My Sports Watch and Bike Computer of the Year 2024

Q: What criteria would I use if I had to award a sports watch or bike computer of the year prize?

A: I would like to use subjective and personal criteria. Something like: I use the device or would use it if I didn’t write this blog and just did sports. A second criterion would be that it has some degree of innovative technical awesomeness.

If I didn’t have those criteria, then the best sports watch of 2024 would be the Garmin Fenix 8 and the best bike computer would be the Garmin Edge 1050. But I have no intention of regularly using either of those in 2025; the Fenix 8’s buttons weren’t amazing enough to win a prize, and the Edge 1050 was just a weird shape even though its screen, battery life and revamped interface are very good.

My Sports Watch of 2024

2024 has seen four dedicated Garmin sports watches, two from polar, two from Coros and two from Suunto, plus others from the likes of Amazfit (t-Rex 3), Apple (Watch 10), Samsung, Google and more. There are some possibly good choices there, and some potentially boring ones.

Well, I will be even more boring than choosing a Garmin. My sports watch of the year is the Apple Watch 10. “What! That’s not even a sports watch,” you say. I would argue that it kinda is; as per Strava stats, the Apple Watch is used by many fitness types, and casual runners, and you will have seen quite a few worn by Olympians in Paris if you looked closely enough last summer.

Q: Is Watch 10 technically awesome?

A: meh. It works. It’s pretty much bug-free and it has some very clever smart features…much less so, sporty ones which are very much well-established features re-imagined by Apple (vitals).

For the avoidance of doubt – I do NOT use the Watch 10 as my primary sports watch but as a sports logger, recovery aid and communications device. I have the Sapphire/LTE version and regularly use it to let others know my location during sport. I also text home during sport for someone to put the hot water on for when I get back and I use Apple Pay to buy lots of coffee and cake when riding. Naturally, I rely on my Forerunner 965/Stryd for the more important workouts, although if I had to, I would be happy to use the excellent Stryd app for WatchOS for more serious running.

My Bike Computer of 2024

This year, I looked at a few bike computers from Magene, iGSport, Hammerhead, Wahoo and Garmin.

Garmin Edge 1050 was better than I expected. A new look, screen, audio and case seemed to more than make up for the huge number of bugs that just about every reviewer failed to mention, including me. Whilst it truly was a half-baked release in that sense, what impressed me the most was its move towards better usability with tweaks to the user interface. I’d used the Edge 540 (button-only) model a lot earlier in the year, which was awful. Perhaps the better usability AND touchscreen were such a transformation from the 540 that I enjoyed it more than I should have.

The “half-baked award” seemed somewhat unfairly bestowed on Wahoo ELEMNT ACE. To be fair, I knew about a new Wahoo months before its release, but only that it was a larger, wind-featured model a short time before launch. Being a Wahoo-lover, I was unduly excited by the prospect of a new ROAM yet somewhat disappointed by the ACE, which came in a larger format than suited me. ELEMNT ACE hasn’t yet crashed on me – something you can’t ever say about any new Garmin…ever. However, some of its headline features were late to the table. For example, Strava Live Segments weren’t added until a few weeks after launch. Its battery life is about 20 hours with the backlight disabled (it’s not normally needed). That seems a far cry from its ‘up to 30-hour’ claims, but 20 hours still must make it the bike computer with the third-best battery life after Edge 1050 and Coros DURA. ELEMNT ACE also retains Wahoo’s excellent usability and adds a tantalising new AIR SPEED feature. Despite my understanding of cDa, I’m not quite sure what to do with ACE’s new WIND DYNAMICS; that, coupled with it being too big means that my best bike computer award has to go somewhere else.

Coros DURA! … just kidding. Of course not.!

It has to go to Hammerhead KAROO 3, which I love. It ticks almost all of my boxes except battery life and even the glaring omission of Di2/Ki2 support appears now to be in a state of ‘almost fixed.’

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