Offline routing is supposed to be one of the banner features of this watch. You should be able to just pick a point in the Maps app on the watch, then choose Straight-Line Navigation or Route Navigation. Unless you’re in a wide-open field, Straight-Line won’t help you much, but Route Navigation should parse the watch’s ability to read roads and trails to get you where you’re going.
Then you choose between Outdoor Running, Walking, or Outdoor Cycling. Why isn’t hiking included? Who knows, but it doesn’t really matter because 90 percent of the time I tried it, the watch would just say, “Route Creation Failed. Try Again.” I only managed to get it to work a couple of times, and only for extremely short distances, and one of those times it advised me to run on Interstate 405, which is one of the largest, busiest highways in the country. I would not rely on this feature.
There’s just a general sense of unfinishedness to the whole thing. Questionable translations abound. It missed waves while I was surfing. It still doesn’t recognize the types of strength training that you’re doing, which is a feature that was promised earlier this year and is readily available on all other sports watches at this point.
Finish the Job
Photograph: Brent Rose
It’s not all bad news. I love that this watch has an LED flashlight, which is a feature that I think every sports watch should have because it’s so useful. The speaker and microphone aren’t great quality, but they’re also nice to have. The watch does a pretty good job of displaying notifications from your smartphone, and if you’re an Android user you can even quickly reply to incoming texts, or initiate texts through Zepp Flow, even though it doesn’t draw distinctions between types of notifications and it will just start buzzing incessantly while you’re driving.
