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The Amazfit Balance 3 is a hybrid training watch aimed squarely at people who want premium health features at a more mid-tier price of $369.99. I think of the Amazfit Balance 3 as a health-and-recovery smartwatch first, and sports tracker second, which means a lot of its best workout features can go easily overlooked. Here are five underrated hacks to really make the most of your Amazfit Balance 3.

Amazfit Balance 3 GPS Smartwatch

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Unlock developer mode with a secret tap sequence on your Amazfit Balance 3

This trick works across the whole Zepp app ecosystem, Balance 3 included. Go to Profile, then Settings, then About, and tap the Zepp logo seven times in a row. This unlocks developer mode, giving you access to device information that the standard app interface normally hides. It's a nice trick to have for troubleshooting a sync hiccup or just satisfying your curiosity about what's running under the hood.

Developer mode also lets you install custom watch faces, rather than relying on the existing native watch face library and upload a custom face on your computer, scan a generated QR code, and install it directly onto your watch.

Log voice memos mid-workout without breaking your stride

The Balance 3's voice assistant is a feature that's easy to overlook if you only think of voice control as a way to start or end a workout. What I like to do is capture quick voice notes during a run or log thoughts between sets without stopping, right as the thought occurs. This is extra useful whenever you want to record how a specific set felt in a specific moment, note down an idea for your next training block, or leave yourself a reminder without breaking your flow.

To use the voice assistant mid-workout, simply press and hold the top button (or crown), and wait for the listening screen to appear before speaking. Even if you don't want to use this feature as a training diary of sorts, you can use the voice assistant mid-workout to adjust settings (like turning up the screen brightness) or use different tools (like starting a timer). After you end your workout, sync your device to the Zepp App, and you can find your transcribed thoughts under the "Workout Notes" section, right next to your activity data.

While we're talking voice commands, there's even more you can do. It's intuitive to treat the voice assistant like a basic remote control, but you can stack multiple commands into a single Zepp Flow request. This means you can start a workout and set a goal or reminder in a single sentence, something like telling it to start an outdoor run and set a 5-mile goal at the same time. This way, you can walk out the door, hold the crown, say one compound sentence with multiple commands, and be fully set up without touching the touchscreen at all.

Turn these three features off when you're not exercising to save battery life

First, the Balance 3 lets you personalize your notifications beyond all-or-nothing enabling/disabling. This way, any critical alarms or low-battery warnings still function even when everything else is muted. For example, if you go to Settings > Notifications > Calendar on your watch, and turn off "Allow notifications," then calendar-related reminders will no longer pop up.

What I do before a workout is disable all notifications, and then go in and enable only the handful of apps I actually care about (like text messages), while keeping the rest quiet.

Next, while we're trimming fat, I find the Balance 3 defaults to more data collection than you probably need on a daily basis. These are the three features I dial back in order to save battery:

• When you're not actively exercising, reduce heart rate measurement frequency from every one minute down to every five or 10 minutes.

• Turn off "Automatic Stress Monitoring" and "Auto Blood Oxygen" tracking unless you specifically rely on that data.

• Disable continuous location tracking and heart rate logging when you're not working out. Just remember to re-enable both when you start a workout.

These quick settings changes will help stop your watch from unnecessarily draining battery in the background, and you really aren't sacrificing much in terms of data.

Fix your Amazfit's accidental workout pauses

I wish I had figured this out before my Hyrox training. One thing I've noticed across Amazfit watches is that the crown (aka the top right button) is overly sensitive, meaning the watch thinks I'm constantly pausing mid-workout whenever I accidentally bump against it. Maybe I have form issues, but I personally can't swing a kettlebell without bumping the button in some way.

Here's my fix: Head into Workout Settings and switch the pause mechanism from a "simple press" to "Long Press." The long press did take me some getting used to when I do want to pause, but I'm grateful that I don't have to worry about any more accidental pauses caused by natural wrist movement.

Fix slow GPS connection on your Amazfit Balance 3 before your run

Living in a densely populated city, I'm surrounded by tall buildings, and all my running watches take longer than I'd like to establish a proper GPS connection. Even with the Balance 3's dual-band GPS and six-satellite positioning system, here's what I do to improve my chances of the fastest connection possible.

First, I changed the GPS accuracy settings. To do this, use the Zepp App, and head to Profile > Watch Settings > Workout > GPS Settings, and switch from power-saving to Balanced or Accuracy mode. Then, before every workout, I open the Zepp App and pull down on the home screen to force a manual sync with my watch. This pushes the newest satellite orbital data to the watch. And if you're worried about battery life, after your workout, head back into those GPS settings and switch away from accuracy and back to power-saving.

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Amazfit's Cheetah 2 Ultra is a premium titanium-and-sapphire trail running watch, with a $599.99 price that feels pretty steep for a brand otherwise known for its budget options. And while Amazfit's Cheetah line isn't exactly my favorite, the Cheetah 2 Ultra is still an incredibly solid choice for any runner who wants a watch that looks and feels top-of-the-line.

Like with the Cheetah 2 Pro, there's more than meets the eye with this surprisingly feature-rich watch. Here are five features in the Cheetah 2 Ultra that go a bit beyond the manual.

Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra

$599.99 at Amazon

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Unlock a secret developer mode in your Amazfit watch

Your Zepp app has a hidden menu you probably wouldn't stumble upon by accident. Go to Profile, then Settings, then About, and tap the Zepp logo seven times in a row. This unlocks developer mode, which lets you dig into device information and debugging options that aren't normally visible in the consumer-facing app. It's not going to unlock secret hardware, but it's a useful place to check firmware details or troubleshoot a stubborn sync issue, and it's fun rabbit hole if you like poking around under the hood.

Developer mode also lets you install custom watch faces, rather than relying on the existing native watch face library and upload a custom face on your computer, scan a generated QR code, and install it directly onto your watch.

Prepare for difficult elevation at a glance on your Amazfit Cheetah 2Ultra

If you're planning a route with serious hills, this is one of the Ultra’s best hacks. The watch includes an elevation overview tool that color-codes slope difficulty across a route, so instead of squinting at a raw elevation profile and trying to guess where the brutal climbs are, you get a more accessible visual for where the terrain gets steep. This feature is easy to miss if you're not a dedicated trail runner, but it's worth pulling up before any route, so you know what you're walking into (before the hill tells you itself, the hard way).

Here's how to use the color-coded elevation glance on your Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra:

1. Create your route: Open the Zepp App, go to the Workout tab, select Create Route, and save your path.

2. Send the route to your watch: Sync your devices and check that the route successfully transfers to your watch.

3. Open Trail Mode: On your watch, launch the Trail Run sports profile before you start running.

4. Activate your route: While in trail mode, go to Settings, select Navigation, choose My Route, and select the route you created. Swipe to the elevation profile to see your color-coded preview.

If you want to see this elevation profile during your run, you can add elevation as a data screen. Here's how to customize your data screens on your Amazfit:

1. Select Workout on your watch and select your activity (like Outdoor Running).

2. Go to Settings > More > Data Page.

3. Tap whichever data field you want to show the elevation. You can swipe through your existing data pages or tap Add Page to create a new one.

Use the flashlight's boost mode when you need extra light (and practice the SOS feature)

Every Ultra user loves their watch's built-in flashlight, but there's even more to get out of it. The Ultra's flashlight includes white, red, SOS, and boost lighting modes, not just a single beam. The boost mode is there for when you need maximum brightness, like scanning a dark trail, while the SOS mode is a safety feature and needs to send a clear flashing signal in the dark. Cycle through the modes with repeated presses rather than assuming it's a one-setting tool.

After you press and hold the top-left button to turn on the flashlight, use the UP or DOWN buttons to cycle through the white brightness settings until you reach the red light mode. You can also swipe down from the watch face to open the Control Center and tap the flashlight icon.

Use your Cheetah 2 Ultra to browse new maps

You might assume your options are limited to whatever maps Amazfit preloads or offers through the Zepp app's map store—which includes plenty of options already. But you can go a little further. The Cheetah 2 Ultra can be used as a map browsing tool when you import OSM (OpenStreetMap) map files, which means if you're headed somewhere obscure that isn't well covered by the default map set, you have a nifty workaround. Just keep in mind the downloaded map needs to actually match your real location to be usable, so this is a plan-ahead hack, not something you sort out mid-trail.

Use the extra storage on your Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra to load MP3 files

Even though the Ultra doesn't download music directly from streaming services like Spotify or Amazon Music the way some competitors do, you can manually load MP3 files onto the watch yourself. This is notable because the Cheetah 2 Ultra doubles the Pro's storage to 64GB, which means plenty room for saved running routes, offline maps, and mp3 files for music. It's an extra step compared to a simple streaming sync, but for anyone who wants a truly phone-free long run, it's a hack worth knowing about. To load music, head to your Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra device page in your Zepp app > Select "Music" > select .mp3 files from your phone and transfer them to the watch.

While Fitbits are a favorite option for go-to fitness trackers—they're thin, unobtrusive, and cheap—its app, Google Health, has always had its problems. However, things might be turning around. The Google Health app has finally received an update that lets it send data to Apple Health.

Google Fitbit Air

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Google Health (formerly known as the Fitbit app) could always pull in fitness, sleep, and wellness stats directly from devices like Fitbit trackers. However, Fitbit devices have historically lacked any built-in way to sync directly with Apple Health. To get around that limitation, anyone who wanted their data to flow both ways had to turn to third-party tools or manual workarounds. This latest Google Health update finally allows metrics like step counts, distance, heart rate, and sleep data to flow into Apple's health platform, too. This means the metrics on your phone will more seamlessly reflect what your Fitbit has been tracking.

How to set up Fitbit/Apple Health syncing

To start syncing your Fitbit data to Apple Health, you'll first need to update your Google Health app. Open the Apple App Store, go to your updates list, and select Update next to the app. Once you have the latest version downloaded, open the Google Health app, tap "Connections" in the top left, select "Apps and services," and then add Apple Health. If you don't see the syncing option right away, try closing and refreshing the app.

