u/MiddleForeign

I’ve been playing padel for about a year. At first, I was using the rackets available at the club and I didn’t really have a problem with any of them.
Later, I decided to buy my own racket and chose the Siux Diablo Go 3. From the very first moment, it felt really bad to me, but I decided to give it some time and try to get used to it.

Now, several months later, I’ve concluded that it’s not a matter of time — this racket simply doesn’t suit me. It feels “hollow.”

In general, I play on the right side and I’m quite a defensive player. I try to play slowly, aim for angles, and patiently wait for my opponent’s mistake. With my current racket, I feel like I can’t aim accurately. I also feel that when I block shots, the racket “absorbs” the power instead of returning it.

In the meantime I tried my friend's siux fenix pro 5 and it felt really good.

I started thinking that what I really need is a “hard” and "stiff" racket something that feels like wood. For days now, I’ve been obsessively researching rackets, and I came to the conclusion that hard foam + carbon = hard/stiff racket. I’m close to choosing the Siux Electra ST4 Pro, which has hard foam and 15K carbon.

But before buying it, I went on Reddit to read reviews from other players, and many people say it’s “not very hard” and that it has a “trampoline effect.” That brought me back to square one, because I thought a racket with hard EVA and 15K carbon would have the exact opposite characteristics. Now I don’t know what to choose.

I was also considering the Head Radical Pro (control foam + 3K carbon) or the Head Radical Motion (same materials). Then I watched a video review where the reviewer described it as “soft,” which again makes no sense to me. I’m going crazy.

I know the Babolat Viper series is considered stiff everyone seems to agree on that but they’re extremely expensive compared to most rackets where I live.

Do you have any suggestions for solving my problem?

I have a coros pace 4. On my touchscreen settings I have only two options

A) always on

B) navigation only

I want my touchscreen to be off when I am inside an active training (when running etc). In every other case I want the touch screen to be on.

Is there a way to do this on coros pace 4?

If you are a beginner, stop worrying about zones. Just run.

Zone 2 is not magic or mandatory. Running is the real magic.

If you are a beginner, almost any type of running will make you better. Go run however you can. If you feel good, next time run a bit more or a bit faster. If you feel exhausted, next time run less or slower.

That’s it. Consistency matters far more than perfectly staying inside some heart rate zone.

TL;DR: Coros = better battery & more features. Garmin = better UI & overall usability

Recently, I decided that I need to retire my Garmin FR55 because after about 3 years its battery is almost dead. Also, the charger doesn’t connect properly anymore and it’s difficult to charge it.

I’m not a serious runner. I run occasionally, I also play padel, go to the gym, and sometimes swim in a pool. I’d also like to mention that the battery and charger failing after just 3 years is quite disappointing—I would have expected better durability.

Now, let’s talk about my experience with this transition. I’ve had the watch for one month, and during this time I’ve been wearing both watches. I trained and ran a 10km race. Obviously, the Coros Pace 4 is a much more modern watch with an AMOLED touchscreen compared to the MIP display of my old Garmin FR55. You would expect these two watches to be incomparable, which is partly true, but there are some interesting points.

Touchscreen: So far, I feel like the touchscreen hasn’t been useful at all. On the contrary, sometimes things get pressed accidentally, which is annoying. In general, I think some devices don’t need touchscreens, and a watch is one of them. I might disable it completely—the Coros dial is very good for navigation.

AMOLED: Aesthetically, it’s more beautiful than MIP. However, in practice, while running with both watches, I often found myself looking at the Garmin instead of the Coros. The AMOLED turns on when you rotate your wrist, while the MIP is always on. Of course, you can set AMOLED to always-on as well, but at the cost of battery life. A practical difference is that MIP in the dark doesn’t glow much—it’s just enough to read clearly. In sunlight, it’s the opposite: MIP becomes very bright and easy to read under the sun. AMOLED is not bad but it can be slightly too bright on the dark and slightly less readable under the sun.

Battery: The main reason I chose Coros is the battery, and in this area it’s amazing. I charged the watch one night, ran a 10km race, and now two days later I’m still at 88%. To be fair, if battery life is your #1 priority, Coros is on another level.

Running metrics: Coros has some additional metrics like running power, ground time, stride ratio, and stride height. I don’t really know how to use these numbers or what they offer me. Maybe I’m just not experienced enough.
It also has two metrics, efficiency and training load. These sound useful in theory, but I’m not sure how accurate they are. Workouts that completely exhaust me show “low” training load, while some easy sessions show high training load. Is this metric actually accurate? I understand training load is algorithm-based and not just perceived effort, but in my experience it didn’t match how hard sessions felt.

Experience in other sports: In the gym, both Coros and Garmin feel completely useless to me. I haven’t swum with the Coros yet, so I can’t compare there. In padel, both watches struggle to measure my heart rate correctly, and apart from that, they don’t offer anything useful.

Quality of life: There are some small differences between the two companies that, combined, can make a difference. For example, during my 10km race, the Garmin would frequently give me audio updates about my stats (pace, heart rate). Of course, I could check the watch anytime, but the audio feedback was very convenient. Especially in that race, I was wearing long sleeves and it wasn’t easy to look at the watch.

There are also differences in menu design. I think Garmin has done a better job here. It’s easier to find what you’re looking for. Before the race, I tried to find the race predictor in both apps. In Coros, I never found it, even though I checked every menu and submenu. In general, Garmin seems better structured in this area. Even after one month, I still haven’t figured out how to disable the touchscreen ONLY during workouts, or how to answer a call from the watch. Maybe I’m stupid, but something so simple should be obvious enough for anyone to figure out.

Another difference that I find terrible is how notifications are displayed. The Garmin, with its old MIP screen, can display emojis, and if a message is long, I can scroll to read it. The Coros, despite having a much better and larger AMOLED screen, does NOT display emojis—it just says that someone “reacted” to your message. Also, if a message is long, you CANNOT scroll to read it. I find this unacceptable. A modern AMOLED watch that can’t display emojis or scroll messages feels like a downgrade from a 3-year-old Garmin

One small quality-of-life win for Coros is a microphone feature they added. When a workout ends, you press a button, speak, and it gets recorded as a note for that workout. I’m from Greece, and text-to-speech in Greek is usually terrible. However, Coros surprised me with how well it understands Greek—well done.

The watch also has navigation, but I haven’t used it yet. In theory, it has superior GPS technology, but I haven’t noticed any difference between the two watches.

Final Verdict: Before buying the Coros, I was 50-50 between this and the Garmin FR165. Based on my one-month experience, if I had to make the decision again today, I would probably choose the Garmin 165. Coros is packed with more features but Garmin nailed the basics and feels more usable.