There is a review of a wireless charging device

The Amazfit Falcon – An ultra-compact multi-sport watch with bluetooth and GPS entanglement for indoor and outdoor activities

In areas that have tall trees or high buildings, the dual-band gps (L1 and L5) will not be as accurate as multi-band tracking will be. One thing I did not like was the 10-second waiting period for the GPS to engage; it’s not a long time, obviously, but other watches I use engage almost instantly.

The Amazfit Falcon is a worthy competitor to top-of-the-line multisport watches currently on the market from Garmin, COROS, and more — especially since it rings up at $499, several hundred dollars less than Garmin’s popular Fenix line.

It took less than 5 minutes for the Falcon to be set up. It pairs with Huami’s Zepp app, which will look familiar to anyone who’s ever used a Fitbit or other fitness tracking app; you can find all your main metrics — like sleep and steps — as well as recent activities on the homescreen, and clicking into any will give you deeper insights as to your own data.

The falcon looks like several of my outdoor watches, as shown in the box. The frame is made from titanium and it has a sapphire crystal glass screen (it also has an anti-fingerprint coating). I didn’t take a battering ram to the device but after multiple workouts, two strength training sessions and a few attempts at dropping it from wrist height, I found no resistance. It’s also water-resistant up to 200 meters, although the most I submerged It was in the shower.

I fully charged the Falcon before setting it up, and after two weeks of wear I have yet to recharge. The company states that with typical use, you should get 14 days on a single charge, and only seven days with heavy usage. The Falcon can last up to 30 days in battery saver mode, with a number ofGPS settings that will allow you to get 21 to 50 hours. When you are running low, it takes just two hours to fully juice up.

You can navigate using four buttons on the always-on screen of the Falcon, even with a flick of the wrist. I found that once I clicked into a menu (like the workout options, using the button at the top right) it was easier to swipe up and down and side to side using the touchscreen capabilities.

The heavier end of the spectrum is expected for a more rugged watch and theFalcon leans towards the heavier end at 64 grams. It’s not quite as hefty as the 89-gram COROS Vertix 2 or 76-gram Garmin Epix and it’s actually pretty comparable to the 61-gram Apple Watch Ultra, but it was significantly heavier than my standard running watch, the COROS Pace 2 (29 grams) and took some getting used to while wearing 24/7, especially while trying to sleep.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/reviews/amazfit-falcon?iid=CNNUnderscoredHPcontainer

Is The Falcon Really That Efficient? Screen Locking Features and Navigation in a $e+ e-$-Based Gps Watch

The screen lock feature was one of the biggest pain points in using the falcon. I kept getting screen locked messages when I tried to use the different screens, so I pressed the button on the lock screen to get the screen unlocked. It’s the lefthand up or down buttons, but that wasn’t clear mid-workout and resulted in unintentional lapping of the workout multiple times since my instinct was to use the righthand buttons. (This may be a customizable feature, but I have yet to figure out a way to remove it.)

It has a battery life of up to 30 days that is pretty impressive, but it is just a little slower than the COROS Vertix 2 or the slightly more expensive Garmin Fenix 7. I found the interface to be a little less user-friendly than in competitors, but I’ve also never used a Zepp-based wearable before and a learning curve is to be expected.

The constant screen-locking made me not happy. The navigation features don’t meet the high standards set by the company, but if you’re not a professional athlete or someone who’s going too far off the beaten path that shouldn’t matter much. The Falcon is a more economical entry point into the multi-sportGPS watch world for someone who would like a less expensive option.

The Garmin Vivomove Trend: Charge on the Qi charging pad and back again for fitness tracking without a proprietary battery. How I feel about my Garmin Watch

The biggest pain point for fitness tracker owners is the proprietary battery that they have. It’s a serious inconvenience—if you forget a Lightning connector or a USB-C charger, you can always borrow one from a friend or find one in a store. A proprietary connectinement from Fitbit? Sorry! I bet you won’t be getting your steps recorded on the Italian walking vacation.

So it was with a sense of almost mystical reverence that I removed the Vivomove Trend from my wrist and placed it on the Qi charging pad next to my desk. I leaned over it and looked at the screen. It is charging! It works, even though it is not incredibly fast. I will never take a work trip with a watch that is not charged.

Garmin’s latest entry-level hybrid watch is still a little clunky to operate, but I do love its attractive, streamlined looks and that new charging system. Wireless charging on any Qi charging pad is almost magical. That makes it look like it’s at the head of the pack.

If you want to track your health without wearing an overtly chunky, sporty watch, you have a few options. Fossil has a watch which packs as many metrics as possible into an analog watch face while Withings makes a tracker that looks as much like an analog watch as possible.

The Vivomove Trend gives you the best of both worlds. My tester is a beautiful, if slightly dated, peach gold with an ivory band. It has a small case with an analogue watch face. However, when you click on your device in the Garmin Connect app, you can pick up to three complications that will be visible when you swing the watch up toward your face.

This allows for much more customization than you might think, because some of the complications can combine—I opted for the Techie face, with the date up top and steps, battery, and floors climbed on the bottom.

Source: https://www.wired.com/review/garmin-vivomove-trend/

The Role of the Haptic Buzz in Tracking and Detecting Activities with a GPS-Accelerated GPS-Enabled Activity Tracker

To start an activity, check your heart rate, go to settings, or set a stopwatch or timer, you just touch your fingertip to the watch face. With a haptic buzz, the options pop up as glowing icons. If you click through to the timer and realize that you’re going to start an activity instead of clicking through, you back off. As a side note, I do wish more trackers would just include one measly on-off button. (Even analog watches have at least one button!)

You can change the strength of the buzz, but I haven’t noticed a big difference. With Move IQ, you can turn on auto activity tracking or start an activity manually.

Move IQ is remarkably accurate—it picked up a wild 3-minute dash from the parking garage to a doctor’s appointment—but if you start an activity manually, you have to double-tap to start the activity once you’ve selected it. Since it connects to GPS via your phone, my tracked results from walking, biking, and running are consistent with results from other trackers—unless I forgot to start the activity manually, which happened a lot.