Not all of your data will carry over

Unfortunately, as of this writing, the update isn't perfect: Some users on Reddit have pointed out that certain metrics, like heart rate variability, aren't included in the transfer—or at least, not yet. Time will tell if another update fixes these missing metrics. And if missing HRV stats is a dealbreaker for you, check out the iPhone app Bevel, which can be a decent all-around replacement for the Google Health app.

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When I raced Hyrox earlier this summer, I opted for my Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro—and I was quite pleased with the results. While Amazfit's Cheetah line isn't exactly my favorite, the Cheetah 2 Pro is a solid choice for any runner who wants a watch that looks and feels top-of-the-line (albeit with some mid-tier tradeoffs). And while the Cheetah 2 Pro has a no-nonsense marathon-watch exterior, there's a surprising amount of software most owners never touch. Here are five features that go beyond the manual.

Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro

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Unlock a secret developer mode in your Amazfit watch

Buried inside the Zepp app is a hidden menu most people will never find by accident. Go to Profile, then Settings, then About, and tap the Zepp logo seven times in a row. This unlocks developer mode, which lets you dig into device information and debugging options that aren't normally visible in the consumer-facing app. True, it won't turn your watch into a hacking tool, but it's a fun rabbit hole if you like poking around under the hood, and it can occasionally be useful for troubleshooting sync issues or checking firmware details that the standard interface hides from you. 

Developer mode also lets you install custom watch faces, rather than relying on the existing native watch face library and upload a custom face on your computer, scan a generated QR code, and install it directly onto your watch.

Overcome jet lag with guidance from your Cheetah 2 Pro

If you travel for races, this one is a true hidden gem: Your Cheetah 2 Pro includes a “jet lag manager.” This feature may not be something you'd think to look for on a running watch, but if you've ever shown up groggy to a marathon expo, you know you'll try anything to help you adjust your sleep and training schedule ahead of race day. 

To use this feature, the watch will have you input your travel details to receive an Amazfit "Adaptedness" score (although I’m not quite sure what goes into this score, so please take it with a hefty grain of salt). While that number itself might not be worth paying too much attention to, your watch will then generate suggestions for when to sleep, be active, and get light exposure. When you have so many other travel logistics on your mind, it could be nice to get real-time alerts on your watch designed to help you adapt faster and make the most of your trip.

On your phone, open your Zepp App > Device Page > Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra > Jet Lag Manager to input travel details and view potential schedules. Then you can open the Jet Lag Manager app directly from your watch's app list—after scrolling down a good bit to find it—and view your personalized schedule and adaptation readiness starting 72 hours before departure.

Protect your eyes with your watch's red light option

Most users know their Cheetah 2 Pro has a built-in flashlight, activated with a long press of the function button. What’s extra-nifty is that it isn't just a single white beam. It uses two white LEDs, plus an additional red LED, and the red option gives you a glare-free alternative for the dark so you're not blinding yourself or wrecking your night vision. There's also a strobe function built in, which is worth knowing about if you ever need to be visible to traffic on a pre-dawn or post-sunset run, rather than just seeing what's in front of you. 

After you press and hold the top-left button to turn on the flashlight, use the UP or DOWN buttons to cycle through the white brightness settings until you reach the red light mode. You can also swipe down from the watch face to open the Control Center and tap the flashlight icon.

Get the notifications you still want, and none of the ones you don't

The Cheetah 2 Pro lets you personalize your notifications beyond all-or-nothing enabling/disabling. This way, any critical alarms or low-battery warnings still function even when everything else is muted. For example, if you go to Settings > Notifications > Calendar on your watch, and turn off "Allow notifications," then calendar-related reminders will no longer pop up. Easy!

What I do is disable all notifications, and then go in and enable only the handful of apps I actually care about (like text messages), while keeping the rest quiet during a long run.

In a similar vein of "less is more," the Cheetah 2 Pro defaults to more data collection than most runners need on a daily basis. These are the three features I dial back in order to save battery:

• When you're not actively exercising, reduce heart rate measurement frequency from every one minute down to every five or 10 minutes.

• Turn off "Automatic Stress Monitoring" and "Auto Blood Oxygen" tracking unless you specifically rely on that data.

• Disable continuous location tracking and heart rate logging when you're not working out. Just remember to re-enable both when you start a workout.

These quick settings changes will help stop your watch from unnecessarily draining battery in the background, and you really aren't sacrificing much in terms of data.

Fix your Cheetah 2 Pro's accidental workout pauses

If you're using your Cheetah 2 Pro during strength training, this is a life-saver. One thing I've noticed across Amazfit watches is that the crown (aka the top right button) is either bigger or more sensitive, meaning the watch thinks I'm constantly pausing mid-workout whenever I accidentally bump against it. I pretty much couldn't swing a kettlebell without bumping the button in some way.

Here's my fix: Head into Workout Settings and switch the pause mechanism from a "simple press" to "Long Press." The long press did take me some getting used to when I do want to pause, but I'm grateful that I don't have to worry about any more accidental pauses caused by natural wrist movement.

Bonus hack: Clear water out of your watch quickly and easily

I'd like to leave you with a bonus hack, since I'm about to head out for a run in the pouring rain: Amazfit has a built-in water ejection feature. Water can linger in your watch's microphone and speaker ports, muffling sound or triggering false touches. Here's what to do: Swipe down from the main screen to open the Control Center, tap the Droplet icon, and hold your watch with the speaker facing downward. The watch will vibrate at specific frequencies designed to physically push moisture out of the ports. Like all the hacks above, this is one of those features it's good to know about now, so you're ready for the moment you really need it.

I'm currently training for a marathon this fall, and today was supposed to be a rest day. Spotify had other plans for me: Today the company launched a new running mode, so I laced up and put it to the test.

This new mode cues up songs based on the different phases of your run and selects tracks based on your preferences and desired tempo. Instead of just shuffling a playlist and hoping the BPM lines up with your cadence, it builds a run around your effort structure: warmup, work intervals, recovery, cooldown. On top of the music, it layers in audio cues at key moments of the run, so you're getting something closer to a coached session, like Nike Run Club is known for.

How to find and use Spotify's Running Mode

Only paid subscribers can currently access this new running mode. Search "fitness" in the app to pull up what it calls the "Fitness Hub," and running mode is right at the top. From there, you can choose from one of 25 presets, or build your own from scratch.

Once you're in running mode, you first pick a workout type: Just Run, Easy Runs, Interval, Pyramid, or Long and Advanced. Then you choose a music genre. For me, the options were pop, hip-hop, EDM, rock, and R&B.

Refining my Running Mode playlist. Credit: Meredith Dietz

I messed around with a few presets before landing on the one I actually wanted to test properly: a Pyramid Rock Run. Here's how I "refined" it:

• Bumped the duration from 30 to 35 minutes.

• Workout type: I chose pyramid, which comes with a helpful graphic showing what the effort structure looks like over the course of the run.

• More genre options showed up at this stage, including house, Latin, classical, and country. There's also a "discovery slider," so I pushed mine to 75% toward new music.

• Turned on the audio coach.

• Toggled on using a target BPM for song selection, set it to 180, and also turned on "adjust song speed to match exactly," though after my test run, I'm not sure what this was supposed to do exactly.

After I locked in those settings, it took Spotify a solid two minutes to generate the playlist. Once it's built, you get options to smart reorder, add tracks, or refine further. Two things I noticed right away: It nailed the 75% new music request (fun!); the run started at 133 bpm (solid), climbed to a peak of 180 (perfect), and then the cooldown had one track sitting at 210 bpm (confusing and bad).

Why Spotify's Running Mode is a great training tool

I thoroughly enjoyed my test run with this new feature today, even though I was supposed to be resting. Beyond the novelty, I think this is a genuinely good tool for runners trying to sharpen their internal sense of pace. Locking music tempo to target cadence gives you something to run alongside, and effort structures like pyramids force you to notice how your stride changes as intensity shifts. The audio coaching reminded me of what I've always liked about Nike Run Club: form cues and, more often than not, reminders to slow down, which is advice most runners need more than they know.

Spotify's AI coach delivers that guidance by way of music, always announcing each song, which I enjoyed. For instance, during the hip-hop playlist, one cue told me to "let the groove loosen my stride, and remember to unclench your fists and drop your shoulders." On the rock playlist, during a peak effort segment, it told me to "keep it snappy, but not forced." My pitch to Spotify here would be to announce the song's bpm, too.

One note worth remembering: the coach isn't actually responding to you in real time—it's all pre-set according to your workout preferences. Still, I approve of these built-in settings. The only real miss was that 210 bpm cooldown track. Everything else about the pacing logic tracked, which made that one outlier stand out more.

My favorite piece of coaching advice was to lock into the kick drum. I tried it during "Misery Business" by Paramore, and according to my Garmin Forerunner 970, I was running at exactly 180 bpm. Even if runners don't love the songs that Spotify selected for them (although I had no complaints personally), I'd still recommend this feature as a fun way to perfect your inner metronome and practice pacing before race day.

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Home gym gear can be a great gift—but only if you get something you’re sure the gift recipient really will use. Please consider whether your girlfriend actually wants a treadmill, so you don’t blame me when you get dumped for buying her one. Whether the person on your list is training in a bedroom corner or has slowly colonized the entire garage, here's where to start and where to splurge.

TRX Training Strength Band Set

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Bowflex SelectTech 840 Adjustable Kettlebell (8-40lbs)

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PowerBlock Elite EXP Adjustable Dumbbells (Pair, 5-50lb)

$399.99 at Amazon

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NUOBELL Adjustable Dumbbell Pair 5-80 lbs

$759.00 at Amazon

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$795.00 Save $36.00

Sunny Health Indoor Bike

$296.54 at Amazon

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$359.99 Save $63.45

MERACH Walking Pad

$198.17 at Amazon

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Peloton Exercise Cross Training Bike

$1,340.00 at Amazon

$1,695.00 Save $355.00

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$1,695.00 Save $355.00

Peloton Exercise Cross Training Bike+

$1,940.00 at Amazon

$2,695.00 Save $755.00

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$1,940.00 at Amazon

$2,695.00 Save $755.00

Peloton Cross Training Tread Treadmill with 24" Touchscreen Display

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The best home gym basics (under $100)

The name of the game in home fitness is space-saving fundamentals. If your gift recipient is new to at-home workouts, these options are a great way to help them get started on this fitness journey.

