New GPS Watches for Fall

COROS announces the new PACE Pro:

With a blazing 1500-nit AMOLED display, massive battery life, and double the processing power of the iconic PACE 3, the COROS PACE Pro delivers unmatched performance for athletes committed to pushing their limits.

These AMOLED displays are becoming the norm without sacrificing battery life – this is a good thing.

Here’s what DC Rainmaker has to say about it:

 …for the first time in its history, COROS is trying to compete directly price-wise, with their competitors.
…
the Pace Pro, priced at $349/399EUR is the closest the company has ever come to matching their competitors on features and pricing.

Is this a sign of COROS maturing and having established itself in the market that they can change strategy?

One super interesting tidbit from the box the watch ships with:

The second difference is the lack of charging cable, and instead, a charging keyring adapter. COROS has played around with such an adapter in the past, and 3rd parties have made one for other companies including Garmin and Apple. Essentially, you take your own USB-C cable and stick it in the end of the keyring adapter, and boom, you’ve got a charging cable. COROS says if you can’t find a USB cable of your own, what rock are you living under, they’ll happily send you one.

I’m sitting on a half-written article bemoaning the current state of charging cables for GPS watches. I cannot understand why watch companies don’t ship with better cables and especially why they haven’t switched with USB-C cables. I’ve been traveling quite a bit this year and have found that my watch is reason why I still need to travel with a USB-A adapter. It’s dumb. It’s 2024, high time to change this. Well, COROS seems to have found a great solution here. Rather than shipping a full charging cable they just ship a small adapter that any USB-C cable can connect to. This is brilliant, and I really hope the other watch makers (hello Suunto!) will copy this right away. And let’s hope fix their charger altogether, because this is overpriced garbage.

But to leave this article in on a high note: The Suunto Race S is now available in titanium. Which is very nice indeed (still with the same dumb charger though).