Coros Apex 2 watch test – A great GPS watch!

Test video summary

My summary

How do I use the Coros Apex 2?

The Coros Apex 2 is a multi-sport GPS watch offering a wide range of functions for tracking performance. It is ideal for outdoor sports such as trail running, as it integrates mapping (ideal for following a route without getting lost!) and offers extended autonomy, an advantage for lovers of long outings. It’s a mid-range watch, but one that competes with high-end watches from other brands.

Features

• Dimensions: 43 x 42.8 x 12.8mm
• Display: 32mm (1.2″), touch-sensitive and colored; sapphire crystal and titanium bezel
• Weight: 42g – Scale weight: 44g
• Autonomy: 40h with standard GPS / 25h with all-system GPS and 14j in daily use
• Strap: 20 mm wide; Nylon
• Cartography
• Connection to the 5 main satellite systems
• Internal memory: 8gb
• Price: €399
• Available in black, grey, pink or coral

Our full Coros Apex 2 test

Design and Ergonomics

The Coros Apex 2 is a carefully designed watch, distinguished by its light weight, which makes it very comfortable to wear. The screen is not too imposing, a positive point for the small wrists we women tend to have.

The nylon Velcro strap may seem unusual at first, but it’s very practical. It provides a perfect fit on the wrist, without the risk of getting caught between two sizes. What’s more, it doesn’t get in the way or cause irritation or unpleasant rubbing. The bracelet features the Coros motto “#ExplorePerfection”, giving it a distinctive style that I appreciate. The bracelets are interchangeable (nylon, silicone) and available in several colors.

Featuring a sapphire screen and titanium bezel, the Coros Apex 2 is highly resistant. It has 3 buttons, including a notched thumbwheel in the middle for easy navigation, even when wearing gloves. The screen is touch-sensitive, and can be configured to remain touch-sensitive all the time, only during activities, or just on the map. Personally, I prefer to have it active only on the map, to avoid involuntary screen changes under a jacket.

The watch’s interface is customizable. Coros offers a variety of downloadable screens, with digital or analog dials. You can also integrate your own photo as a wallpaper. It’s a bit of a gimmick, but it’s nice to be able to choose the wallpaper you want. That’s how I was able to create an ultra-minimalist screen for myself!

Autonomy

Autonomy is the watch’s strong point. In standard GPS mode, it lasts 40 hours, and 25 hours when connected to 5 satellite systemssimultaneously. In connected watch mode, it lasts 14 days.

To give some figures, during my experience on the Munster’Trail 60 km, I consumed just under 40% of the battery after more than 9h of activity and with navigation activated.

The Apex 2 can be fully recharged in less than two hours, which is another great advantage for quickly recovering a few percent of battery life when you’ve forgotten to charge it!

GPS, mapping and route tracking

Another of the Coros watch’s assets is its GPS system: it can connect to the 5 main satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidu and QZSS) simultaneously, making it highly accurate.

Secondly, one of the big advantages of the Coros Apex 2 is its cartography, which is usually reserved for more high-end watches from competitors. I really appreciate this, as it’s much easier to get your bearings when you have the background map rather than just the track. In fact, I get lost a lot less now that I have it!

The Apex 2 supports the display of standard and topographic Open Street Map backgrounds. Maps must first be downloaded from the Coros website(https://coros.com/maps/#/) and transferred to the watch via a USB cable. This is the only slightly negative point: it’s a rather long and tedious operation, and you have to be careful with the 8 GB memory limit (it’s not possible to download all the maps in the world!).

Once that’s done, off you go! The cartography is then on-board and available offline. It’s very precise for hiking and trail trails, but lacks urban detail such as street and city names.

Route tracking is simple and efficient. It’s easy to synchronize routes from the Coros app (and recently it’s even possible to create your own routes directly in the app). The watch guides you precisely, with turn-by-turn guidance. It also alerts you quickly when you leave the path, telling you how far you are from the track… You’re never lost for long!

However, the watch does not allow you to recalculate the route in the event of a mistake or if you wish to take another route.

Sports activities and training

The Apex 2 offers a multitude of sports profiles adapted to various disciplines:

• Running and walking: Running; Carpet/Gym; Trail; Track; Hiking; Walking
• Mountain and climbing: Mountaineering; Indoor climbing; Bouldering; Skiing; Snowboarding; Cross-country skiing; Ski touring
• Cycling: Road bike; Home trainer; Gravel; Mountain bike
• Swimming: Pool; Open water
• Water sports: Rowing; Speedsurfing; Calm water; Whitewater; Windsurfing
• Combined sports: Triathlon; Multisport
• Cardio and weight training: Weight training; Skipping rope; Indoor cardio; Outdoor cardio; Indoor rowing machine; Skipping rope

Each activity is customizable with up to six data screens, containing 2 to 8 information fields per screen. Over 50 metrics are available, including distance, time, elevation gain, pace, heart rate, race level, power and training load.

You can program simple splits directly from the watch or create more complex workouts directly via the app for the following sports profiles: running, trail, cycling, swimming, weight training, indoor climbing, bouldering. For the moment, I’ve only created split workouts for running: it’s very simple and intuitive, and synchronization is very fast.

The little training bonus: you can follow a training session with an itinerary in front of you. Very practical if you want to do a split or other workout on unfamiliar trails.

After each workout, all data is synchronized and can be consulted via the app, enabling us to analyze our performance in depth. Metrics are presented in graphical form, allowing you to visualize your progress throughout the session.

Sensors and measurement

Coros Apex 2 is equipped with sensors to monitor performance and health on a daily basis.

The optical heart rate sensor allows you to monitor your heart rate in real time, throughout the day and of course during sports sessions. Although the data may lack precision, it’s a good basis for daily monitoring. For greater precision during sporting activities, the Coros armband can be used as a complement.

The watch also measures heart rate variability (HRV), a key indicator for assessing recovery levels. This data can be useful for adjusting your training according to your state of fitness, which is really useful!

For high-altitude enthusiasts, the Apex 2 features an oxygen saturation sensor (SpO2) to track altitude acclimatization and monitor how our bodies adapt to oxygen depletion.

In addition to these sensors, the watch offers complete daily tracking, as well as sleep tracking to analyze its various phases during the night. All this data can be easily consulted in the application, which not only tracks sports performance, but also your general state of health.

Additional widgets

The Apex 2 also lets you listen to your favorite music tracks directly from the watch by connecting Bluetooth headphones. However, you need to download the music and transfer it via the USB cable. Personally, I’ve had 0 .mp3 files since Spotify was created, so I’m not sure how useful this function is!

In addition to sports-related functions, the Coros Apex 2 integrates other practical tools such as a stopwatch, timer, alarm, compass and metronome to improve running cadence. You can also control a GoPro or Insta360 camera directly from the watch (never tested yet).

Conclusion

The Coros Apex 2 is an excellent, comprehensive watch. Its main asset is the cartography and very good autonomy usually found on top-of-the-range watches. Quality materials and a robust watch, it has everything you need for all types of sport.