Garmin is synonymous with excellence in GPS tracking for athletic activities. But also, when most people think of Garmin, they think of big, chunky running watches. It’s safe to say that most GPS watches aren’t designed for aesthetics first, but Garmin has some cool ideas up their (sweat-wicking) sleeves to make fitness tracking a lot more comfortable.
First of all, if you’re someone who has ever had to wear a support garment under their shirt, you’ll know that chest straps can often get in the way of sports bras. Garmin is trying to solve that with the HRM-Fit.
It’s designed to clip to a sports bra instead of wrapping around your chest, giving it a better and more comfortable fit while still maintaining the accuracy we’ve come to expect from Garmin.
HRM-Fit can connect to a Garmin smartwatch, pick up your heart rate while running, cycling, hiking, etc., and even function as an activity tracker if you don’t have a smartwatch with you.
It comes in at a relatively light 1.9 ounces (53g), though one person whom we discussed this device with pointed out a flaw. She raised the concern that even at that light-ish weight, clipping a heart rate monitor to a nice sports bra could potentially stretch it out, which might be why Garmin emphasizes these are for medium to high-support bras.
The Garmin HRM-Fit will retail for $149.99, and it works with Garmin Connect. Fitness applications and devices aren’t always designed for bra-wearers, so it’s nice to see Garmin try to take steps to fill that niche!
If you’re a fan of running watches, you don’t have to live with a chunky watch that doubles as light weightlifting. Enter the Lily 2 series, designed to give you all the benefits of a fitness watch without the excess chunkiness.
Garmin offers colorways like Cream Gold and Coconut or Dark Bronze and Mulberry, or you can even get fancy and design your own combination of case and wristband colors on the Garmin website.