Timex is coming for Garmin and Fitbit's GPS fitness trackers. The company best known for its plastic kid's watches has stepped up its offerings with the Timex Ironman R300, which touts an impressive 25-day battery life and a low $120 price.
The Timex Ironman R300 GPS, available for purchase now on Timex’s website, is the brand's most advanced wearable yet. While Timex sells number of GPS and fitness watches, the Ironman introduces workouts guided by athletes and coaches available from its always-on display. While this is not a new feature for GPS watches in general, it is rare to see on a fitness tracker this inexpensive.
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Timex refers to the Ironman R300 as a fitness-first smartwatch, but it's pretty limited in the smartwatch department: You can receive notifications, but you can't reply to them. It also lacks an app store of any kind.
The Ironman R300 comes in black, dark grey and silver-grey and sports a simple square case with a thick-bezeled digital display. It certainly doesn't have the swagger of the Apple Watch, but it might not need it.
Timex's new watch promises an incredible 25 days of battery life. While that drops down to 20 hours if you’ve got GPS turned on, it could still be the company's secret weapon to best its competition. That's a lot longer than similarly priced GPS watches; for instance, the Garmin Forerunner 35 will only last up to 13 hours with continuous GPS.
The Ironman R300 is it’s water-resistant to 30 meters, and looks pretty durable overall. We'll need to get hands-on with it to find out for sure, though.
We think the best sports watch overall is the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music, but its $350 cost is definitely a turn off. The Ironman R300 doesn't seem like it'll have as many features packed into its small display, but for $120 it certainly has our attention.
