I went on a big hike in the beautiful Wye Valley in the UK to test out AllTrails’ new Peak subscription service. AllTrails is one of our best fitness apps, and I wanted to update its review, taking the new Peak service into account.
However, also wanting to make the most of the opportunity, I wore my Apple Watch Ultra 2, my Garmin Instinct 3, and the all-new Whoop MG, the medical-grade version of the Whoop 5.0.
The main wearables I wanted to test were the Instinct 3, the best Garmin watch for outdoor adventures at its price point, and the Whoop MG. The Instinct series is super-popular because it’s cheaper than the high-end Fenix series, while still offering fantastic GPS and navigational capabilities, albeit at the expense of some features like full-color maps.
I often use the Apple Watch Ultra 2 as a litmus test when checking the GPS and heart rate indications of other, cheaper wearables. I’ve done these sorts of tests before: last year, I ran the London marathon with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Garmin Epix Pro and compared their results against Strava and my official marathon chip time. You can see that video below.
This time, I’m taking Garmin’s Instinct 3, comparing it with the readings from my Apple Watch Ultra 2 and AllTrails’ map of the route I walked. I’m also testing the new Whoop MG’s heart rate readings, comparing them against the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Instinct 3 to set a standard for wrist-mounted heart rate detection.
The hike
It was a 7.81km (according to AllTrails) out-and-back walk starting near the historic, ruined Tintern Abbey to the top of the hill, the Devil’s Pulpit, via some ancient Welsh woodland. There’s a steep ascent and descent, with a flat section at the top of the climb. That 7.81km is the distance I walked, not the listed distance of the hike itself.
You can see the abbey from the top of the Pulpit, said to be where the devil stood to tempt the Abbey’s residents from afar – scary stuff. I’m glad I didn’t do this walk on Halloween!
The results: GPS
Last year, during the London marathon test, I said there were small differences in accuracy between Garmin and Apple, largely due to the way they process information. Unless you were an elite athlete needing millisecond times, I came to the conclusion that Garmin and Apple were accurate, close enough to each other for serious fitness enthusiasts and amateur athletes.
I’m happy to report this is still the case with the Garmin Instinct 3 and AllTrails, with just a 0.13 differential between Garmin, AllTrails, and Apple’s respective measurements of the hike, with Garmin recording 7.67km and Apple recording 7.75, give or take 100 meters of accuracy, then. Not bad considering we’ve been connecting to three different satellite networks across eight kilometers.
The results: heart rate
It’s a little bit more challenging when it comes to measuring heart rate against the Whoop, as it automatically grouped my exercise into two separate hikes, discounting the bit of flat ground at the top. I didn’t manually start the workout as I did on the other two watches: I let Whoop pick it up automatically. I’m just impressed its algorithms could automatically detect I was hiking, rather than in the gym, running or walking.
Above, you can see the heart rate timeline graphs of all three devices. I’m pleased to see the heart rates on all three devices look roughly the same, sharing peaks and troughs with no wild deviations or spikes despite having been worn on different wrists and using different algorithms.
Conclusions
Without testing the Whoop against one of the best heart rate monitors on my chest (four devices were enough for one hike!) I’m happy enough with the accuracy of all these devices and could recommend them all for most exercise enthusiasts. AllTrails was also near enough from a GPS perspective, albeit possibly a slight over-estimation considering it calculated the highest total distance of the day. Nonetheless, very impressive considering the hike took me through large areas of covered woodland, during which GPS has a nasty tendency to jump around due to signal blockage.
Stay tuned for my full Whoop MG review, but from an accuracy standpoint, I’m happy with the way these (admittedly very unscientific) tests have gone.
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