Keeping pace with the pricier competition

The Coros Pace 3 is aimed at anyone looking for a watch that can track a multitude of sports and do it for a lot less money than similar watches from Garmin and Polar.

While this is the cheapest watch in the Coros family it certainly doesn’t scrimp on features, including the promise of accurate GPS through a new dual-frequency GPS mode, the ability to navigate your way when you get lost and the offer of weeks of battery life from a small and light design.

Related: Best fitness trackers for your wrist: Expert tested and reviewedIt’s clearly positioned to challenge other affordable multisport watches like the Garmin Forerunner 55 and Polar Pacer. So is the Pace 3 a great watch for fitness fans? I’ve been wearing it and tracking runs, indoor workouts, swims and more to find out.

Coros Pace 3

Recommended

The Coros Pace 3 is a fantastic multisports watch that offers strong performance across the board, is great value and one of the current standout watches to track your workout time.

Pros

• Strong GPS accuracy
• Great battery life
• Useful navigation support

Cons

• Training features not as slick as rivals
• No ANT+ connectivity
• More expensive than Coros Pace 2

Pricing, specs and availability

The Coros Pace 3 is available in a single, 41.9mm size option and costs $229/£219. The next Coros watch up from the Pace 3 is the Apex 2, which is priced at $399/£349.

It does mean however that the Pace 3 launch price is more than its predecessor the Pace 2, which cost $199/£179 at launch and does get some of the software features announced for the new Pace to still make it an attractive buy.

Design and display

Small and light

The Pace 3 is a small watch, measuring in at 11.7mm thick and with a 41.9mm case, so it stays the same thickness as the Pace 2 and is a touch smaller in comparison. Put that next to a similarly priced Garmin like the Forerunner 55, and the Pace 3 will soak up similar space on your wrist.

The watch case is made from polymer, so it’s light too, and along with white and black looks also comes in an all-red Track edition. Coros gives you strap options here too. There’s a softer and lighter nylon band and a more typical silicone sports band. Both are removable and these are 22mm straps that use a very simple pin mechanism to let you quickly pop them out and pop in a new band.

There’s a combination of two physical buttons and a 1.2-inch, 240 x 240 resolution, always-on memory LCD screen. That’s the same size and resolution screen as the Pace 2, only this time it has touchscreen support offering another way to interact with the latest Pace. No, it’s not a colour screen, but it’s rare to find AMOLED screens on a dedicated multisports watch at a similar price.

So instead Coros focuses on delivering strong visibility in all conditions and that’s exactly what you get here. It\s not the biggest screen, but I certainly never had issues checking on my real-time stats or simply checking the time on land and in the water.

On that front, this is a multisports watch and that does mean you can swim with it. Coros offers both pool and open water swimming modes along with a triathlon mode as well.

It’s got a 5 ATM rated design, so you can take it as deep as 50 metres. I’ve mainly used it for pool swims and the experience of using it in the water feels very similar to using the Pace 2 and that’s a good thing.

Health and fitness

An accuracy boost

I think the best way to describe the tracking experience of using the Pace 3 is that Coros has sought to make the kind of improvements that ensure you’re getting more reliable data as opposed to simply offering loads of more features.

Case in point here is the introduction of its dual-frequency GNSS chipset. This chipset has appeared on other Coros watches with mixed results and is designed to boost accuracy during outdoor tracking, particularly when you’re using the watch near tall buildings, in bad weather and large, forested areas.

I’ve used similar modes on a host of different watches, including the Apple Watch Ultra, Garmin Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 265, along with smartwatches from Huawei and Xiaomi – and the dual-frequency support on the Pace 3 is great. It’s perhaps not Apple, Garmin and Suunto-level great, but the accuracy improvements compared to the Pace 2 are definitely noticeable in areas where it’s more challenging to pick up a reliable GPS signal.

It’s the same story for the optical heart rate monitor Coros includes here, which is an upgraded one from the Pace 2 and also supports taking pulse oximeter readings as well. I think it could be partly down to the small form factor of the Pace 3 and the great fit you get here that the heart rate tracking performance during exercise, even at high intensity, really impressed against a heart rate monitor chest strap. However, if you do suffer from some rogue or questionable readings, you can pair an external Bluetooth heart rate monitor to it – unfortunately Coros leaves out the ANT+ connectivity support.

