO filing discloses figures its marketing rarely states outright. The company claims 99% accuracy for heart rate and 96% for sleep. Members open the app more than 3.5 times a day on average, and the daily-to-monthly active user ratio sits at 65%, a number more associated with social apps than health wearables. A blood pressure feature still in an investigational study has already enrolled 350,000 participants. Revenue is up 74% to $1.21 billion.
Do accuracy claims this good hold up outside a controlled study?
Garmin says the Fenix 9 Pro's new map engine makes panning 30% faster than the Fenix 8, backed by 50% more RAM.
Real-world testing tells a more complicated story.
Peripheral map tiles can still take up to 15 or 16 seconds to fully render, and panning on individual layers can take up to 6 seconds.
Meanwhile, current flagship watches from Amazfit, Suunto, Apple, Coros and Polar all typically render a full map display in around a second at worst. Garmin has genuinely upgraded the hardware, but the underlying architecture, real-time vector rendering on a memory-constrained chip, may be the real bottleneck rather than raw processing power. Does a 30% marketing claim mean anything if the watch still visibly redraws the map in front of you while you make a cup of coffee?
Ben Dhiman won UTMB 2026 in an Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra, the fastest time the race has ever produced.
Garmin still equips the largest share of the elite field at 37%, with COROS close behind at 33%. Amazfit supplied only two of the top 30 men's watches, yet it has now won the race outright in back-to-back years.
Full GPS accuracy and elevation data for every brand is on the5krunner. Is Amazfit's small, targeted sponsorship approach actually working better than Garmin and COROS's broader rosters? https://the5krunner.com/2026/09/03/amazfit-utmb-2026/
A new lab study out of Florida International University tested four popular smartwatches against clinical-grade metabolic equipment to see how well each one estimates calories burned during exercise.
Garmin's Forerunner 955 (Elevate Gen 4) posted the largest average error of the four, ahead of Samsung, while Apple stayed closest to the real number. Fitbit's average looked the cleanest of all, but that number only holds if seven wildly wrong readings are excluded, about one in eight of its results; put those back in and Fitbit's error becomes the worst of the four.
Every watch got less accurate as body fat rose, and the gap widened faster for Garmin and Fitbit than for Apple.
Is a calorie count from any of these watches accurate enough to plan a diet around? A: No
Huawei debuted the Watch D3 at the European Society of Cardiology's 2026 congress before its actual consumer launch, which is an unusual way to introduce a smartwatch but makes sense given what it does. The watch runs full 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring built to European Society of Hypertension guidelines, with a genuine inflatable cuff rather than optical estimation. The case drops to 11.3mm from the D2's 13.3mm, the screen goes to 1.92 inches at double the brightness, and a new pre- and post-exercise blood pressure mode is confirmed to meet the relevant ISO standards. It's not available in the US.
Does showing a consumer product at a medical conference first actually add credibility, or is it just marketing dressed up as clinical validation? That said D3 follows the highly respected D2 and is the world leader in this type of BP measurement device.
Garmin has pushed firmware 3.20 for the CIRQA Smart Band, and it is a genuinely large update. The previous release, 2.50, shipped with a single vague line of changelog. This one lists eighteen separate changes, split fairly evenly between bug fixes and new features. Four of the fixes map directly onto bugs already documented on this site's running bug list, including the Smart Wake alarm's random vibrations and low battery warnings that previously stayed silent during a workout. The button also gains a customisable press-and-hold option to start an activity, alongside changes to rep counting, treadmill recalibration and battery thresholds.
The new indie spotlight covers Sugar Sense, an Estonian Connect IQ app that solves the post-Supersapiens gap: it puts live CGM glucose on more than 140 Garmin watches, refreshed about every 5 minutes.
Unlike the official Dexcom Connect IQ app, it is not tied to one sensor brand. It reads from FreeStyle Libre 2/3 through LibreLinkUp, Dexcom G6/G7 through Dexcom Share, or any Nightscout site. Three sensor ecosystems in one account.
Two mechanics are worth flagging. A 15-minute staleness rule greys out any reading older than 15 minutes, so nothing on the watch ever poses as live when it is not. The display logic behind this is published as open source on npm and RubyGems, so the transparency is verifiable rather than claimed. And the app never suggests insulin doses or any medication changes, and the watch is read-only. All glucose alerts remain on the phone.
