Adidas MiCoach Smart Run review

The current crop of smart watches are little more than second screens for your smartphone, designed to let you know when you’re getting a call or should check your email. Not so with the Smart Run, the first fitness-oriented smart watch from Adidas. It is strictly designed for fitness fanatics to keep track of their performance without needing a host of other gadgets to monitor heart rate or location.

Unlike most other fitness trackers, which tend to require a separate heart rate monitor, the Smart Run has a light-based sensor built into the watch body to detect your pulse. This is convenient, as you don’t need to wear a chest strap, but will undoubtedly have an impact on battery life. It also has integrated Wi-Fi, which means you can sync your workout to the Adidas MiCoach website without having to boot up a PC first, along with GPS and Bluetooth.

At around 80g It’s rather bulky compared to a fitness band, and is even larger than Sony’s chunky Smartwatch 2, but still sits comfortably on the wrist. The metal and glass construction feels a lot more heavy duty than other fitness gadgets we’ve tried, but may put off those with smaller wrists. The rubber strap has plenty of holes to get a tight fit, which is necessary to get a precise heart rate reading. Two metal teeth lock the strap down so it doesn’t flap about when on the move.

The 1.45in LCD display doesn’t have a particularly high resolution; at 184×184 pixels, it’s easy enough to read the time but it’s a little trickier to enter text. You have to swipe through letters horizontally as there’s no room for a full keyboard, which can be quite time consuming.