A solid set of resistance bands may not be flashy, but it’s one of the highest bang-for-your-buck gifts you can give. There are plenty of options to choose from for around $25 typically. (You could also spring for the popular TRX resistance band set for $179.95.)

Another must-have is a kettlebell or two. For a beginner, that might be a 25-pound kettlebell, which shouldn't cost more than $40 (if your gift recipient is stronger, obviously go heavier). The basic cast-iron type is usually the cheapest, while colorful competition-style kettlebells feel a bit nicer. If you're feeling extra fancy, the BowFlex SelectTech 840 Adjustable Kettlebell (available for $150) lets you easily adjust from 8 to 40 pounds with a turn of the dial.

Pair some basic resistance bands with a kettlebell—plus an ab-roller like this one for $23.99—and you'll have covered strength, conditioning, and core work for under $100 total.

The best gifts for strength training ($100–$400)

A doorway pull-up bar is the classic pick here. This one is available for $27.99 and barely takes up any space, but still, it opens up a ton of possibilities. However, make sure your gift recipient’s doorframe allows you to wedge in a doorframe bar; otherwise, you might try a pull-up tower like this one for $89.99.

If you ask me, pull-up bars tend to be overrated (and underused in practice). That's why my top recommendation for gift-giving here has to be adjustable dumbbells. I believe they’re the single best gift in this range for anyone serious about strength training at home.

Instead of a rack of a dozen dumbbell pairs, one set dials from roughly five to over 50 pounds per hand, all while storing away in a space the size of a shoebox. If budget allows, this could be the gift that actually allows someone to start lifting at home.

Prices vary greatly in this category, ranging from true budget options under $100, to my favorite Nuobells at $795. Your safest bet is probably the PowerBlock Elite EXP Adjustable Dumbbells, typically available for around $399.99.

The best big-ticket home gym equipment ($300-1,000+)

This gift territory might be for a "the whole family chips in" situation. At-home cardio is a beautiful gift, but most reliable cardio machines start creeping near the $1,000 mark. Still, I know of solid budget options before we get there.

For cardio without a treadmill-sized commitment (or price), a stationary bike is a great gift that can be found for under $300. Similarly, walking pads are a popular option, especially if your gift recipient works from home. I recommend the Merach W50 TrekPad for $329.99, primarily for its incline range (up to 12%).

If your budget allows, a Peloton is quite the gift. The new Cross-Training line launched in the fall of 2025, so it’s still pretty new:

• The Cross-Training Bike has the same size of screen and the same main features as the original Bike, but adds a swivel mount to the screen, a more comfortable seat, and upgraded internals: better quality audio, a faster processor, and better wifi and Bluetooth connections. It’s normally $1,695. but frequently goes on sale.

• The Cross-Training Bike+ has similarly upgraded internals compared to the regular Bike+. It adds a movement-tracking camera for AI-based form coaching in strength workouts, and can take voice commands. It also has a fan and a phone tray. (It has a swivel mount, too, but that’s not new for the Bike+.) It’s normally $2,695, but similarly goes on sale fairly regularly.

• The Cross-Training Tread (aka treadmill), like the Cross-Training Bike, adds a swivel mount and upgraded internals. It’s normally $3,295.

For more hybrid athletes or strength-focused gift recipients, all-in-one functional trainers are a smart option—especially smart home gym systems. Think compact, wall-mounted or freestanding units with digital resistance and guided programming built-in. These are a trendy option for someone who wants structure and coaching baked into their workouts, rather than figuring out how to program them themselves, though popular options like Tonal and Speediance typically run over $3,000. This would be a mighty generous gift, but I'd be remiss not to mention them as an option.

What to keep in mind when shopping for home gym equipment gifts

A few things worth knowing before you complete your checkout, so that your gift really shines:

• Prioritize materials like steel and metal over plastic wherever possible.

• I'd avoid trendy items you found onTikTok, but if you do want something unconventional, read my guide here to make sure you're not getting scammed.

• Make sure your gift recipient not only has the floor space, but the storage space for your gift.

The last thing I'll say is that you shouldn't feel obligated to go big. The best gift is the one that matches how the person actually trains, not how impressive it looks when they unwrap it. For more ideas on home gym must-haves, check out our guide here.

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Ultrahuman rings, including the new Ring Pro, come with an extensive app. Even before you activate any PowerPlugs (add-on features), there are plenty of graphs and numbers to get lost in. Here are a few hacks you should know to navigate the data deluge and make sure you're getting the most out of its clever hidden features.

with PRO charging case

Ring PRO

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Ring AIR

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I've used two of Ultrahuman's rings: the Ring Air, which I reviewed here (and which is no longer available in the U.S.), and the Ring Pro, which I wrote about a little here. Ultrahuman just came out with a new version of its app, so if anything here looks different from what you're used to (like the Longevity tab), make sure you have the latest version.

Use the Ultrahuman ring's longevity tab, but not for longevity

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

Ultrahuman gives you an estimate of your biological age, which you may (correctly) think of as kind of a silly gimmick—but don't ignore the longevity tab altogether. It's actually a great summary of your long-term trends. If you think of the Ring tab as giving your day-to-day data and suggestions for what to do today, then the Longevity tab tells you what all those days have added up to.

This is where you'll find an estimate of your VO2max, which gauges your cardio fitness. You'll also see a card describing your sleep debt; mine tells me I'm one hour in debt, due to bedtimes creeping later over the past week, but it also tells me a few on-time bedtimes should wipe out the debt.

Get better heart rate accuracy in Ultrahuman ring workouts by using a different device

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

Smart rings don't make great workout trackers, as I've told you before. You have to take the ring off for comfort or safety for many workout types, and the heart rate readings aren't particularly reliable, even when you may want to keep the ring on.

Ultrahuman can track workouts with the ring, of course, but the app also has a setting that accounts for exactly my complaints. If you have another device, like a Garmin or even a basic chest strap heart rate monitor, you can have Ultrahuman use that more reliable device for your heart rate during workouts. Just start a workout from the app (under the plus sign menu), and you can choose another device. It actually works with anything that can broadcast heart rate and gives you instructions for connecting your Airpods Pro 3, Apple Watch, Polar sensor, Whoop, or Garmin.

"Train" your Ultrahuman ring for better accuracy

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Ultrahuman

A new feature in the Emerald update is the ability to "train" your ring's heart rate detection algorithm. To use it, you'll wear a secondary device at the same time as your ring, and Ultrahuman will compare the signals it gets from the two devices. This is supposed to allow Ultrahuman to detect your heart rate more accurately.

So far, the feature is only available for a few specific Polar heart rate monitors, none of which I have on hand, so I haven't been able to test this yet. But Ultrahuman says that support for other devices, like Garmin, is coming soon. Training for step counting is also coming soon.

Keep an eye on sunlight with the vitamin D plugin (even if you don't care about your vitamin D)

One of Ultrahuman's strengths is that it keeps track of the best time to do certain things. By default, you'll get recommendations about when you should stop looking at screens for the night, and you'll also get a recommendation to get a certain number of steps during the early morning and "golden hour" (around sunset) timeframes. There's a similar timeline for what Ultrahuman thinks are your best times to have caffeine during the day.

But there's another handy timeline you can add: one that shows you the timing for sunlight. To see it, go to Powerplugs and activate the Vitamin D plugin. You can use this for its original function, of course: taking note of when you are outdoors and getting sunlight. The ring detects some sunlight on its own, and you can tell it when you've been outside if you're trying to rack up a certain amount of time in the sun.

Now, you'll get a line on your timeline showing when the sun rises and when you'll get "partial sunlight" in the evening, customized to your location. You can infer some of this timing from the circadian windows plugin, but I like having it in its own little column on the timeline. I find this handy for planning outdoor activities toward the end of the day—if I go out near the "partial sunlight" time, I should probably bring a flashlight if I'll be on the trail. To see all your timelines in parallel, tap on the Active Windows card on the main screen.

Save battery on your Ultrahuman ring with Chill Mode

One of Ultrahuman's most useful features is a simple battery-life setting that you won't find unless you go looking for it. When you first buy your ring, it will operate in Turbo Mode, which the app describes as running "all sensors at full intensity for continuous, all-day tracking." And sure, when the ring is new to you, maybe you'd like to use Turbo Mode and turn on live heart rate on the home screen so you can get the most data to look at.

But for everyday use, Chill Mode makes a lot more sense than turbo. This mode still tracks your sleep and restful periods, and it will still sample plenty of data during workouts, but it skips detailed tracking during other times. Your battery will last longer in Chill Mode, and honestly, I don't feel like I'm missing anything important.

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This week Garmin launched the Cirqa, its first screenless smart band, for $199.99. Right out of the gate, Garmin leaned into marketing the Cirqa as a Whoop alternative that does not require a subscription. However, that "subscription-free" promise is already under fire.

Within these first few days of the Cirqa's long-awaited launch, users have begun voicing concerns that some very basic workout features require a Garmin Connect+ subscription—namely, live heart rate displays. Luckily, Garmin has already responded to the outcry, confirming that an update should fix this issue within the next couple of days. Here's what we know so far.

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Garmin will roll out Cirqa updates in the next few days

Hands-on testing this week revealed that if you want to see your current heart rate during a workout, you'd need to sign up for a Garmin Connect+ subscription for $6.99 per month. Without paying, you could only see your average heart rate after finishing a workout—not a live reading, which is extremely useful during the exercise itself.

Others have pointed out that the change appears to be a direct response to the backlash the Cirqa received in its first days on the market. When I asked Garmin for comment, a rep told me: "We'll be rolling out live heart rate during activities in the next Garmin Connect Mobile build. This subscription-free feature will be available in the next few days to Cirqa Smart Band customers."

Even still, it's important to note that not all features are available without a subscription. Garmin Connect locks a whole range of advanced features behind a subscription paywall, from Garmin Coach (which can create personalized training plans), to nutrition tracking, meditation, and breathing exercises.