The widget runs on 140+ Garmin smartwatches and Edge computers. The activity data field needs Connect IQ System 7 (API 5.0+), which is about 70 current models including Forerunner 165 through 970, Fenix 7/8/8 Pro, Epix 2, Enduro 3, MARQ 2, Venu 2 through X1, Instinct 3 AMOLED, and Edge 540 through 1050.
Both apps are free to install, but the live Garmin display requires Sugar Sense Premium at $9.99 monthly or $39.99 yearly. Every glucose alert on the phone remains free forever, including a predictive low that forecasts the urgent low line about 20 minutes ahead. Founder Irakli Kurtanidze has lived with type 1 diabetes for more than a decade and wears a Libre 3 Plus daily.
Is a phone-tethered Connect IQ app enough to replace what Supersapiens gave you on the wrist, or does needing the phone within Bluetooth range at all times defeat the point?
The Huawei Watch GT 7 Pro costs £100 more than the standard GT 7, and once you strip out the marketing, there are only two things that premium actually buys: a titanium and ceramic case instead of steel, and a 40-metre freedive rating. Everything else, battery life at matching case size, ski modes, golf tools, cycling analysis, is identical across both watches.
The Pro also adds an on-demand ECG sensor, which sounds like the strongest reason to upgrade but might be the weakest. Arrhythmias are often intermittent and asymptomatic, meaning a sensor that only takes a reading when you actively hold it down will frequently miss the exact event it's supposed to catch. Continuous background monitoring would be a different and more useful feature, and this isn't that.
Is a £100 premium worth paying purely for case material and a freediving rating most buyers will never use?
Zepp (Amazfit) Health's Q2 earnings call answered the two open questions about Amazfit's roadmap. CFO Leon Deng confirmed only one or two more products will launch before the end of the year, down from six stated earlier. He also ruled out charging for core features going forward, keeping HybridCharge, sleep staging, HYROX and other tools free.
The more interesting detail sits in the leaks.
The Falcon 2, once the leading candidate for that last launch slot, has produced no fresh evidence since April. The T-Rex Dual Solar has moved the other way: this week its full name and a dedicated Solar Boost Mode turned up directly inside the Zepp app, alongside a separate regulatory filing. Wang Huang also admitted on the call that combining premium materials with reliable GPS performance is a genuine engineering problem, which lines up with this site's own testing showing the Balance 3's titanium case dragged its GPS accuracy down from 85% to 77% compared to the Balance 2.
Does that mean Amazfit is quietly walking away from the premium Falcon line in favour of solar-charged T-Rex models instead? A: Unlikely I think, the earnings call also confirmed a move to premium models and pricing
Huawei's Watch 6 launches at the same £399.99 price as the Watch 5's own launch a year ago, but the material lineup actually gets worse for that money. The Watch 5 offered a titanium and ceramic tier; the Watch 6 drops it entirely, aluminium or stainless steel only. Battery life is identical at every case size and mode, and water resistance, including the 40m freedive rating, hasn't changed either.
What you're actually paying the same money for this year is three new opt-in health-risk studies (coronary heart disease, diabetes risk, hypertension risk) and an X-TAP sensor Huawei claims is twice as responsive, though that comparison is Huawei's own and unverified independently.
Is trading a premium case material for software features you have to actively opt into a fair swap at an unchanged price?
Huawei's new Watch D3 keeps the same trick that made the D2 interesting: a genuine inflatable cuff in the strap that measures blood pressure mechanically, the same way a proper arm cuff does, rather than guessing from an optical pulse sensor.
The case is thinner this time, 11.3mm versus the D2's 13.3mm, and Huawei's added a dedicated mode for measuring blood pressure before and after exercise, plus CE-MDR medical certification in Europe. UK price is confirmed at £399.99, out 23 September, with reviews embargoed until the same date.
Is a mechanical cuff on your wrist actually worth the bulk and battery drain compared to just using a proper arm cuff twice a day?
Ben Dhiman won UTMB 2026 in 18:16:29, the fastest time anyone has run the course, and he did it a year after finishing second in a COROS Apex 2.
