Overall, running is a pretty low-tech sport—all you really need is a good pair of shoes. But there’s one piece of gear that many runners completely geek out over: the watch.

Today’s top GPS running watches can give athletes all kinds of data about their training, from heart rate and stride length to VO2 max estimates and race predictions. “It can be one way to track your fitness improvement if you’re someone who likes data,” says Chicago-based running coach Amanda Wagner.

One of the most popular brands today is Coros. It’s only been around for 10 years, which makes it fairly new compared to long-standing brands like Garmin and Suunto. But it’s quickly gained traction among runners.

“It’s known to be a powerhouse running watch brand at a really great price point,” Wagner says. “It’s known to be accurate and connect fast to GPS.” It’s also got a reputation for offering exceptional battery life, making it particularly attractive among ultra endurance athletes who want a tracker that lasts as long as they do.

The brand’s latest launch is the Coros Pace Pro. It updates the older Pace 3 with a bright AMOLED screen, longer-lasting battery life, downloadable offline maps, and a faster processor (so that it’s more responsive as you’re tapping around). Plus, it’s got eight times the storage capacity. At $349, it’s priced in the midrange of running watches—not the most budget-friendly, but also not the highest top-of-the-line luxury option.

Looking closely at the specs, I was intrigued by the lineup of premium features: The Pace Pro offers just what most serious runners want, without a bunch of extraneous bells and whistles that can drive up the price on higher-end watches. So I got a sample to test out, using it to track runs, walks, strength training, and sleep. And I found it to be an exceptional training tool that actually helped me log better workouts.

Coros Pace Pro — $349.00

• Display: AMOLED (1500 nits)
• Battery life: 20 days for daily use, 31 hours of dual-frequency GPS
• Controls: Touchscreen, digital dial, back button
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, WiFi
• Memory: 32 GB
• Waterproof rating: 5 atm (enough for swimming, but not diving)
• Warranty: 2 years
• Color options: Black, grey, blue

Pros:

• Exceptionally long battery life
• Bright screen with easy-to-read graphics
• Downloadable maps with turn-by-turn directions
• Impressively precise GPS (and quick connection)
• Workouts are easy to create and follow 
• Captures loads of data

Cons:

• Unreliable sleep tracking
• Plays MP3s but can’t stream music or podcasts
• Setup can be time-consuming

Battery life

Long-lasting battery life is one of the biggest selling points for Coros watches in general, and that’s true here even with the brand’s first (energy-sucking) AMOLED display. Coros says a charge on the Pace Pro lasts 31 hours with dual-frequency GPS on, or up to 20 days with regular day-to-day use. I found an hour-long run only ate up 4 percent of the battery power.

This longevity is huge if you’re doing ultramarathons or Ironman races. It’s also just super convenient. “Think of, say, an Apple watch—those maybe last part of a day versus this Coros watch, it’s going to have a longer battery life,” Wagner says.

It also charges quickly. When it first arrived, I opened up the box to find the Pace Pro charged to 75 percent (a nice perk for those of us who love the instant gratification of a toy we can immediately play with). I plugged it into my computer to download some music, and within a few minutes it was already up to 91 percent.

One thing to note: The watch comes with a charging adapter that connects to any USB cable, which is convenient. But the adapter itself is tiny and feels easy to lose. (Coros seems to anticipate this, offering a keychain you can stick it in for safe-keeping.)

Setup

To get going with basic functions, I found the setup pretty straightforward and minimal. But I had to hunt to figure out any fancier features like how to download a training plan or add music. There’s no video to take you through all the steps, and they aren’t always the most intuitive, so I ended up Googling almost everything.

The screen and hardware

The Pace Pro’s AMOLED screen is bright and easy to read no matter whether it’s dark or super bright out. Meanwhile, the new, faster processor makes it super quick to tap around through tons of data right on your wrist.

The one place where I found it’s not the most responsive is actually getting the screen to light up. When I kept it on the “Gesture-Based” setting to extend battery life when not working out, the watch face didn’t always show up immediately when I lifted up my arm to take a peek.

The screen is 1.3 inches, and it comes with a silicone band, which I found decently comfortable. It’s not so big that it gets in my way, and it’s light enough to wear 24/7. However, as someone who doesn’t love sleeping with a watch, at night I found it a little clunkier than a Whoop band.

GPS connectivity

Coros says the Pace Pro has a new satellite chipset and hardware configuration for the brand’s most precise GPS performance to date. I found it always connected to GPS for me quickly in just two to six seconds.

To check how accurate it was, I looked back at all my maps after my runs. I could see it captured my exact path across a street, for instance, rather than showing a wiggly line. There were slight deviations of a foot or two, but no major aberrations, even around buildings that typically freak out my old Garmin.