To Garmin's credit, the reversal came fast. Still, Cirqa's entire pitch is built around not needing a monthly fee, so locking something as fundamental as a live heart rate reading behind Connect+ was always going to look bad. It's worth noting that competing screenless trackers like the Polar Loop and Amazfit Helio Strap show it for free, too.

What this means for you

The bigger story here is Garmin's (and other fitness trackers') ominous pattern of paywalling things. With this week's live heart rate outcry, it looks like plenty of Cirqa users instinctively interpreted what could have been a software bug as some sort of corporate ploy. Garmin has spent the last couple of years steadily moving more functionality into Connect+, and each time it does, longtime users brace for the next basic feature to disappear behind that wall.

I asked a rep directly about whether "subscription-free" promises could change down the line. With standard disclaimers about not speaking to any future roadmap, Garmin says it won't suddenly wall off features that are free today. Any future paid tier would be additive, with new features available behind a subscription, rather than existing stuff pulled behind a paywall. None of this is confirmed, but it's a fairly predictable shape a future paywall would take, so I'll be keeping an eye on it for you.

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When I first reviewed an Ultrahuman ring (the Ring Air, last year), I wrote that my biggest complaint was that I found the app overbearing. To give an example of but one of the things that annoyed me about it, it scored me on a metric called “brain waste clearance,” as if that is something it could measure or that I could affect. But a new version of the app—Ultrahuman is calling it the Emerald Update—changes everything. 

I’ve been using a beta version of this new app as I test the forthcoming Ring Pro, and so far, I'm impressed: It's now easier to navigate, and presents the data from my ring in a way that’s actually useful and easy to read.

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Important information and actions are presented first

The first time I open the new Ultrahuman app each day, I see a screen that gives a small amount of information—just the important stuff—about how I slept and how my day is shaping up. For example, today it says my sleep is improving, my resting heart rate is normal, and my temperature is “borderline” (a little higher than usual). It tells me I only got six hours of sleep. That’s pretty much everything I want to know when I check the app early in the day. 

On the home screen (what I see after I dismiss that initial greeting), the Ultrahuman app now distills its firehose of data into a few “next best actions.” The top one for me right now is to get up and move, since I’ve been pretty sedentary today. If I tap to see more, the next recommendation is to set an alarm to start my bedtime routine, since my bedtime has been inconsistent. These recommendations are actually pretty useful!

The app is easier to navigate

The old Ultrahuman app had tabs at the bottom of the screen, but most of them were useless unless you had purchased specific Ultrahuman products (blood testing, glucose monitors, or a home air quality monitor). Now, there are five tabs: the ring tab, with all my main data screens; “longevity,” which gives me an “ultra age” showing how fast I am supposedly aging according to my habits; Jade, which I’ll say more about in a minute; PowerPlugs, where you can choose add-ons that give you extra features (some free, some subscription-based); and “zones,” a social feature (a zone is apparently something like a group or club).

I find the longevity tab useful for longer-term metrics. I don’t put much stock in its exact longevity number (what does it mean to be two years older than I am?), but this tab also shows my estimated VO2max, along with a note explaining a recent algorithm update. As I scroll down, I can see some recommendations for “slow[ing] my aging,” which amount to advice for long-term health—mine is that I need to tackle my sleep debt (I also have low “blood flow smoothness,” apparently). The app’s mystifying ways haven’t disappeared entirely; they’re just a little further from the surface. 

“Jade” houses an AI chatbot that I honestly try to interact with as little as possible. The card telling me about my blood flow smoothness suggested that I ask Jade what this means and how to improve it. I tapped the button to do so, and Jade told me it doesn’t know what blood flow smoothness is. This part seems to need some more work.

Circadian windows are easier to read

In the old version of the app, I was constantly being told when and when not to consume caffeine. This is still a big part of the app, though you can disable it by uninstalling the free caffeine PowerPlug that is on by default. Now, however, the app shows me my “active windows” at any given time. Right now, it's the afternoon, and the app tells me it’s fine to have caffeine, that sunlight and exercise won’t affect my sleep timing, and that it’s OK to look at screens. Later this evening, the caffeine window will close, and later, my screen time window will close. 

The app doesn’t do a great job of explaining these windows, however. What exactly will happen when “phase delay window” starts? But I do like that there’s now a view that shows all three timelines in parallel, labeled with different times. That’s not to say I trust the underlying decisions any more—I’m still definitely going to stop having caffeine well before 6 p.m., but I also know the evidence doesn’t actually support skipping my morning coffee.

What this update means for those wearing Ultrahuman ring

Overall, I’ve found the experience of using the ring a lot more pleasant alongside the new app redesign. Ultrahuman says that data processing now happens on-device, so you don’t need an internet connection to get your metrics and recommendations. I’m still working my way through the app’s features as I test the Ring Pro, but I’m looking forward to the improved heart rate accuracy and the ability to use data from Garmin and other devices for workouts. There’s even a feature to “train your ring” by using it alongside another device. Sometimes, change is good. 

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If you've browsed fitness trackers lately, you've probably noticed the name Amazfit popping up more and more. Before you ask, Amazfit has nothing to do with Amazon—the brand is made by Chinese company Zepp Health (formerly Huami).

Amazfit is angling to be the budget-friendly alternative to the big names in wearables—think Garmin, Coros, and even Apple. Amazfit watches are typically cheaper than their competitors while packing in a surprising number of premium-feeling features like AMOLED displays, long battery life, dual-band GPS on some models, and health tracking features typically found in watches costing two or three times as much.

I've spent a lot of time testing Amazfit's lineup, including the Balance 3 ($369.99)and the Cheetah 2 Pro ($449.99), and I'm currently testing and reviewing Amazfit's Cheetah 2 Ultra, the brand's most advanced running watch coming in at $599.99. My goal is to figure out whether the brand is actually a legitimate competitor to the established players, or just a cheaper, inferior watch that looks the part, and so far, here's what I can tell you: For hybrid athletes, Amazfit nails it. I think the brand's official partnership with Hyrox says a lot about who these watches are built for. But when it comes to serious running watches, Amazfit isn't exactly leading the pack.

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What to know about Amazfit's running watches

The Cheetah line is Amazfit's answer to Garmin's Forerunner series, Coros's running-focused watches, and so on. On paper, the Cheetah watches do look like pretty compelling competition. You get dual-band GPS, running power metrics, offline maps, an AI coaching feature that builds out race-specific training plans, and more, all at half the price that Garmin sells a comparable Forerunner, feature-for-feature.

The issue I've encountered is that specs on paper don't always translate to a watch that feels like it was built by people who actually run. Here's a small example: The Cheetah watches come with heart rate zones labeled with "fat burning" language. No serious runner training for a race wants to see that kind of framing on their watch—it's a leftover from generic fitness-tracker thinking, not something you'd find on a Garmin or Coros built specifically around training zones and performance.

Amazfit markets the Cheetah 2 Pro as not only "engineered for runners," but specifically as a marathon-training tool. Generally speaking, marathon runners are a demanding, yet well-served, audience. There are a lot of excellent existing options, and the Cheetah 2 Pro didn't hold up to that comparison in my testing. It wasn't one big thing, but a lot of small issues do add up:

• My lactate threshold estimate was off by nearly 40 seconds per mile.

• The GPS distance tracking was slightly worse than my Garmin Forerunner 970.

• After you finish a run, the workout summary screen disappears almost instantly, and you have to dig back through menus to see your stats. (It sounds minor, but every runner I know wants an immediate glance at their splits and pace the second they stop moving, not a multi-button hunt through workout history.)

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Amazfit watches are great, but there are better options for runners

If you're training seriously for a marathon and want deep, dependable workout analytics, I'd point you toward a Garmin Forerunner instead:

• At a similar price to the Cheetah 2 Pro, the Garmin Forerunner 570 offers more reliable advanced metrics and access to Garmin's much deeper training ecosystem.

• Spend a few hundred dollars more, and the Garmin Forerunner 970 gives you more tools with a longer track record among serious athletes.

This is all assuming you're planning on spending hundreds of dollars, so you might as well go for the best of the best. I'd also be remiss not to mention that the most elite marathoners in the world still wear the cheapest running watches.

To be clear, plenty of Amazfit watches are still fantastic options. It's the Cheetah line in particular that disappoints me. If you're not chasing marathon PRs and instead you want a good-looking, budget-friendly watch with solid health tracking, I'd point you to Amazfit's Balance line. But as of right now, I can't imagine turning to the Cheetah line to replace a dedicated running watch if you're truly serious about the sport. And if you're not serious about the sport, I can't imagine spending upwards of $400 on a running watch.

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Creatine is best known as a supplement for people who hit the gym: Take a scoop of creatine powder every day, and you may find yourself able to work a little harder. But creatine is also being studied for its mental health benefits. Is it worth taking just for those? Maybe. 

What is creatine? 

Creatine is a natural chemical that our bodies use for energy production in cells. If you remember learning about ATP as an energy source (and how mitochondria, the “powerhouse of the cell,” turn food into ATP), you already know a little bit about this. When ATP is used, creatine phosphate can recharge that ATP (replacing its spent phosphate) for some quick extra energy. 

This is why it’s so useful in the gym: if you’ve just done nine bench presses and want to do a tenth, but your muscles are out of energy, having a little extra creatine in your muscle cells might give you just enough oomph to finish that last rep. Over time, you’ll end up doing more work, and thus a person who has a lot of creatine in their muscles will probably end up a little bit stronger than a person who has less. 

Our bodies make some creatine, but we also get creatine from the food we eat (especially meat). Creatine supplements, available as powder or pills, can add to our internal creatine stores. That’s why it’s a popular supplement among people who do a lot of strength training. 

What brain benefits is creatine known to have? 

Muscle cells aren’t the only cells that use creatine—pretty much every cell in our body needs energy, and creatine is part of the system that provides it. So it’s worth asking whether supplementing creatine might help other areas of our health. 

This is where the evidence gets a lot less definitive. To give you a sense of the state of the science, I took a look at Examine.com’s database on studies relating to creatine supplementation. It records “A” level evidence for creatine’s benefits to strength and to power (the ability to use strength in quick bursts). Creatine gets a “B” for growing the size of your muscles and for some tests of memory. Many of the other studied outcomes are duds, with lots of “C” and “D” ratings as you scroll down the table. These lower ratings don’t mean that creatine is useless, just that there’s no clear, well-understood benefit that’s been solidly established. Scientists are still working on these questions.

