u/000arabella

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So I am a rower in my second season and I am looking for a good watch to track my workouts, sleep, recovery, and heartrate. from what i can tell, the garmin forerunner 70 seems to match all my needs and isn't too extortionately priced (I could afford it with a bit of saving). I'm not too fussed about looks or GarminPay, but the one thing putting me off buying the FR70 is the fact that I haven't seen many non-runners talk about it.

I would use it to track my erg (indoor rowing machine) workouts, my outdoor/indoor cycling, my weightlifting, some core workouts (if it can do that), my sleep (as this is something I have struggled with for a while), my water rowing training and races, my recovery, and only occasionally, some runs. I understand that this is a watch designed for runners, but all its features seem to fit perfectly to what I need, so are there any drawbacks for non-runners?

I've also heard a lot online about people falling for the garmin and running more because of it, and obviously as an athlete having the motivation to run more is always nice, so any thoughts on that?

But, on the flip side I've heard of it being really bad with apple phones and notifications. Having a watch ping at me every 2 seconds sounds like a living hell to me, so is there a way to turn those off, and how good/bad are garmin watches with apple phones anyways?

The reason I'm turning to garmin is because I really prioritise a long battery life, and I've heard that apple watches aren't the greatest with that, and so I don't want to end up losing lots of sleep data because I'm charging the watch overnight, but if anyone does have both, how does the apple watch compare and is it really that bad, and do you think it would align with my priorities?

I really want a sport-focused watch and other womens watches (such as the vivoactive/vivomove, lily 2, and venu) seem to be less sport focused and more like a regular smartwatch, and in my opinion the FR70 is the perfect balance of sport-focused and not too decked out with the gadgets and gizmos, but if anyone has any suggestions or other watch models/brands to turn to that would be great!