While the Pace 3 doesn’t look like a watch you’d want to go for a big hike with, Coros does include some navigation features here, including the ability to upload routes to the watch via the Coros app. It’s nice and straightforward to do that and while you don’t get the full topographical maps you’ll find on Coros’ pricier watches, it does offer breadcrumb-style support, which will be more than enough for most to better navigate new surroundings.

This isn’t a watch that just wants to track you, though. It also wants to crunch that data and help you decide when to train and help you build workouts to create more structured training too. So like a lot of new sports watches it’ll keep an eye on your training load, recommend recovery time and offer the ability to build interval workouts and download training plans.

If you’re a runner, you can carry out running fitness tests to get a better sense of your overall fitness. For indoor workouts, there’s a muscle heatmap mode that lets you keep track on whether you’re dedicating enough leg days during your week, for example.

Having spent a lot of time using the training features on Garmin, Polar and Apple watches, I feel like Coros’ approach leans somewhere in between what Garmin and Polar offers you. They can offer good guidance and workout features are well executed, but the presentation of some insights doesn’t feel as slick as what you’ll get on a similarly priced Garmin.

If you want a watch to track your steps and sleep, again, Coros can cover that as well. I wouldn’t say these are primary reasons to grab the Pace 3, though. It lacks the more motivating approach you’ll get from a Garmin or even an Apple Watch and while sleep tracking offers a nice breakdown of sleep stages and offers similar sleep duration stats to the excellent Oura Ring Gen 3 smart ring, it lacks the more meaningful insights that rivals like Polar offers.

Smartwatch features

A musical bump

The Pace 3 isn’t going to give you the feature-rich experience you’ll find on a proper smartwatch, but it will give you more smartwatch features than we got on the Pace 2.

You can still view notifications in a pretty basic fashion, change watch faces and there’s also find my phone and watch modes, which do work well to reunite you with your Pace 3 or help you hunt down your paired smartphone.

Coros has now included a music player and you have a portion of the built-in 4GB storage to use to store audio on it too. It’s only compatible with MP3 files and to get audio over to your watch you’ll need to hook the watch up to a computer to do it – dragging and dropping files on, which can take a while if you’ve got a lot of files to throw on.

Sadly, unlike an Apple Watch, Garmin or Samsung Galaxy Watch, that music player isn’t compatible with third-party music streaming services, so you will need to own the music to listen to it. The touchscreen makes that music player a nice feature to have though, and I’ve paired multiple headphones including the AirPods Pro 2 with no issues, making it a good addition if you care deeply about it.

Battery life

More of the same, and that’s no bad thing

Coros watches have always offered great battery life, whether it’s in day-to-day use or during workout tracking and it’s more of the same with the Pace 3.

Based on Coros’ numbers, you should enjoy up to 24 days (up from 20 days) of smartwatch battery life and 38 hours of GPS battery life. Opt for the best accuracy GPS option and that number drops to 25 hours. Throw music streaming into the equation and that hogs the battery enough to see GPS battery drop below 10 hours – so use it wisely if you’re looking for longevity.

Over the few weeks I’ve tested the Coros Pace 3 I’ve found it’s been capable of lasting comfortably a week with scope to go further. It doesn’t feel like there are as many features that hog the battery here, as there are on rival watches like Garmin and Polar. The notification support is simpler for instance and if you opt for the full GPS mode instead of the dual-frequency one, then that will push things a little further too.

Ultimately, I’ve never felt short changed with the battery on the Pace 3 and it does offer some improved numbers on its predecessor as well too.

Verdict

The Coros Pace 3 is a really fantastic little multisports watch that promises a lot and delivers on most fronts. It’s a great option for runners looking for more than the basics or someone that wants a multisports watch without the premium price tag.

If you look at it against the competition, something like the Garmin Forerunner 55 arguably offers a more user-friendly software, while training features on something like the Polar Pacer feel like a slight step up on what you get here. Pace 2 owners might not see it as a definite upgrade unless you’ve been left underwhelmed by features like GPS support, wrist-based heart-rate tracking or care about having more smartwatch smarts.

Despite jumping up in price from what the Pace 2 launched for, the Coros Pace 3 remains a great buy that doesn’t scrimp on the things that truly matter.