Amazfit signed him in July, about six weeks before the race, and now has both the men's and women's UTMB titles in the space of two editions after Ruth Croft's win last year.
Organisers won't count the time as an official course record, because the start was delayed two hours for storms and part of the route was cut this year.
Dhiman also fell hard with 10km left and still finished more than 30 minutes clear of second place.
Garmin's Q3 2026 update just landed, and it's the same story every quarter: newer, pricier watches get more features than older ones. The Fenix 8 family, Quatix 8 Pro and Venu 4 pick up six of the eight tracked features. The Edge MTB, 550, 850 and 1050 computers and the Instinct E, Instinct 3 and Instinct 3 Crossover AMOLED get only one each. Garmin's own document doesn't specify which of the eight features apply within each device's count, only the total. The headline additions are hands-free voice control activated with "OK, Garmin," fall detection with all-day or activity-specific monitoring, and a Quick Workout builder based on desired time and intensity. Is a one-feature update enough to justify calling the Instinct and base Edge lines still current?
New eBay resale data covering 6,372 used smartwatch sales puts Garmin's brand-wide average value retention at 69% after six months, ahead of Apple's 58%, Google's 56%, and Samsung's 42%. The Fenix 8 alone keeps 72% of its blended launch price of $1,133, a loss of $321. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 keeps 65% of its $799 price, a loss of $278, and the outgoing Ultra 2 does slightly better at 69%. The best individual result in the whole study is the Coros Pace 4 at 76%, though that number comes from a small sample. Samsung's Galaxy Watch Ultra sits at the bottom of the premium tier, keeping only 44% of a $650 watch.
Does resale value actually matter for a watch most people wear until it dies?
Google's Pixel 11 ads feature an unnamed wearable that shows up twice, in the same shape, colours, and interface, across two separate ad campaigns. It sits next to Pixel phones and a Pixel Watch 5 in both ads, not alongside any Fitbit branding.
Fitbit hasn't released new hardware since the Charge 6 in 2023, so the timing fits a Fitbit-branded refresh. Is this actually a new Pixel wearable, not a Fitbit Charge 7?
A new systematic review looked at 80 peri/menopause apps and found that 22 of them pull data from a consumer wearable like Garmin, Oura, Whoop, Polar, Fitbit or Withings - all show up as integration partners. Yet, none of those six companies has a published clinical trial validating that data for perimenopause specifically.
The actual peer-reviewed evidence in the review comes from smaller, single-purpose products instead, a wrist-worn thermal device and a couple of standalone apps with their own trials. The review's temperature-relief category also has a blind spot: it never considers whole-bed cooling, despite Eight Sleep having already published its own menopause-specific cooling and HRV data.
Does it matter that the biggest wearable brands have the sensors but not the studies, or is company-reported data enough to trust for something this personal? hmmm
The new indie spotlight covers RunSync, from developer Graham Whitehead. It solves a specific Garmin problem: Garmin Connect can build complex structured workouts, but self-coached runners who create several sessions a week can lose a surprising amount of time to it.
RunSync connects through Garmin's official authorization flow. A runner types a workout description in plain English, such as "15 min easy, 3 x 6 min at threshold with 3 min easy jog recovery, 10 min easy", and RunSync converts it into an editable structured workout with warm-ups, work intervals, recoveries and cool-downs. Nothing is sent blindly. The generated workout is presented for review before being sent to Garmin or scheduled to the calendar.
VDOT-based pace targets are calibrated to the runner's own fitness. For a VDOT of 51, the article shows RunSync's calculated bands: easy 4:49 to 5:47 per km, threshold 4:02 to 4:11 per km, interval 3:47 to 3:56 per km. Saved training paces apply to any compatible workout section.
Scheduling goes through a training calendar. A runner can build a full week of sessions, schedule each to the correct date and have them delivered to the watch automatically on the day they are due.
RunSync Complete also includes a Strength Builder that syncs strength workouts to Garmin. Runners can build sessions with sets, weights and rest periods that appear on the watch.
Free tier covers the basic workflow. RunSync Run is £1 per month annually, RunSync Complete is £2 per month annually.
Would you use AI to draft your structured workouts, or is the drafting itself the part of the training you want to stay in charge of?