When it comes to cognitive benefits, the evidence is mixed, but many researchers feel it’s promising. Many influencers, biohackers, and wellness enthusiasts take an optimistic view, supplementing creatine themselves (and often recommending or selling it) in hopes the benefits turn out to be real. 

A 2024 review of 16 studies found that creatine seems to improve memory, attention, and processing speed. The strength of the evidence wasn’t great, though: the authors write that the evidence for benefits to memory is only “moderate” and for other benefits the evidence is of “low certainty.” Some outcomes that were studied, including overall cognitive performance, didn’t seem to be improved by creatine at all. 

A 2025 review highlighted the disappointing results so far, while pointing out that we know creatine supplementation does actually increase brain levels of creatine. In other words, it’s doing something, but we haven’t entirely figured out how these benefits would work, if they in fact do. 

Both reviews noted that creatine’s effect on brain performance may depend on who is taking it. People who have less creatine in their body to start with—such as vegetarians, who don’t get much in their diet—might benefit from supplementation even if omnivores don’t. Older adults may benefit more than younger, healthier people, and it’s possible the benefits of creatine show themselves best in people who are stressed. 

Sleep deprivation may be a type of stress that creatine can help with. A 2024 study found that a single mega-dose of creatine helped cognitive performance in people who were sleep deprived. That dose was huge, though: the equivalent of 24 grams for a 150-pound person. (A normal dose of creatine is 5 grams each day.) I’m not saying you should take creatine if you’re feeling foggy after a late night, but I’m certainly going to think about it next time that happens to me. 

What are the risks of creatine? 

Creatine is one of the best-studied consumer supplements out there, and the safety profile is good. That’s why so many people take it: even if you’re not sure it’s working, there’s no significant harm in taking it anyway. Creatine isn’t linked with any serious health issues at normal doses, and it’s pretty affordable. For example, this Nutricost tub works out to 20 cents per daily serving (if you’re taking five grams each day). 

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The main risk of taking creatine is that it can cause stomach upset, especially in larger doses. That could be a problem if you’re intending to try a 24-gram dose, or one of the other dosing schemes from cognitive studies. People who take creatine for cognitive benefits often aim for 10 grams a day. You can split that into five grams in the morning and five in the evening, if taking 10 at once doesn’t agree with you. 

Now, there’s one other risk of creatine that people commonly talk about online, but it doesn’t have any solid evidence behind it. That’s the idea that creatine may accelerate hair loss in people (usually men) who are already prone to what’s sometimes called male pattern baldness. This idea comes from looking at the biochemical pathways involved in creatine metabolism and in hormonal changes related to testosterone, and finding a place where they intersect. 

Researchers flagged this as something worth looking into—maybe creatine possibly could accelerate hair loss, but the internet ran with “creatine causes hair loss” as if it were a known fact. In truth, no human study has verified this link, and a study designed to look for it found the opposite. It concluded: “This study was the first to directly assess hair follicle health following creatine supplementation, providing strong evidence against the claim that creatine contributes to hair loss.” 

How much creatine should you take, and what kind? 

If you’re interested in taking creatine for mental health benefits, the rules are the same as for people who are taking it for muscular benefits—except that you may want a higher dose. 

As mentioned, there’s not a specific number of grams we know you need to take for brain benefits (because we aren’t totally sure whether there are brain benefits for the average person). Ten grams per day seems to be a popular choice. Five grams is usually recommended for muscular benefits. For the gym benefits, you want to take your creatine consistently every day (don’t skip taking it on rest days), and it doesn’t matter what time of day. For brain benefits, the same rules of thumb seem reasonable. 

Sometimes people take a “loading” dose for their first week or so, taking larger doses (often four times as much as the regular dose) to build up the body’s stores of creatine faster. This is optional: taking a regular dose for a few weeks does the same thing to your body as taking a loading dose for one week. I’d say most people these days probably skip the loading phase, because of the risk of stomach upset with large doses, and because we know the loading phase isn’t necessary. 

Finally, people often ask what kind of creatine to get. And the answer is simple: creatine monohydrate is the best-studied and known to be effective. Happily, it is also the cheapest and the easiest to find. I wouldn’t worry about the brand; it’s all the same stuff. Personally I like taking creatine in capsules, since it’s more convenient than mixing powder into a drink, but the powder is cheaper and just as good. 

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This morning, Garmin announced it has acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic. These platforms are major players in the endurance and strength-training world, primarily for the quality of their training plans. This news is already sparking a lot of speculation—and skepticism—among athletes and coaches who've built their training around these tools. Here's what this acquisition might mean for the way you train.

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Why Garmin acquired TrainingPeaks

According to Garmin's official press release, this acquisition “strengthens Garmin's fitness ecosystem with customizable coaching experiences for endurance, strength, and performance-focused athletes across every stage of their fitness journey.” The deal covers TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic only, not all of parent company Peaksware Holdings. This is a Garmin-specific focus on its endurance and strength assets, rather than a sale of the entire parent company.

TrainingPeaks is best known for its training plans, logs, and coaching tools, but this deal is drawing attention to other features and perks. For instance, Garmin likely has its eye on TrainingPeaks Virtual, a nifty indoor cycling platform.

It's also worth noting that TrainingPeaks owns the trademarks behind some popular metrics for serious cyclists, like Training Stress Score, Normalized Power, and Intensity Factor. As of right now, other companies like Wahoo, Hammerhead, and TrainerRoad license those terms for use in their own products—we'll see if the Garmin deal impacts this. Garmin already dominates the hardware layer with its watches, bike computers, and sensors that generate the data. What it hasn't dominated is the planning and coaching layer that sits on top of that.

There's also a strength-training angle with TrainHeroic. Garmin is clearly trying to get firmer footing in the strength and hybrid training worlds, and buying up an established strength-programming platform is a much faster path than building one from scratch.

What happens to TrainingPeaks now?

This is where the community's nervousness comes in, and it's not unfounded. As of right now, TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic connects to more than 100 devices and apps, including hardware from Garmin's direct competitors like Wahoo, Coros, Polar, Suunto, and Apple. Garmin now has incentive to make that platform less accessible. Whether it acts on that incentive is unclear, so there are three broad scenarios people are speculating about:

• Best case: Garmin leaves TrainingPeaks largely alone as a standalone product, keeps it multi-brand, and maybe integrates some select TrainingPeaks features into Connect+.

• Middle case: Garmin treats TrainingPeaks the way Strava has treated Runna since acquiring it, which might look like a sort of combo-deal subscription.

• Worst case: Garmin absorbs TrainingPeaks' features and utterly paywalls them. Existing users lose years of workout history, race notes, and coaching plans.

Nothing in today's announcement addresses these fears directly. For now, Garmin's messaging is all about "enhancing the ecosystem."

The bottom line

Acquisitions like this typically take months (sometimes longer) before any product changes roll out, and Garmin has given no timeline. Here are some longer-term questions worth watching:

• Will non-Garmin device support go away?

• Will Garmin's strength training finally get better?

• Will pricing for either platform change?

Garmin is already one of the biggest names in athlete devices and data; today's acquisition expands the company's reach more into coaching and structured training plans.

Maybe TrainingPeaks' best training tools make it into Connect+, Garmin's strength training gets a long-overdue upgrade, and everybody wins. Or maybe a beloved independent tool gets slowly absorbed and degraded. For now, all we can do is keep an eye on whether TrainingPeaks' device integrations with Garmin competitors stay intact, and what happens to pricing.

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Exercise is a healthy and, one might argue, necessary part of our lives. The guidelines from public health organizations tell you to aim for at least 150 minutes of “moderate” exercise each week, and that each minute of “vigorous” exercise counts double. That raises the question: What the hell is “moderate” exercise? How do you know when you’re doing it? 

Moderate exercise is sometimes conflated with "zone 2" exercise. These two things aren't exactly the same, but they do overlap a bit. I'll get into the difference below. Moderate exercise includes activities like walking and casual bicycling, and it counts whether you think of it as a workout or not. Getting enough moderate exercise has benefits for your heart, metabolism, mental health, and more—so let's dig in to what it is and how you can know when you're doing it.

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Scientists measure METs, but you don't have to 

If you use a fitness tracker like the Fitbit Air, it may try to tell you that "moderate" exercise occurs when you reach a certain heart rate. This isn't actually the case. The scientists who came up with the exercise guidelines didn't use heart rate as their guide. Instead, they used charts that measured how many "METs," or metabolic equivalents, each type of exercise requires.

I'll explain more about METs below, but the important thing to know is that the type and intensity of exercise is what tells you whether it's moderate, not your heart rate while you're doing it. You can look up exercises on a chart like this one, but here's the basic idea: 

• Walking is moderate exercise; jogging or running is vigorous.

• Bicycling is moderate if it’s under about 12 miles per hour on the flat.

• Indoor cycling is moderate if it’s up to about 100 watts of power.

You don’t have to overthink it. The guidelines that mention “moderate” and “vigorous” activities aren’t asking you to monitor your heart rate or any other numeric metric. They want you thinking in terms of generalities: walking versus running, leisurely bike commuting versus sweating your heart out in a spin studio.

And honestly, if it’s easier to watch your heart rate than to worry about the above, that’s fine. For most of us, 150 minutes of Zone 2 is going to be at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise. So follow that guideline, and you’ll be an overachiever.

It’s not really about heart rate

So why does your watch want to steer you toward a certain heart rate during exercise? Mostly because that's easy to measure. Moderate exercise sorta-kinda matches up to "zone 2" cardio, which I’ve previously explained. (Zone 2 is is the second-lowest intensity in a five-zone system, and the easiest way to know which zone you're in is to glance at your fitness watch.)

While you can use heart rate zones as a rule of thumb to find moderate exercise, this idea falls short in two ways: (1) different gadgets and systems use different cutoffs to decide which numbers count as "zone 2", and (2) for most of us, zone 2 includes most moderate activities but also some vigorous activities. If you’re relatively fit, you can jog at a 12 minute-per-mile pace while keeping your heart rate in zone 2. That’s a “vigorous” activity in terms of METs, though. 

