New Coros Vertix 2 brings mapping and big battery life
Coros has announced its new Vertix 2 outdoors adventure watch, with a big focus on battery life and mapping features.
The Vertix 2 will be available in two colors – Obsidian and Lava – and will cost $699.
The US sports watch brand, which has Garmin in its sights with big feature sheets and low prices, has certainly made another aggressive move with its follow up to 2020’s Coros Vertix.
Big GPS overhaul
At the heart of the new Coros is a dual-frequency GPS chipset, which may not sound particularly sexy, but promises better GPS coverage, especially with tree cover or in deep valleys. It’s something that we’ve heard about on the Huawei Watch 3 Pro, and Coros is ready to make a big noise about it too.
And underpinning this hardware change are three GPS modes.
“Standard GPS” will last 140 hours between charges with one second GPS pings. That’s right up there with the longest-lasting sports watches on the market, although we’d warn against direct comparisons to “standard” modes likes of Garmin and Suunto. And that’s because while those brands have focused on modes than reduce accuracy in favor of better battery, Coros has opted for the opposite.
It’s only the secondary All Systems On mode that uses GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, and QZSS (which is more comparable to the Garmin Enduro) and that lasts 90 hours. The Enduro lasts 80 hours – so it’s still impressive – although that can extend up to 300 hours in less accurate modes.
And the final mode uses All Systems alongside the dual frequency chipset, which lasts 50 hours. However, Coros promises “next level” accuracy, and is designed for treks in valleys or under tree cover.
So while Coros has upended its GPS power saving strategy, there’s still excellent battery life levels. And the company says it will last 60 days of plain old daily use.
Mapping modes
Added to this battery life and GPS story are new mapping features on the Vertix 2.
There are three layers including landscape, topographic and a hybrid, which mixes the two. That’s a big step-up in terms of navigation from the Vertix, and makes it one of the few outdoor watches with mapping support. Coros is also adding these TOPO maps to the original Vertix and the Apex Pro as well and will land before the end of 2021.
There are changes in the hardware too. The screen size has increased to 1.4-inch, with a fairly low-res 280 x 280 resolution in 60 colours – but more than does the job.
There’s also music playback, but sadly this is still from uploaded MP3s using the 32GB of built-in storage.
There’s a heart rate monitor, as you’d expect, and the Vertix 2 will record HRV every morning to ascertain stress levels.
Eliud Kipchoge Edition PACE 2
In addition to the Vertix 2, the company has also launched a Eliud Kipchoge Edition PACE 2.
The watch, used by the marathon legend in Tokyo 2020, is decked out in the Kenyan national colors and comes with the Coros Pod sensor for extra training dynamics.
The package retails for $249 (a discount over the standard $300 cost for the package) and there will be 5,000 units available.
Both watches are up for grabs now from the Coros website and we’ll be putting the Vertix 2 through its paces soon to see if the Garmin and Polar rival has come up with a sports watch great.