Doing a workout

In theory, one of the major perks of a good running watch is the ability to program workouts right onto it. In practice, this can sometimes be so cumbersome it’s not worth the hassle. But I found Coros makes it super easy to build a workout in the app, and there’s also a library of coach-designed workouts and even full training plans to choose from.

On the run, the watch gave me clear signals of when to start an interval, when to recover, and how fast to go. I liked the way the pacer option kept me honest about my speed in a non-irritating way, only giving a gentle nudge every 65 seconds when my pace was off (you can customize the frequency). Meanwhile, colored lines made it easy to see my heart rate zone at a glance. It felt like having a coach on my wrist tell me exactly what I should be doing when so that I could focus in on the running itself.

The Pace Pro seems mainly designed for runners and triathletes. Case in point: You can choose between “run,” “indoor run,” “trail run,” or even “track run,” plus four different biking and two swimming options. But you can also track other activities like skiing and rowing. I used it to track a couple of strength training sessions, just because I could.

“A lot of runners end up enjoying their watch so much that they want to track all their data and all their activities with it,” Wagner says. For lifting, there’s an auto-rep counting feature, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, depending on the exercise. It also recorded my heart rate, which isn’t the point of strength training, but hey, nice to know. I don’t know anyone who buys a watch for lifting workouts, so the lack of usable features here isn’t shocking. But I did like being able to keep track of how much time I spent doing strength work throughout the week.

Once you finish any kind of workout, you get a bunch of stats to scroll through right on the watch (like heart rate zones, elevation, cadence, stride length, recovery time), and have a chance to note your rate of perceived exertion. Or you can check out the data on the Coros app or a third-party platform like Strava or Training Peaks. Wagner says she’ll go over this kind of data with the athletes she coaches at least once a month, and sometimes as often as every single day, depending on how data-driven they are.

One thing I loved: The Pace Pro gives you daily stats without feeling at all shame-y on rest days. Even if you set daily goals, there aren’t markers like unclosed rings when you don’t hit them—you just get a congrats message when you do.

Maps

The addition of offline maps is a huge draw for many runners. With the Pace Pro, you can create a route (on roads or trails) in the Coros app, or import a GPX file. I found it’s a little more time intensive to map out a route in the app than in, say, Google maps, but it’s not terrible if you’ve got some patience.

Then, once you choose to follow a route during an activity, you’ll get turn-by-turn prompts and off-course alerts. It can also tell you how to get back to the start. However, it won’t re-route you when you veer off (like you’d get with a routable map on a high-end Garmin), so you need to figure out how to get back on track yourself by looking at the map on your wrist

It took me a few minutes to get used to the timing of how far ahead it warns you about a turn—on short blocks, I’d get a prompt for a turn two blocks ahead, which is just confusing. But you can always look down at your wrist and see the route highlighted. Once I got a sense of the rhythm though, this was a huge help that kept me from stopping my workout to take out my phone and check where I was headed.

Other features

One thing that got me excited about the Pace Pro was the ability to listen to music right from the watch, but this feature was actually pretty underwhelming. Yes, with 32 GB storage, you can fit a massive playlist, but it only supports MP3 files—if you want to stream Spotify or podcasts, you’ll need your phone. I found the Bluetooth connection was also pretty darn spotty unless I turned off my phone’s bluetooth connection so it didn’t interfere.

Initially, I was also intrigued by the Pace Pro’s all-in-one capability as both a running watch and sleep tracker. Yet I found the sleep tracking gave me a good deal more credit than my Whoop, counting the time I spent scrolling Instagram in bed as “light sleep.” It also doesn’t always pick up on naps. So I’d say that while it’s helpful to get a general idea of your sleep, if that data’s super important to you, I’d recommend a tracker like Whoop or Oura ring that specializes in it.

One cool perk, however, is that you can do a few health tests right from the Pace Pro: You can see your heart rate, heart rate variability, breath rate, oxygen saturation, and get an overall “stress score.” It’s not an FDA-approved ECG, but pretty neat for a quick check-in.

Who the Coros Pace Pro is best for

Honestly, I’d recommend the Pace Pro to nearly any runner who’s in the market for a premium smartwatch. The only caveats are that if you want one that also gives you best-in-class sleep tracking or streams music and podcasts, you’ll probably want to keep shopping around. (Though you’ll likely need to pay a little more.)

But if a long battery life, a bright screen, or offline maps are a priority, this watch truly gives you a ton of bang for your buck. “Do you need to spend $800 on a smartwatch? No,” Wagner says. “You can get one for $200 or $300 that has all the features and more that you might need.” The Pace Pro offers just that. Personally, I found that the collection of features add up to better workouts, taking care of details like where the heck you’re headed so you can just focus on putting in the work.