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TomTom Deepens Fitness Commitment with New Line of Wearable Devices

Pretty much any decent fitness tracker you buy these days has the ability to track stats such as distance, speed, calories, or in some cases even your location if there is Global Positioning System built into it. Changes in body composition over a period of time illustrates real progress towards users’ fitness goals, in a way that exclusively tracking steps or stairs never could. It has most of the things you’d expect from a fitness tracker – it has a touchscreen display, and it can calculate heart rate, track sleep, count steps, and estimate the calories you’ve burned.

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TomTom Touch is a new slim, stylish and easy to use fitness tracker that not only tracks efforts such as steps and calories burned, but also lets the user see the effect of these efforts on their body. Touch is meant to be worn 24/7 and has all the features you expect from a fitness tracker such as steps, sleep, heart-rate monitoring, calories burned, and it has modes for running, cycling, or gym. Using something called Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), the TomTom Touch can tell you your body fat percentage and muscle mass percentage.

The Touch has a similar design to the Gear Fit and a similar shape to the Fitbit Alta with the tracker having a small screen to notify you of how many steps you’ve done and other important data, like the time and smartphone notifications. When using the music player, GPS, and the heart rate monitor, the watch will last about 5 hours, which is less than other GPS watches in this price range, but understandable given the additional power requirements.

TomTom says its Touch is created to be worn 24-7 and includes everything you’d expect from the best fitness trackers available today. Besides integrated music playing, it offers 24-hour battery life, a barometer that gauges elevation gain or loss, and a 3D distance measurer (altitude, latitude and longitude).

The TomTom Spark (and the Runner sister product) have expanded their skills with a new route discovery feature. Additionally, Route Exploration will let you upload routes to the watch, so you can try out a new path someplace you’ve never run before. Every time a runner hits the pavement, they’ll see their Global Positioning System trace the route on the monochrome display, so they can find their way back to the route’s start. The Spark 3 Cardio + Music and Runner 3 Cardio + Music will launched in October for 249 euros.

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The Spark 3, which is known internationally as the Runner 3, includes sport profiles for running (indoor/outdoor), biking (indoor/outdoor), swimming, gym workouts and freestyle workouts. I tried the Spark 3 for a little while, but I didn’t notice many differences between it and the previous TomTom Spark Cardio + Music. Battery life for the TomTom Touch is estimated at five days, which is respectable. And, lastly, the Adventurer is water resistant up to 130 feet.

Sarah Tew  CNET