Wrist Assessments

- Tom Wiggins

TOMTOM SPARK 3 CARDIO + MUSIC US$230 / tomtom.com

Sometimes the only way to get yourself out of bed for your morning run is to turn it into a Rocky montage. Enter TomTom’s Spark 3, which is particularly suited to music-loving pavement pounders.

Getting Eye of the Tiger onto its 3GB memory is hardly the slickest procedure (although it’s definitely worth it), but once the tunes are there and you’ve got a pair of Bluetooth headphones hooked up – it comes with some for an extra $30 – you can start tracking your runs with the built-in GPS and heart-rate monitor. You can set specific objectives for each part of your run, such as fat burning, how many calories you want to crush, or what distance you want to cover. It’s certainly no Apple Watch in terms of design (the greyscale screen could be brighter and has just 144x168 pixels) or functionality (it doesn’t do phone notifications), but that simplicity equals better battery life. There’s no touchscreen, so a 4-way button underneath the screen controls all the functions, with vibration feedback to confirm selections – handy when you need to skip an accidentally loaded ballad in mid-run.

Once back home you can sync up your activities to the TomTom MySports app, which keeps track of all your workout data including duration, calories burned, heart rate and a map of where you actually ran.

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