The other reason heart rate isn’t accurate for this task is that your heart rate changes for all kinds of reasons. The hotter it is when you're working out, the higher your heart rate tends to be. Same goes for when you’re nervous or stressed. And as you get fitter, you’ll be able to do the same activities at a lower heart rate. Those activities might feel easier than they used to, but they’re not any less work. 

What is a MET, anyway?

One MET is the energy expended when you’re at rest—the amount of oxygen, calories, etc that it takes to keep you alive and breathing. (We use oxygen in the process of burning calories, so officially a MET is 3.2 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute.) 

Researchers can then put a mask on a person and measure how much oxygen they use while running, walking, playing guitar, etc. If an activity takes twice as much oxygen as sitting still, they say it takes two METs. Here are a few examples (taken from this scientific paper): 

• 2 MET: washing dishes, or playing croquet

• 3 MET: walking at 3 miles per hour (a pretty typical walking pace)

• 4 MET: table tennis, ice skating

• 5 MET: modern dance, fast-paced ballroom dance

• 6 MET: volleyball, singles tennis

• 7 MET: jogging, jumping rope

The numbers go up from there. Speed skating clocks in at 15 MET. To be clear, you will not be measuring METs directly when you exercise. The MET studies are done in labs so that we can use the information to get a sense of what MET values each common type of exercise tends to have.

Moderate exercise is 3 to 6 MET, and vigorous is 6 or more

The physical activity guidelines define “moderate” exercise as at least 3 MET, but less than 6. Vigorous is 6 MET or more. Because METs are specific to the activity, not to how fit you are, it makes the most sense to look at METs in terms of the pace you run or the settings you use on your treadmill or other cardio machine. Here are paces and activities that have been clocked as between 3 and 6 METs: 

• Walking at 3-4 mph (a 15-minute to 20-minute mile)

• Cycling, between 50 to 100 watts

• Shooting baskets

• Playing baseball

• Taking a low-impact aerobics class

And these are vigorous (6 or more MET): 

• Race walking (5+ mph) 

• Walking uphill

• Walking with a 12-pound pack

• Jogging (a 12-minute mile is 8.0 MET; the faster you go, the higher the MET)

• Bicycling at 12 miles per hour or faster

• Swimming laps

• Playing a game of basketball, soccer, or hockey

So when you're trying to get your 150 minutes (or more) of moderate exercise each week, you can count all your walking, your easy bike riding, and your low-impact aerobics class. Give yourself credit for vigorous exercise for all the time you spend jogging (at any heart rate), lap swimming, or rucking. You may find you've been doing more exercise than you think.

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The Forerunner 70 launched alongside the 170 earlier this summer as the successor to the long-running, hugely popular Forerunner 55. Alongside the 570 and 970, with these watches Garmin offers a full slate of modern, AMOLED-screen devices with an impressive array of software features, from lifestyle logging to a calculator. 

The 70 is now Garmin’s official budget option, and while it may not be the best watch at this price, it still includes a bunch of advanced software features you'd normally only find on a pricier device. If you're expecting it to simply be a repackaged Forerunner 55, you'll be pleasantly surprised with just how different it is. Whether you're upgrading from a 55 or just want to make sure you're actually getting everything you paid for, here are my five favorite hacks for the Forerunner 70.

Garmin Forerunner® 70, Easy-to-Use GPS Running Smartwatch, Advanced Training Metrics and Recovery Insights, Up to 13 Days of Battery Life, Black

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Use shortcuts to mimic the hotkey support of pricier Forerunners

Your Forerunner 70's button shortcuts can be reassigned, even without full hotkey support. The device may not have the customizable quick-press hotkeys of pricier Forerunners, but you can still remap what happens when you hold certain buttons. To do this, hold down on the Up button, select Watch Settings  > System > Shortcuts, and then assign new functions to different buttons (or combination of buttons) from their existing list.

My go-to recommendation here is to assign Do Not Disturb (or Silent Mode) to the Down button. For me, the default path (hold LIGHT, open Controls, tap the icon) is a few too many steps when I'm already annoyed by a notification received mid-run.

Credit: Meredith Dietz

While you're customizing your watch, it's worth stripping down your data screens too. I demonstrate how to do this in the Garmin Connect app here.

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Let your Forerunner 70's "Quick Workouts" do the thinking for you

Instead of building a workout from scratch, you pick a time and an intensity, and the watch generates the session using your current fitness data. The workout factors in your current Training Readiness score, so your "45 minutes, moderate intensity" might look different two days in a row, depending on how recovered you actually are. It's a fast way to get a workout that matches where your body actually is that day, as opposed to where you assumed it should be. (I especially like this watch’s run/walk formats aimed at beginners or people returning from a break.)

After selecting "Run" as your activity, follow these steps to create a Quick Workout:

1. Scroll down and select Training.

2. Select Quick Workout.

3. Select an intensity level (easy, moderate, hard, very hard).

4. Select a workout duration (30, 45, or 60 minutes).

5. Press the upper-right button to select a workout option.

Run like an ultra-marathoner with rest timers and waypoint tools

You might know that the 70 includes the ability to upload your own routes, something the Forerunner 55 lacked. What you probably haven’t seen yet is the fact that Garmin included a bunch of features typically reserved for ultra trail runners, like course time cutoffs. Another is the “Up Ahead” feature, which shows upcoming aid stations or various waypoints along your route. The 70 doesn't show detailed maps, but it will track waypoints along a loaded course and tell you the real route distance remaining to the next one. 

While you may not need all those waypoint-related tools, I recommend at least exploring the rest timer. You don’t need to be competing in a trail race to want to track your rests. This is especially great for anyone who is training for a race for the first time and wants to practice how long they’ll linger with fueling or water stations. I’ll personally be using this as both a motivational and disciplinary tool, to make sure I actually stick to my hydration strategy during long runs this summer.

To access these tools, you'll need to add "Ultra Run" to your list of activities (something I'd never thought I'd use on any watch). Press the START button on an Ultra Run, and then select Ultra Run Settings. Scroll down to Lap Key, and then select which setting you'd like:

• Lap: Records a lap and displays lap details when the Lap Key is pressed.

• Rest Only: Starts a rest timer when the Lap Key is pressed. Press the Lap Key again to end the rest period.

• Lap + Rest: Records a lap, displays lap details, and starts a rest timer when the Lap Key is pressed. Press the Lap Key again to end the rest period and record another lap.

Use your Forerunner 70's "Record Only" mode as a breadcrumb trail on unfamiliar routes

The 70 doesn't have full onboard color mapping like Garmin's higher-end watches, but Record Only mode lays down a "breadcrumb trail" of everywhere you've been without the battery cost of turn-by-turn navigation. If you get turned around, you can use those "breadcrumbs" to retrace your own path.

And while it's not a hack, here's another navigation-related setting to be aware of: I recommend turning on Find My Phone before you head out on an unfamiliar route. It's such a handy feature, but weirdly buried in the controls menu—you have to hold the LIGHT button, scroll to the phone-with-question-mark icon, make sure your phone is connected, and your watch will be able to ping your connected phone with sound and vibration (even if it's on silent). I find this gives me extra peace of mind that I'll be able to locate my phone if it slips out of my belt while I'm on a trail run.

Don't let easy workouts drain your Garmin's battery

On the flip side, if you are on a familiar route, it might be wise to turn off Always-On GPS. This is my hack to help battery health hold up longer. In general, I recommend caring for your watch's battery the same way you treat your muscles during a training block. Full charge cycles accelerate battery degradation, so during normal weeks, cap charging around 80% instead of topping off to 100% every time.

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The Garmin Venu Sq 2 is one of the best budget smartwatches you can get. The Venu Sq series is already considered a lower-priced line, but after the 40% discount, it's an even better option for those looking to try a Garmin without spending too much. Right now, you can get the Venu Sq 2 for $149.99 (originally $249.99), a 40% discount. This is one of the lowest prices for this watch I've seen, according to price tracking tools.

Garmin Venu Sq 2 GPS Smartwatch (Shadow Gray)

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This smartwatch was released in 2022 and is still one of the best budget options for anyone looking for fitness-focused features from a device that won't need to be charged every night. This one has a built-in GPS for pace and distance measurements during outdoor workouts, and since it uses the Garmin app, you'll get all the hydration and monthly cycle tracking as more premium Garmin models.

The Venu Sq 2 works with Apple and Android and has all the important features you'd expect from a smartwatch these days, including an accelerometer, an optical heart rate monitor, and a blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) sensor. It also has excellent fitness tracking features, up to 11 days of battery life, and great sleep tracking. You can also go swimming with it, or use it to make contactless payments. You can read the full "excellent" review on PCMag.

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The Garmin Forerunner 170 arrived earlier this summer as the successor to the Forerunner 165, slotting in above the (also new) entry-level Forerunner 70 and below the 265/570. At first glance, it's easy to write off as a lateral move from the older device: same GPS chipset, same heart rate sensor, and actually a day less battery life than its predecessor. That makes the $299.99 price tag a little confusing next to a 165 that regularly goes on sale for under $200.

But after spending some time with the 170 on my wrist, I came away impressed with how Garmin has packed it with features and tools previously reserved for watches costing $449 or more. Despite being described as “mid-tier” in Garmin’s lineup, it really does have the training software that used to be reserved for higher-end models, including full Training Status, Training Readiness, wrist-based running power, running dynamics, and even cycling power-meter support. Whether you're upgrading from a 165 or just want to make sure you're actually using what you paid for, here are my five favorite hacks to get the most out of your Forerunner 170.

Garmin Forerunner® 170, GPS Running Smartwatch, Advanced Training Metrics and Recovery Insights, Whitestone with Whitestone/Cloud Blue Band

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Reprogram the buttons on your Forerunner 170 so you can instantly lock the screen in bad weather

Like Garmin's higher-end watches, the 170's buttons are fully customizable. And if you ask me, the defaults aren't the best setup for how a lot runners actually train.

