Coros has made a name for itself among endurance athletes and adventurers with watches that emphasize long battery life, accurate GPS, and a no-nonsense interface. Last year the brand released its first bar-mounted cycling GPS unit, the Dura, and today the outdoors-focused Coros Nomad is here with a unique feature that should help it stand out from the crowd.
Coros Nomad key specs
- Weight: 61.3g
- Price: $349
- Buy from Coros
Form factor
The Coros Nomad sports a chunky, plasticky look and tips the scales 61.3g. I found that it’s lightweight and comfortable enough for 24/7 wear, though it did limit my wrist movement slightly. Those with smaller wrists will certainly want to try the watch on before purchasing.
Coros ships the Nomad without the band attached, so you can configure it to be worn on your left or right wrist. The tiny spring-loaded attachment pins are finicky, and I had a hard time getting the band to stay in place at first. After watching a video online, I was finally able to get both ends of the band attached to the watch, and it’s stayed secure ever since.
Coros gives the Nomad a 5 ATM waterproof rating, which is good for swimming, showering, and heavy rain exposure. I’ve worn it swimming and in the shower without any issues, and it seems robust enough for most outdoor adventures. The watch is paired with a proprietary USB charging adapter that conveniently comes with a keychain holder—helpful for those of us who travel and/or are prone to misplacing charging cables. Because the Nomad rarely needs to be charged, it can be easy to forget where you put the charger!
“Adventure Journal” and voice pins
The Nomad is the first Coros watch targeted specifically at the “adventure” market. The brand’s existing Pace and Apex watch lines are targeted more toward runners, while the Vertix series is billed as a watch for multi-day expeditions. Coros designed the Nomad for slightly more casual outdoor pursuits, like mountain biking, and they note it’s “COROS’ first watch for anglers” with eight (!) different fishing data modes.
One unique feature included with the Nomad is what Coros refers to in press materials as the “Adventure Journal,” a name that is not to be confused with the publication of the same title. Within the Coros app, you can add photos and videos to your activities, and share the activity with friends and family. If this sounds like Strava, or Ride With GPS, that’s because it’s pretty much the same thing.
What Coros adds to the idea of sharing your adventures online is the ability to record voice memos in the field, directly on the watch. With a quick press, you can record a voice note, which the Coros app later transcribes to text, and the watch automatically creates a waypoint where you made the recording. The audio quality is just OK—you won’t be recording a podcast on the trail—but for quick notes, reminders, and observations, it’s a genuinely useful addition that I haven’t seen from other watches or mapping services.
Voice memos are geo-tagged so you can use this feature to mark a point of interest quickly. For example, I added a marker at home by creating a voice pin and saying “my house.” After syncing my watch with the free Coros app, it added a pin and labeled it “house” using speech-to-text. I can also listen to the actual recording of my voice within the app, and read a transcription of the memo as well.
The microphone is a great addition, but it also raises the question: when will a GPS watch manufacturer finally include a camera? Even $50 kids’ smartwatches have them, and the ability to snap a quick reference photo in the field would be far more valuable than recording audio alone. Though I usually have my smartphone with me for taking photos while biking, I don’t take my phone trail running, and there are many times I would have loved to have even a low-quality camera with me. Still, Coros deserves credit for making it easy to add audio to activity maps, in addition to photos and videos captured with another device.
Coros continues to update their activity sharing features, with plans to add a 3D-flyover in the future. One concern I have is that unlike Strava, there’s no way to hide your start and/or end location, which is a helpful privacy feature for shared activities when you begin your adventures from home.
Like previous Coros devices, the Nomad can be paired with a GoPro or Insta360 action camera so you can use the watch as a remote to start/stop filming.
Display and navigation
The Nomad features a 1.3-inch (33mm) Memory-in-Pixel touch screen with 260×260 pixel resolution. While it isn’t as sharp or vibrant as the AMOLED display on Garmin’s Forerunner 970, it’s still plainly visible in all lighting conditions. The display is a little blocky and muted, and small map details like street names require squinting, but the trade-off is excellent visibility outdoors and a long battery life.
I’ve found touch screens to be finicky on the trail, but the Coros Nomad actually does a pretty good job distinguishing between drops of sweat and your finger. The watch also features a smart lock function that ignores accidental button presses and screen input while in certain modes. The combination of a touchscreen and a rotating crown makes it easy to move through menus, zoom into maps, and pan across the display without frustration. The mapping itself is responsive, and users can load GPX files to follow pre-planned routes. For riders who like to explore unfamiliar trails, this is a must-have feature that could even take the place of a bar-mounted unit for many rides.
GPS accuracy and battery life
Like other Coros models, the Nomad emphasizes endurance. Battery life is rated at up to 22 days of daily use on a single charge. I was able to get 22 days between charges wearing the watch 24/7 and tracking seven different outdoor activities during that time. That’s substantially more than most smartwatches, though it’s less than Coros’ flagship watch, the Vertix, which claims at least double the battery life.
During testing, the GPS proved to be pretty accurate, recording 1.03 miles on a measured 1-mile track run. In the map image above, the green line shows what the Coros Nomad recorded, while the blue line shows data from the Garmin Forerunner 970. While the Nomad line might not look as tight, the Garmin has a feature that detects track workouts and adjusts accordingly. What’s impressive is that the Coros was on my right arm, and I was running counterclockwise, which you can see pretty clearly based on the positioning of the lines.
Dual-frequency satellite support further enhances reliability in challenging environments like forests or canyons. On a 16-mile trail ride, the Coros was within 0.05 miles (0.3%) of my Garmin Edge MTB bar-mounted GPS, and the ~1,400ft elevation gain/loss was within about 30 feet between the two devices.
Training and health features
The Nomad includes a full suite of health and training metrics. An ECG function is provided in addition to standard heart rate monitoring, and the watch offers training status and readiness metrics similar to those found on Garmin devices. Sleep tracking results were consistent with my Garmin Forerunner, and the HRV metrics appear to be directionally in line as well. For those who rely on data to guide recovery and training load, the Nomad provides enough detail to be useful without overwhelming the user.
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Beyond GPS and training metrics, the Nomad includes standard smartwatch features like weather updates, music (when paired with wireless headphones), smartphone notifications, and even fishing-specific features. In fact, the watch can track eight different types of fishing—a somewhat quirky addition, but one that could appeal to anglers who want to log time on the water as carefully as mountain bikers do on the trail.
Price and value
At $349 MSRP, the Coros Nomad is priced the same as the Pace Pro, and $50 more than the Garmin Instinct E. Compared to the Instinct E, the Nomad claims better battery life plus it adds a higher-resolution color screen and a microphone to record voice pins.
Pros and cons of Coros Nomad
Pros
- Rugged form factor and great battery life
- Easy to navigate menus and to pan/zoom the map
- Voice pins to add points of interest
Cons
- Limited screen resolution makes some details hard to see at a glance
- Only one size that could be too big for smaller wrists
Bottom line
The Coros Nomad is a compelling choice for mountain bikers and outdoor adventurers who want a reliable GPS watch with long battery life and some genuinely novel features. It sits comfortably between Coros’s running-focused Pace/Apex models and the expedition-ready Vertix series, offering a practical balance of performance, durability, and price. For riders who prioritize battery life and ease of use over flashy displays, the Nomad is worth a close look.
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