I ran, cycled and worked out with the Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: here's the winner

If you’re looking for an affordable sports watch then the Coros Pace 4 and Garmin Forerunner 170 should be near the top of your list.

Both are among the best running watches in particular, and pack a lot of impressive features into small, featherweight designs that fit small wrists well.

I’ve been testing the two watches head-to-head for the past few days, using both to track an all-out 5K along with couple of other runs, an indoor bike ride and two strength workouts.

Latest Videos From

I’m a fan of both watches and they mostly offer similar features, but there are some pros and cons to each, with the Coros being cheaper and having longer battery life, while the Garmin has better smart features and a more polished user interface.

Here’s what I learned from testing the Garmin Forerunner 170 and Coros Pace 4 head-to-head.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: price

The Coros Pace 4 costs $249 or $279 if you opt for the Coros Pace 4 Aluminium, which has a metal bezel.

It’s cheaper than the Garmin Forerunner 170, which is $299 for the standard model and $349 for the Forerunner 170 Music, which has music storage and WiFi.

Garmin Forerunner 170 Music: $349 at Garmin

The Forerunner 170 is available to order from Garmin directly, before its wider launch in the coming weeks. It comes in four colors and offers a lot of handy new features and better training analysis than the Forerunner 165.

View Deal

Coros Pace 4: $249 at Amazon

In six months of testing, I've only come to like the Coros Pace 4 more and more, and it's an excellent value watch compared to other sports watches. I now wear the slightly pricier Coros Pace 4 Aluminum model, which has a metal bezel that gives it a more premium look.

View Deal

There is the cheaper Garmin Forerunner 70 ($249), which has the same look as the Forerunner 170 but doesn’t have music, NFC payments or some of the sensors on the 170, like a barometer and altimeter.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: specs

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: design

Both watches have lightweight designs that are either all-plastic, or mostly-plastic if you opt for the Coros Pace 4 Aluminium, which has a metal bezel. There are more color options for the Forerunner 170 at the moment, including attractive teal and pink designs.

I like the look and feel of both watches — they’re very comfortable to wear 24/7 because they’re so small and light, and they still have bright 1.2in AMOLED displays that are easy to read during and outside workouts.

The Forerunner 170 has five buttons, whereas the Pace 4 has three buttons, one of which is a digital dial. I find this dial easy to trigger accidentally and overall slightly prefer the five-button design of the Forerunner 170, but it’s not a major difference.

Both watches have all the usual sensors on board, like an optical heart rate sensor, barometric altimeter and compass, and both have a 5ATM water resistance rating and 4GB of storage. The Pace 4 has a mic you can use for voice commands and to take notes.

You can connect external sensors including cycling power meters and heart rate chest straps via Bluetooth on the Pace 4, and via Blutooth and ANT+ on the Forerunner 170.

The Pace 4 offers multi-band GPS tracking, whereas the Forerunner 170’s most accurate mode is all-systems GPS — more on how much of a difference that makes later.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: Sports tracking and training analysis

A big plus point for the Coros Pace 4 is that it’s a full triathlon watch with a multisport mode, whereas the Forerunner 170 is more running-focused and doesn’t have a multisport mode.

Both watches offer a lot of different sports modes, including track run and open water swimming, and training analysis that includes a breakdown of your acute vs chronic training load, VO2 max estimates, race predictions and a recovery advisor.

One extra feature you get on the Forerunner 170 is Training Readiness, which is a score out of 100 rating the state of your body at that time, based on things like recent sleep and stress and training history.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: GPS & HR accuracy

Garmin’s decision not to give the Forerunner 170 multi-band GPS, which is available on its more expensive watches, is probably based on the fact it drains battery life quicker, and Garmin’s all-systems-on GPS tracking is accurate enough anyway.

On the latter point, it’s true that in my years of testing Garmin watches as a marathoner I’ve rarely, if ever, felt that the brand’s all-systems GPS wasn’t good enough, but I still prefer to use Garmin’s multi-band GPS when it’s available for the best possible accuracy, especially in city centers.

I’ve used the Coros Pace 4 for six months and it’s produced very accurate GPS tracking in multi-band mode, including at the London Marathon.

When testing the two watches head to head recently I found that they produced pretty much identical distance and pace stats, along with very similar GPS tracks, while running a 5K parkrun and on a 10-mile run in my local forest.

I’d still rather have multi-band myself, but so far in various tests with the Forerunner 170 the all-systems GPS has been reliably accurate, and it also was in my long-term testing of the Forerunner 165.

With regards to the heart rate tracking of the two watches, in the workouts I’ve done so far both have been pretty good, but the Coros Pace 4 did have some erroneous spikes and didn’t match up as closely with the readings from a chest strap as the Forerunner 170.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: smart features

Smarts are an area where Garmin is well ahead of other sports watch manufacturers, and that’s the case with the Forerunner 170 vs the Pace 4.

The Forerunner 170 allows for much more customization of watch faces, including the colors used and stats on show, has more widgets like Sports Scores, offers NFC payments and the music model can link up with streaming services including Spotify as well as storing music files.

While the Coros Pace 4 does offer music storage, this is only for MP3 files; you can’t link it with a streaming service. It doesn’t offer NFC payments either, and doesn't have access to an app store like Garmin’s Connect IQ.

Both can control music playback on your phone, and one extra you do get with the Pace 4 is a mic you can use for voice commands like starting a timer or a workout.

Neither watch has offline maps, but both do offer breadcrumb navigation with turn-by-turn directions so you can follow routes through a line and pointer trail.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: battery life

Garmin wins on smarts, but Coros wins on battery life. The Pace 4 offers up to 19 days of juice in watch mode, which drops to six days if you have the screen always-on, while the Forerunner 170 only offers 10 days of battery life and four days with the screen always-on.

The Pace 4 also offers more GPS battery life despite using the more power-intensive multi-band mode. You get 24 hours of multi-band tracking vs 14 hours of all-systems-on GPS with the Forerunner 170.

In my testing the Pace 4 routinely lasts five days when running every day with the screen always-on, even in the high mileage weeks of marathon training.

The Forerunner 170 has so far needed charging every three to four days in my testing, always with the screen always-on and running daily.

Garmin Forerunner 170 vs Coros Pace 4: verdict

This is a really hard choice I will say there isn’t a bad call you can make here; both are excellent watches that I’ve enjoyed using and found reliably accurate.

I find the Garmin user interface a little slicker and more polished, and the Forerunner 170 has a lot of features you won’t get on the Pace 4, especially smart features.

For its part the Coros Pace 4 is a full triathlon watch with longer battery life and has multi-band GPS on board, even if this hasn’t proved a big difference-maker in testing so far.

The Coros is also cheaper, which could be the biggest difference of all, especially as the Pace 4 is $100 cheaper than the Forerunner 170 Music I’ve been testing. It’s still a lot more affordable even if you opt for the Pace 4 Aluminium for a more premium feel.

Having used the Pace 4 for a full marathon training block and found it so reliably good, I’d lean towards it myself given the saving and the fact I don’t use music or NFC payments on my watch. But if you need those features in particular the Forerunner 170 is the clear pick.

Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds.

More from Tom's Guide

• Forget pricey new running shoes — I would get these last-gen Hoka, Saucony and New Balance at a steep discount instead
• Coros Pace 4 vs Coros Pace 3 vs Coros Pace Pro: Which is the best Coros watch for you?
• Garmin Fenix 8 vs. Garmin Fenix 8 Pro: should you upgrade?