A few of my favorite reassignments: I run in the rain a lot (it's romantic!), so I set "Hold Start + Up" to Touch Screen Toggle, which is a shortcut to lock the screen instantly in bad weather. I also moved Do Not Disturb to the Down button, since the default path (hold LIGHT, open Controls, tap the icon) is a few too many steps when I'm already annoyed by a notification received mid-run.

If you're a regular interval runner, you might try assigning your lap button to trigger auto-pause. This makes it a little easier to manually stop and restart the clock when you're getting your heart rate down.

Other combinations worth trying:

• Start + Down to broadcast your heart rate, which is popular in some group exercise settings.

• Start + Up to pull up Garmin Pay for a post-run coffee.

• Back + Down to lock the touchscreen, to save you from accidental pauses.

To set any of these reassignments up, hold the Up (Menu) button and go to Watch Settings > System > Shortcuts. (While you're customizing your watch, it's worth stripping down your data screens too. I demonstrate how to do this on a Garmin watch here.)

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Use your Forerunner 170's "Record Only" mode as a breadcrumb trail on unfamiliar routes

The 170 doesn't have full onboard color mapping like Garmin's higher-end watches, but Record Only mode lays down a "breadcrumb trail" of everywhere you've been without the battery cost of turn-by-turn navigation. If you get turned around, you can use those "breadcrumbs" to retrace your own path.

Two more navigation features you should set up in advance:

• Turn Around alerts are a big favorite on this watch. This tool lets you skip planning an out-and-back route entirely. Set one by time or distance before you start, and the watch buzzes at the halfway point, so you'll land back exactly where you began.

• Find My Phone, which I find to be weirdly buried in the controls menu (hold the menu button, look for the phone-with-question-mark icon), pings your connected phone with sound and vibration even if it's on silent. Press back on your watch once you've found it to stop the alert.

Let your Forerunner 170's "Quick Workouts" do the thinking for you

Instead of manually plugging in a pace and distance, the 170 can build a workout on the fly from just a time range and an intensity level (easy, moderate, hard, or very hard). In theory, this generated workout factors in your current Training Readiness score, so "45 minutes, moderate" might look completely different two days in a row depending on how recovered you actually are. It's a fast way to get a workout that matches where your body actually is that day, as opposed where you assumed it should be.

Repurpose the Cycling Coach tool to track your cross-training workouts

A few tools on the 170 get ignored simply because they're new to this price tier and Garmin doesn't call much attention to them during setup—and some of them can be really useful, even if they don't initially seem like they jibe with your workout routine:

• Lifestyle Logging is a useful way to track more than just workouts. Meditation, reading, and other manually logged activities all feed into your overall wellness picture instead of leaving your health data purely exercise-based. It's also just nice perspective to have.

• Cycling Coach doesn't have to be reserved just for dedicated cyclists. Consider giving it a spin during cross-training, since it gives you a structured, adaptive plan based on how well the watch already knows you.

• Running Power doesn't require a chest strap on the 170. Instead, it's estimated from the wrist using motion and elevation data. It may not be a precise metric, but as a real-time effort gauge on hilly routes where pace alone is misleading, it's a nice way to complement your other data points.

Don't let easy workouts drain your Garmin's battery

If you're on a familiar route, running a familiar workout, turn off Always-On GPS. Your battery health holds up longer, and you're not left scrambling to charge the morning of a big race.

In general, I recommend caring for your watch's battery the same way you treat your muscles during a training block. Full charge cycles accelerate battery degradation, so during normal weeks, cap charging around 80% instead of topping off to 100% every time.

A few bonus tips

• Keep an eye on Garmin Connect update notes. It's worth checking in periodically rather than assuming you have everything already.

• And if you have the 170 Music edition, download your playlists the night before a long run, not during your warm-up. Syncing eats battery and needs a solid wifi or Bluetooth connection. Start it early, or you'll be stuck jogging in place, waiting on a progress bar.

• Finally, this one works across most Garmin touchscreen watches, including the 170: Place your palm flat over the entire watch face, and it instantly returns to the main watch face and dims or turns off the backlight, depending on your display settings. It won't work mid-activity while you're recording, but for killing your screen quickly at your desk after checking a notification, it's neat to know.

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Coros makes great running watches that are seriously underrated. You'll recall that I ranked the Pace 4 as the best running watch under $250, and I think the Pace Pro (with its larger screen and offline maps) is excellent, too. And while Coros watches do the basics quite well, they also have a surprising number of useful yet often hidden features. Here are 10 of my best tips and tricks for getting the most out of your Coros running watch.

Coros Pace 4

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Use the Extender for detailed maps while you’re running

One of these gives more information than the other! Credit: Beth Skwarecki

The Pace Pro watch has maps built in; the Pace 4 just has basic navigation without maps. You probably already knew that. But whichever you have on your wrist, you may not have realized you can pull out your phone during a run to see a detailed map (with satellite view!) right on your phone. Instead of fiddling with the controls on your tiny watch screen, you can zoom on your phone as it updates in real time with your location and the path you’ve run so far. 

To use this feature, just open the Coros app on your phone while you’re running. Right at the top of the main screen, you’ll see a card with your current live activity. Tap that card and you’re in what Coros calls the Extender, a tool that lets you view data from the activity and even update some information directly to the watch. 

There’s a lot you can do with the Extender—we’ll look at the Adventure Journal later—but mapping is hands-down its best feature. If your watch doesn’t have maps (like the Pace 4), you essentially get them here for free. And if your watch does have maps (like the Pace Pro), you can view a higher-resolution map, with easier-to-operate controls, from this screen instead of making do with what’s on your watch.

Get your stats every mile without creating a new lap

By default, Coros watches will mark a lap for you every mile if you’re not doing a specific workout. This is nice because the watch will show your time and pace for that mile. It’s a pretty standard feature. 

But this also means that when you look at the activity later, you’ll see each mile as its own lap. If you want to track a different set of laps—the first versus the second loop around your neighborhood, perhaps—the auto laps will interfere. 

Fortunately, a recent update changes that. You can now program automatic laps separately from distance alerts. Here’s how to get the best of both worlds: 

1. On the watch, go to the Run mode (or Trail Run, etc.), go to Auto Lap, and change it to OFF.

2. Also under the Run (etc.) mode, go to Activity Alert, then Distance Alert, and make sure it is set to ON. You can set a distance here, which you probably want as 1.00 mile. 

3. If you want to hear your time and pace out loud when the alert arrives, go back to that run mode and change Voice Alert to ON.

This way, I’m able to do two loops of a two-mile trail, and end up with two laps, one for each loop, while also getting a reminder every mile of my pace. 

Load a route (even if you know where you’re going) to get Hill Alerts

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

This is another new-ish feature, and it’s a great one if you run a lot of hilly trails. Coros has Hill Alerts that will tell you when you’re starting a major uphill section, and it will let you know how many more hills you have waiting for you. You can preview the hills on the whole route, or just wait for the alerts to surprise you as you’re running. I find these useful, since I’ll know how long of a hill I have coming up and can pace myself accordingly. 

To use this feature, though, the watch has to know where you’re going. Create a route from the Explore tab, or download one you created in another app like Strava. Then tap Sync with your watch. I have a library of routes saved for my favorite trails, so using this feature is as simple as choosing a route from the same screen where I start my run. (Instead of hitting Start, just scroll down to Navigation and select the route you’re running.)

Fix your voice training notes in two ways

After you finish an activity on the Pace 4, you can record a little voice note with anything you’d like to remember about the activity. I’ve written before about how I find this incredibly useful. For strength training, I read in the highlights of my workout log. For runs and other activities, I’ll say something about how the run felt or what factors may have affected me (like the heat, lately). 

But sometimes you miss something you wanted to include, or you otherwise screw up the recording. If you don’t notice this until later, you have two options that each show up a little differently. 

One is to fix it from the watch. From the watch face, scroll or swipe up to see your widgets. One of the widgets shows your previous activities. Select the activity, scroll down to the voice note, and re-record it. This overwrites the old recording, and if you wait a few minutes, the transcription in the app will be redone as well. 

Or you can edit it as text from your phone. The original voice note gets transcribed into text, but if you hit the garbage can icon next to the note on your phone, the voice recording disappears and you now just have a text box where you can edit the text (or add to it) as much as you’d like.

Scroll the digital dial to make the lap screen go away

This is a tiny hidden feature that I only just learned about, and I love it. Whenever you mark a lap (or the auto-lap feature marks a lap for you), a screen with that lap’s statistics stays on your watch for what seems like forever—eight seconds, I believe. But if you’d like to get back to your regular screen, there’s a simple way: Just turn the dial a click or two. The lap is still marked, but the screen goes away.

Set up a running routine with the Coros Training Hub

You probably knew you could download a training schedule to the Coros app and thus to your watch. (If you didn’t: Go to the Training Plan Library under settings and see all your options.) But there’s another way to get runs showing up as scheduled: Add them yourself on your calendar on the Coros Training Hub. 

The Coros Training Hub is a website that provides a much easier interface for planning than the phone app does. To use it, go here (the link will only work if you’re logged in to your Coros account). Click the calendar icon on the middle right side of the screen, and then select or create a training plan. 

Here’s how I used it to create a basic schedule for myself in minutes. Click a day, then hit “Quick Workout” and fill in the essentials. For example: Run, 3 miles, no pace target. Once you’ve created that workout, you can copy and paste it to other days. Right now I’m doing short easy runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and a longer run on Sundays. I got a month’s worth of that schedule set up quickly (changing some of the details each week, like making the long run longer) and then I saved the training plan. Once it’s created, I could then drag it to any future date on the calendar, and now I have my runs set out for me. 

This means that if I scroll to the widgets on my watch, I can see what run I’ve scheduled for myself for today (or tomorrow, or later this week). And when I start a run, it asks me if I’d like to do that three-miler I had planned. 

Find the hidden screens on the Pace 4

This is a simple hack that evaded me for the longest time. If you ever find yourself on a strange screen while you’re running, and don’t know how to get back to the screen you were on, that’s because Coros changed the screen layout. (If I’m remembering right, they changed it twice. Just when I figured out the old way, it stopped working.)

