COROS Pace 4 In-Depth Review: Best Budget Sports Watch Gets AMOLED Display & New Features

COROS Pace 4: Overview and Price

• 💡 The COROS Pace 4 continues the tradition of the Pace series, offering a feature-packed, lightweight sports watch at a budget-friendly price.
• 💰 Priced at $249, it's a slight increase from the Pace 3 ($229), but remains highly competitive in the sports watch market.
• 🎯 The watch is designed for comfort, with a 43mm case and weighing just under 40g with a silicone band, making it easy to wear for daily use, sleep, and various sports.

Display and Battery Life

• ✨ The most significant hardware change is the move to an AMOLED display, offering vibrant colors and high contrast, with a peak brightness of 1500 nits for excellent outdoor visibility.
• 🔋 Battery life is advertised up to 19 days without always-on display and up to 6 days with it. Real-world testing yielded around 5 days with always-on display and typical usage including sleep tracking and real-time heart rate.
• ⚡ For outdoor activity tracking, battery life is advertised from 24 hours (max accuracy, always-on display) to 41 hours (single band, always-on display off), with testing showing solid performance that met or slightly exceeded claims.

New Hardware and Features

• 🎙️ A new microphone has been added, primarily for taking voice notes during activities, which can be automatically transcribed in the COROS app.
• 🏃 The action button is a new customizable hardware feature, allowing quick access to functions like map switching or voice notes.
• 🚫 Unlike the Apex 4, the Pace 4 does not have a speaker for calls, but retains a beeper for sounds.

Health and Sports Tracking

• ❤️ The Pace 4 tracks heart rate, calories, steps, sleep, heart rate variability, and stress, and includes an SPO2 sensor for high-altitude situations.
• 🏊 It offers a comprehensive suite of sport profiles, including running, cycling, swimming (pool and open water), triathlon, and various gym and outdoor recreation activities.
• 📊 Advanced running dynamics like stride length, running power, and ground contact time can be collected directly from the wrist, along with training load, status, recovery time, and a race predictor.

Accuracy Testing

• 🛰️ The watch features a dual-band satellite chipset for GPS accuracy, with both high (single frequency) and max (dual frequency) modes. Testing in challenging hilly and canyon environments showed rock-solid GPS track accuracy.
• ⛰️ Elevation tracking was generally accurate, though one flat ride showed an unusual shakiness and higher than expected gain.
• 📈 Heart rate accuracy was decent for indoor cycling and running, but showed some spikes and inaccuracies on rough outdoor rides, especially during descents, and potential cadence lock during trail running ascents.
• 💪 For weight training and HIIT, the optical sensor performed decently, though wrist-based optical sensors can struggle with specific movements like arm curls.

Value Proposition and Comparisons

• 💰 Despite a $20 price increase, the Pace 4 offers significant value and is competitive with other brands at its price point.
• ⚖️ COROS is also implementing price drops on the Pace 3 and Pace Pro, making the Pace Pro (with offline maps but no microphone) a compelling option for $50 more.
• 🧐 The Pace 4's advantage lies in its lightweight design and the inclusion of a microphone, while the Pace Pro offers larger screen size and offline maps. A follow-up comparison video is planned.