The TomTom Runner Cardio is a GPS-enabled running watch and the follow-up to the impressive TomTom Runner.

Their tests do assess fast cycling but not fast running and appear to extend accurate heart rates up to the high 190s bpm. Snug is best butnote that during activity, especially on cold days, your wrist will expand as you warm up, soan optimalsetting at the start might be differentafter 10 minutes or so.If you’ve been feeling like you’re among the last people walking the planet without a fitness tracker wrapped around your wrist, clipped on your shirt, or dropped in your pocket, perhaps its time to add one to your fitness equipment and start recording your stats. This ability to combine your Runner-captured data with other services you might already use is a big benefit. TomTom's own GPS mapping technology adds a new level of tracking and precision unavailable in popular wrist-based fitness devices such as the Nike FuelBand and Fitbit Flex, and puts it more in line with the likes of the Garmin Forerunner 10. The Garmin Forerunner 220 is a must-have sports watch for runners who are training for distance — and not just because of the GPS. The Graphical Training Partner, accessed by hitting the down button on the GPS calibration screen, will likely be the most-used feature of the watch, offering up four different modes: Zone, Race, Goal and Laps.

There are online running courses and running coaching options available, plus loads of great in-depth articles to read for free. The Jawbone app lets you log everything you eat, so you can get a complete picture of calories in versus calories burn. The Jawbone app is fantastic tool, allowing you to see your data in clean graphics, log food, motivate and compete with your UP using contacts, and more. What the Vivofit 2 offers that its older brother does not is a more secure clasp, a better selection of colours, a backlight on the display for better readability in low light, and a move beeper, an activity timer.The device itself is a coin-sized circle that can be worn on the wrist or around your neck, clipped on your clothes, or slipped in your pocket. Before you head out with the Runner, you'll need to sync it up with the TomTom MySports Connect program and fill out your personal profile.

Finally there's Laps mode, which lets you set either automatic or manual laps taking into account time and distance.Familiar runs around the 9 mile mark match up within a few metres, which means it’s plenty accurate enough (a marathon race using the phone was bang on 26. On the negative side, like most optical HRMs, sometimes the TomTom did sometimes seem to take a little while to ‘get going’ and dial into to its normal accurate state. On larger tracks an intermediate level of zoom would be preferred and trying to follow this type of navigational line I find difficult when cycling with ANY device using the same method.