On the Pace 4, the action button on the lower left side of the watch switches between navigation, music controls, and your regular activity data screens. When you’re on a data screen, scrolling or swiping up and down cycles through the different data screens. 

You can think of it as three different columns; scroll up and down within the column of data screens to see all of those variations, or use the action button to move sideways to the next column. 

Save photos to specific map areas with the Adventure Journal

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

If you see something interesting on your run—or if you want to make a note about how you’re feeling—the Adventure Journal makes it a lot easier to review later. This also uses the Extender feature, so pull out your phone during the run and tap the live activity card. 

From here, you can take a photo, or you can mark a spot as a “pin.” Pins can also have photos and text attached. I don’t normally allow my phone camera to store location information in photos, so when I’m on the trail, this gives me an easy way to make note of where something is. Here’s the weird gravestone in the woods; here’s that trail fork I want to investigate later; and so on. 

Track your rest times at waypoints

Here’s a feature I just learned about that seems like it will come in handy for longer runs where I’m taking breaks. The Trail Run feature now has the ability to track a lap for how long you rest at a waypoint. 

Waypoints are points on the map that are embedded in the route you’re navigating. They’re not the same as pins, even though they seem like they should be the same thing. (You can convert a pin into a waypoint, though.) 

If you plan to run a long trail and rest at certain points along the way—like the aid stations that ultramarathon runners stop at during races—the Lap Details section of your activity will show the time you spent at each waypoint before moving on. With this recent heat wave, I’ve been using my car as a cool-down spot in the middle of longer runs, so I’m looking forward to using waypoints to keep track of this.

Geek out on your training metrics on the phone or web

Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Coros

When you scroll or swipe up from the watch face, you can find analytics like your training status and training load. But the view you get on the watch is just a tiny taste of what Coros can tell you about how hard you’ve been training (and how much you should be training). 

If you tap on Training Status in the Coros phone app, you’ll see some graphs with not just your status (I’m optimized, great) but also showing how your fitness has changed over time and whether you’re staying in the recommended window for intensity. 

What’s more, you can log on to the Training Hub and get even more detailed information. With graphs like the one above, you can view how your fitness has changed next to your workout intensity, VO2max, or any of a number of other metrics. You can see how you’re doing now compared to a few months ago, and how your training has affected things like your lactate threshold. I can see that I’ve been slacking off since getting back from Hyrox, but I’ve also finally started training a little harder and will probably see the benefit of that soon. 

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You can do all the right research and pick out the highest-reviewed, best-sounding, most durable headphones for exercise—the thing is, once you’re working up a sweat, you’ll inevitably find something about your headphones that just isn’t perfect.

Maybe you share my love of the bone-conducting Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, or perhaps you want noise-cancelling earbuds, and you go with my colleague Beth’s favorites, the Powerbeats Pro 2. But once you get them on, you might notice they don’t stay in place during heavy cardio, or the sound isn’t as deep as you need for an intense lift. Before you throw in the towel on your earbuds of choice, consider these small, nerdy adjustments to enhance your audio experience before your next workout. 

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Get your ear tip size right—then go one step further

Stock silicone tips are designed to fit the average ear, which means there's a decent chance they're not the right option for you. If your earbuds ever feel like they're working their way out mid-workout, this is very likely a fit problem.

Memory foam tips like these solve two problems at once: they mold to your ear canal for a passive noise seal, and that same seal creates enough friction to keep earbuds locked in during movement. I recommend looking at the brand of your earbuds and buying straight from the source. For instance, Apple lets you buy new ear tips for your AirPods for around $10. 

There are plenty of DIY fixes online, but unless you’re particularly crafty, they might be more trouble than they’re worth. The adhesive might give out the moment you actually sweat, which can leave residue on the earbud housing. A $15-dollar pair of silicone ear hooks (like these) does the same job properly: they clip onto the earbud body and hook around the outer ear, and they're designed to survive a sweaty run without peeling off.

Of course, you can save time and simply opt for earbuds with built-in ear hook designs. I’m currently writing an in-depth review of the Suunto Spark open-ear headphones, but I’ll go ahead and give an early recommendation for their ear hook design right here.

Dial in an EQ specifically for your workout

Most people leave their EQ on whatever setting they use for podcasts or the office, which might be poorly suited for a workout. A track that sounds perfectly balanced at rest can sound thin and tinny halfway through a hard interval.

The general move for a workout is a mild bass boost and a slight treble lift to punch through ambient noise (traffic, gym equipment, your own breathing). Everyone's preferences are different, so mess around with it before your next workout. From there, most companion apps—like Shokz, Bose, Beats, Jabra, and more—let you save this as a custom profile so you're not re-adjusting it every session. If your headphones support saved EQ profiles, it's worth setting one up specifically labeled "workout" so you're always one tap away from it.

Bonus hack, since we're already talking audio: if you use podcasts to pace easy workouts, try speeding them up slightly, to around 1.25x. It's a small enough change that the content still sounds natural, but the very slightly faster speech cadence has a way of nudging your stride turnover up without you consciously trying to run faster. For me, it's a cheap, free alternative to a metronome app.

Program your headphones to trigger your workout routine

If you have a pair of headphones you use exclusively for workouts, you can set up your phone to automatically do things the moment those headphones connect. On iPhone, this lives in the Shortcuts app under Automation. Create a new automation, choose Bluetooth as the trigger, select your workout headphones specifically (not "any device"), and set it to run when they're connected. From there you can chain in an action—like opening Strava—the second your running headphones pair.

How to create a shortcut for your workout headphones. Credit: Meredith Dietz

The same trick works for call management. If you don't want to be interrupted by a phone call mid-run, build a second automation that turns on Do Not Disturb (or a custom Focus) when your workout headphones connect, and switches it back off when they disconnect. It's a nice way to really disconnect and focus on your breath. If you're worried about missing something urgent, you can still allow calls from favorites to break through DnD.

Keep them clean, protected, and sweat-resistant longer

IPX ratings tell you your earbuds can survive sweat; they don't tell you sweat won't slowly degrade them over time. If your earbuds ever get properly wet (not just sweaty), most manufacturers recommend wiping them down with a soft, dry, lint-free cloth. Then, make sure you actually let them air dry for a couple of hours before using them or putting them back in the case.

Where you can actually extend their lifespan further is the case itself. Any soft case is basically decorative—it does nothing against a water bottle or dumbbell landing on top of your gym bag. A rugged hard-shell case, like this one for AirPods, is one of the cheapest upgrades you can make.

Reroute your cables to control where sweat actually goes

If you're still running with wired headphones—and I know plenty of dedicated runners who are—cable routing matters. Most people let the cord hang straight down the front of the chest, which means the sweat rolling off your collarbone might run straight down the wire toward the connector at the earbud. That connection point is where corrosion starts, which could eventually kill your wired headphones.

The fix: loop the cable up and behind your ears first, then let it drop down the back of your neck. Gravity pulls sweat down your back instead of pooling at the jack. It also stops the cable from bouncing against your chest with every stride, which is a nice bonus.

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The Forerunner 165 is an accessible, reliable running watch for Garmin users who want serious metrics without complexity overload. It’s slotted in below the 255/265 line, offering a bright, colorful touchscreen and solid running fundamentals—GPS, heart rate, sleep and stress tracking, and support for structured workouts—without some of the pricier extras like maps or a solar panel. (If you're confused by Garmin’s numbering system, we’ve got you covered.)

The 165 has been succeeded by the Forerunner 170, but it’s still a fan favorite—even if most owners aren’t using this watch to its full potential. Here are my favorite hacks and hidden features to get more out of your Garmin Forerunner 165. 

Garmin Forerunner 165

$249.99 at Best Buy

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Add the flashlight to your controls menu—and adjust it to see better at night

The 165 may not have a dedicated LED hardware flashlight like the higher-end models, but it does have a “flashlight feature” where it turns the watch’s bright AMOLED display fully white. By default you won’t have flashlight available, but you can go into Controls (by holding the UP button) and add "Flashlight" as a tile. Once it’s added, you can unlock the red light mode by pressing the DOWN button until it cycles through to it. Red light is easier on the eyes, especially at night, compared to the stark white default. 

Adjust the controls menu to create your own "hotkeys"

Unlike the 265 and up, the 165 doesn't support customizable hardware button shortcuts for things like Garmin Pay or the flashlight I mention above. The workaround is to be intentional about ordering your Controls menu items, putting whatever you use mid-run (flashlight, Do Not Disturb, music controls) at the very top, so it's always one swipe away, instead of buried in a scroll. (And instead of scrolling through your options one-by-one on your watch, take a gander at this list here and build out your control menu with intention.)

Use a workaround to get your Forerunner 165 to provide "breadcrumb navigation"

The 165 may not have full on-screen mapping like the higher-end Forerunners, but it will still show you a breadcrumb trail if you load a course from Garmin Connect—meaning you can follow a planned route's shape even on a "map-less" watch. (It just won't render surrounding streets.)

Create custom activity profiles instead of editing the default one 

Rather than constantly changing your data screens between an easy run and a track workout, you can duplicate the Run profile and build multiple ones with different fields, alerts, and auto-lap settings. It sounds obvious, but you may not realize you can stack multiple Run-type profiles in the activity list at once.

Personally, I recommend stripping down your data screens. Pace, heart rate, and cadence are plenty for most workouts. Everything else (elevation, calories, lap count) can live on a secondary screen you can glance at during recovery jogs, not hard efforts. You can customize directly on your watch, or it's a little easier to explore in the Garmin Connect app:

1. Tap Activities & Apps, then select Run.

2. Select Data Screens and choose the screen you want to edit.

3. Tap Layout to choose how many data fields (1 to 4) you want on that screen.

4. Select Data Fields to change what metric displays (e.g., pace, distance, heart rate zone).

Pause before uploading to Strava after a run for more accurate data

Every runner I know has had to grit their teeth through syncing issues between Garmin and Strava. If you're the type to hit "sync" the second you stop your watch (like I know I am), here's my tip: Slow down. Give Garmin Connect two to three minutes to finish processing the activity file before it pushes to Strava. That processing window is when Garmin finalizes GPS smoothing and segment matching. When you upload too early, you can end up with jagged pace spikes or missed segment credit that never seems to correct itself.