Appearance and comfort
I think the Pace 3 is cute. I ended up with one of the retro colored editions, but you can also get it in a plain black, or a sleek red-and-white model with a nylon strap, to name a few.
And, yes, it has a reflective LCD (also called MIP) screen, rather than the glowy smartphone-style display that you might find on a newer Garmin or, for that matter, an Apple Watch. If you’re not familiar with this style of display, I have an explainer here. These MIP screens are highly visible in sunlight, but can be harder to see indoors unless you turn on the backlight. A major perk of the MIP style is that it’s very low power, so the display can always be “on” without affecting your battery life.
The Pace 3 only comes in one size, 42 millimeters. I love it, but people with bigger arms may prefer a bigger watch, and there’s no option for that unless you want to spring for the Pace Pro, which is a fancier watch that costs about $US100 more. On the other hand, if you like your watches small and light, the Pace 3 is probably one of the lightest on the market right now. It weighs just 39 grams with the silicone strap I’m wearing here, or just 30 grams if you buy the version with the nylon strap.
Navigating the watch
On the side, there’s a scroll wheel that serves as your “OK” button when pressed, and a separate, smaller button that has a “back” function and can mark laps during an activity. The watch also has a touchscreen—a nice surprise if your only experience with reflective screens is with Garmins like the 55 or 255, which require you to navigate with buttons.
Flick up from the watch face to see your widgets, like your upcoming workouts, steps and calories for the day, training status, how long until sunset, and so on. Press the scroll wheel for a menu that includes your favorite workout types plus options to go into the watch’s settings. Long press the back button for a carousel of shortcuts.
By default, the display is locked, and you have to hold in a button (or scroll a wheel, if you prefer) to unlock it. I found that handy since otherwise I was always pressing or scrolling the wheel by accident.
Activity tracking
The Pace 3 has all the standard activities you’d expect from a running and fitness watch, including a strength training feature that can follow workouts you set up in the app. (A recent update even brought the ability to edit your reps from the watch.)
During workouts, you can open the Coros app and tap the Extender icon in the corner to see your current stats. For example, for a strength workout, you can see your reps, sets, and set time or rest time. You can only get this on Garmin if you pay extra for a Connect+ subscription; Coros gives this to you for free.
Accuracy is excellent, for both heart rate and GPS. The Pace 3’s heart rate readings matched what I got from a chest strap (the most accurate way to measure heart rate), and you can of course pair the watch to a chest strap if you want to be sure you’re getting the best possible readings.
Location accuracy was impressive as well, closely matching my actual path every time I checked the map without any notable deviations. The Pace 3 uses GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, and QZSS, and can do multi-band calculations to improve accuracy when you’re among tall buildings or trees.
Battery life and charging
The Pace 3 uses a three-pin cable that snaps onto the back of the watch, similar to Garmin’s setup but not compatible with it. The watch comes with this cable, but you can also get an adapter to connect the watch to any USB-C cable. Make sure to get the A1 adapter, though—the Pace Pro uses the A2 adapter, which looks identical but doesn’t quite fit.
I got 13 days of use from a single charge. Coros says the Pace 3 can last up to 15 days, not counting activities, so that roughly matches. The battery is good for about 38 hours of activity tracking in total, although this drops if you select certain navigation options or want to play music while you’re running. The most battery-intensive setup would be to use dual-band, all navigation systems on, and have music playing. You’ll get 7 hours on a full charge with all of that.
Training features
Coros offers plenty of analytics and training features. You get pretty much everything a Garmin in this price range would offer, and then some. Training status, for example, is available on this watch, and the watch can also break down your training to tell you how much aerobic and anaerobic load you’ve been getting. Those are available on the Garmin 265 and higher, but not the 165.
Coros also has a web-based Training Hub with a dashboard of performance metrics they call EvoLab. This is one of the things Coros users consistently cite as a big plus this ecosystem has over Garmin; many find it easier to read and use than Garmin’s version of the same.
Smartwatch features
While the running features are all similar or better than what you’d get with other watches, some of the more smartwatch-y features are lacking.
For example, the Pace 3 can play music from the watch, but only if you load music files onto it ahead of time. It can’t control the music that is playing on your phone, and it definitely can’t download tracks from, say, Spotify.
The Pace 3 also doesn’t have a tap-to-pay feature, like Garmin Pay or Apple Pay. That can be inconvenient if you like to run without bringing a phone or wallet.