COROS has introduced a novel outdoor fitness watch aimed at hikers and campers featuring dual-band GPS, a remarkable 22-day battery life, and offline maps. After personally trying out the COROS NOMAD, I can confidently state that it presents an appealing option compared to the widely-used Garmin Instinct 3, excelling in numerous aspects.
The standout feature of the NOMAD is its offline street and topographic maps, which now come enhanced with street/trail names and points of interest, ensuring you’re prepared even if you haven’t pre-downloaded a route.
Its Ambiq Apollo 510 processor ensures map navigation is exceptionally smooth. You can zoom in or out using the crown or swipe on the touch display to explore nearby areas, and it refreshes the details in under a second, unlike other fitness watches I’ve tried that suffer from frustrating delays.
Fans of traditional fitness watches will enjoy that the COROS NOMAD features a 1.3-inch MIP display. Although I personally prefer AMOLED, COROS’s vibrant, high-contrast approach to MIP is sufficiently legible indoors, especially when the gesture backlight is activated, and excels in outdoor conditions.
Moreover, COROS has modernized the NOMAD with its innovative voice pins. Utilizing dual noise-canceling microphones, you can capture your thoughts during activities and link each recording to a precise GPS location. This feature transforms your workout summary into a hiking diary, with the ability to attach photos to specific pins and send the summary to friends and family for them to listen and view.
I tried it on a local hike and was pleased with its performance. My voice was clear when the watch was close to my mouth, and it was still understandable when positioned at my hip, along with impressive noise cancellation for wind and footfalls.
COROS automatically transcribes each voice pin, and if you mention something like a tick infestation or trailfork, COROS will mark that pin with a hazard or navigation symbol. Additionally, you can place pins without speaking by employing the same action button shortcut menu.
Beyond voice pins, you can now view 3D flyover highlights of your COROS activities within the app. More generally, COROS has revamped its training load widget to no longer reset every Monday; you’ll receive a continuous 7-day overview of your training load, which is far more beneficial.
COROS has also incorporated numerous fishing activity modes, allowing you to log your catches and casts, designate “promising” fish locations, and access other specialized tools. While I have never fished myself, it’s encouraging to observe COROS attempting to cater to niche markets.
In many respects, the NOMAD resembles a rugged COROS PACE Pro. They both carry the same $349 price tag, provide 30+ hours of dual-band GPS tracking, training load information, recovery time insights, music storage, and efficient offline map navigation.
However, while the PACE Pro faces a competitive landscape of running watches, the NOMAD competes with only a select few rugged adventurer counterparts, such as the Instinct 3 and Amazfit T-Rex 3.
Reasons the COROS NOMAD captivated me more than the Garmin Instinct 3
I awarded the Garmin Instinct 3 a commendable review rating for its extended battery life, precise data, and Garmin training features. Nonetheless, I found it disappointing that Garmin did not equip a $450+ “adventurer’s watch” with offline maps and more exclusive outdoor functionalities, making battery life its only distinguishing characteristic.
Regardless of your interest in the NOMAD’s voice pins and fishing tools, COROS has ensured it stands apart from its other models and has not restricted map access like Garmin has done. Additionally, even if you opt for the Fenix 8 for mapping capabilities, its performance is slower, and navigating through buttons rather than a crown lacks the same enjoyment.
Certainly, the Instinct 3 has numerous advantages over the NOMAD: increased water resistance with a MIL-STD-810 rating, an integrated flashlight, daily recommended workouts, a rucking application, and contactless payments. Most importantly, Garmin provides AMOLED or solar charging options in various sizes, whereas the NOMAD is limited to a single MIP variant.
Thus, it’s not accurate to claim that the COROS NOMAD is unequivocally “better” than the Instinct 3. However, it’s $100–150 less expensive, serves as a more reliable navigation tool in emergencies, helps you capture memories of your favorite moments outdoors, and its lengthy battery life is sufficient for most users without solar recharging.
Evaluating the COROS NOMAD’s GPS and HR accuracy
I took the COROS NOMAD for an extended run and a hike while utilizing the Garmin Forerunner 970 and the Garmin HRM 200 chest strap as control devices for GPS and HR, respectively.
During the initial 12-mile run, I used the NOMAD’s default All-Systems GNSS mode alongside the SatIQ mode on the Forerunner 970. The outcomes from COROS and Garmin ended up differing by approximately
