Best Triathlon Watches for 2025
The best triathlon watches allow you to track your swim, ride, and run and easily transition between the three during a race. This is a great tool for tracking your training and monitoring your fitness.
The best smartwatches have become more sophisticated than ever. Not only do they now give you more accurate tracking, with many adopting multiple GPS satellite constellations and offering multi-band GPS, but fitness tracking tech has increased.
Best Triathlon Watches for 2025
1. Coros Pace 3
Over the last 12 months, the Corus Pace 3 has emerged as one of my favorite multi-sport smartwatches. It ticks all of the boxes: triple-related functions—open water swimming, running with power on the wrist, triathlon mode—as well as sleep tracking, onboard music, touchscreen, super accurate GPS/barometric altimeter, and excellent battery life. It’s also much lower than its competition in terms of price.
If there’s been any downside with the Pace 3, it’s that there’s not a ton of use for the touchscreen (which likely pushed the price over $200), given that there’s no mapping – something that’s fair to be without any watch under $400.
Otherwise, I liked the screen, the light weight, and the lack of sports performance mentioned above, even if it does venture a tiny bit into the lifestyle realm.
It’s a sports watch – or rather a decidedly triathlete-friendly sports watch – and for the price, it doesn’t need to be anything else.
2. Suunto Race S
The Suunto Race S has some big shoes to fill: Coming off the back of my favorite bang-for-your-book smartwatch in recent history, Suunto Race, the Finnish brand put the Race on a diet, reducing the overall footprint and weight and managing to lower the price to $100.
The result is the Res S—an incredible choice for triathletes looking for good GPS accuracy, an AMOLED touchscreen, and great offline mapping.
The only downside to this otherwise smartwatch unicorn? By shedding $100 and some weight/footprint, the Race S took a big hit in its battery life—the Race S had 12-20 days of real-world battery life, while the Race S had less than half that.
And while I really appreciate the smaller screen when it comes to taking up space on my wrist, that AMOLED touchscreen is most useful (really) when it comes to mapping and with a very small screen, that definitely hinders performance.
Still, finding a great tri-ready smartwatch with an AMOLED touchscreen and offline mapping is nearly impossible under $400, so if that’s your price range, you’re going to have to find your watch.
And if you love everything about the Race, but admittedly don’t understand wearing a clunky and sporty watch, the Race S is an aesthetically pleasing option.
3. Polar Grit X2 Pro
Of the smartwatches I’ve reviewed this year, the Polar Grit X2 Pro is one of the most surprising. When you look at its features, functions, and tech details, it’s not a bad watch: the Grit X2 Pro has great navigation (including offline mapping and powerful GPS), a host of sport modes and functions, and best-in-class heart rate sensors and physio data tracking. It’s also a nice watch that’s super rugged and well made.
In a vacuum that makes the Grit X2 Pro a good watch, but sadly this smartwatch exists in a busy place at a super-competitive price point.
First, the most obvious: Polar hasn’t quite cracked the code on battery life yet, and with an advertised 10 days of smartwatch usage (43 hours of GPS), and real-life capacity that with exercise and all-day wear a watch that looks more like 5-6 a day Under $300.
Polar hasn’t even smoothed out the software/hardware kinks yet that make their touchscreens incredibly slow and unpredictable.
Also, unlike the Vintage V3, the Great X2 Pro is pretty heavy and bulky on your wrist (although for some that might be a selling point…).
4. Apple Watch Ultra 2
I was so happy when Apple finally released the first version of the Ultra—a watch that can complete Iron Man without a charge.
Not only was this an innovative idea, but it also meant that triathletes could train with an Apple Watch for the first time without having to worry about dying on a long ride day.
This latest update to the Apple Ultra 2 includes a black case option, which helps the otherwise large-looking device look slimmer on your wrist, and it also looks a bit more like Apple Series watches – for better or worse.
Also, since Ultra 2’s original release last fall, the new version of the Watch iOS adds more training load insights, sleep apnea notifications, and more use for the “revolutionary” (irony intended) action button can (yes, it hurts) yours is a button. Before you run this program, do a few things; Now it does so much more.
To be fair to Apple though, you can now use it to switch between multi-sport workouts, which is a big nod to triathletes.
Otherwise, the black Ultra 2 is effectively the same as the one released last year (including the aforementioned software update, of course), and not entirely different from the original Ultra, which you can now get for about half the price of the Ultra 2 if you look.
The latest software updates are truly a boon for triathletes, but if you’ve got a silver Ultra 2 or an older Ultra, it’s a tough sell to get a new one.
For long-course triathletes who spend many hours in long training sessions, the Phoenix 7 Pro Sapphire Solar is a great fit.
Its self-charging solar feature is unlike anything else, and you can easily go all day while using the watch’s many features – you won’t find that in any competitors. There is also a flashlight function.
Along with the usual wireless connectivity capabilities, the watch also includes optical heart rate measurement and pulse oximetry.
Designed for triathletes looking to take their long rides to the next level, look no further than the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Sapphire Solar.
5. Apple Watch Ultra
With the launch of the Apple Watch Ultra, the tech behemoth hopes to expand into the sports market. But is the product good enough to do so.
You can read our full Apple Watch Ultra review for the detailed test, but in short, it looks like a very appealing proposition.
And this is especially the case when what you want is a full-fledged smartwatch as well as a multi-sport proposition.
The 50mm screen is a joy to use while swimming, biking and running, and it’s wrapped in a titanium body.
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It’s operated by the touchscreen and dials and buttons on the right side of the watch, while on the left you’ll find the ‘Action’ button and speaker.
Battery life is shorter than most other watches on this list, with 36hrs of daily use. In its ‘Ultra’ variant, the Apple Watch is now able to offer up to 20hrs in GPS mode, seemingly making it Ironman friendly.
Three special features include a convenient autotransition function as well as several run metrics.
The watch also has pool and open water modes, but no power meter connectivity for cycling, nor offline mapping or Nav.
6. Garmin Forerunner 965
The Forerunner 965 is at the top of Garmin’s Forerunner range and features a bright display and an AMOLED screen for touchscreen interactivity that makes the transition really easy, switching between sports with a single touch. Despite this, it still manages 31 hours of GPS tracking.
Garmin includes loads of health data, from training readiness scores and recommended workouts to reach your goals, to how well you slept, with built-in HRM and Plus Ox for 24/7 monitoring and HRV analysis.
On-board turn-by-turn directions, round-trip routing and pace-pro race strategies, as well as color maps, as well as on-the-fly clampro climbing profiles.
You can also play tracks off the watch as you train and use Garmin Pay to speed up payments, leaving your card or cash at home.
7. Suunto Vertical Titanium
The Suunto vertical builds on Suuntos robust, military-grade smartwatch performance, adding dual-band GNSS tracking and solar charging for the titanium models, allowing it to offer a claimed 85-hour battery life with a 2-S-Clock of full GPS tracking offers with The lowest power tour mode goes a year between charges.
There’s WiFi, full offline mapping, HRM, weather, flashlight and all the fitness and health monitoring you’d expect from a premium smartwatch.
The color touchscreen has increased in size by 1.4 inches and the resolution has increased to 280x280, although the response time isn’t as fast as some competitors.
The clock also looks too big. Sonto says its manufacture is 100% carbon-compensated.
8. Wahoo Elemnt Rival
The Wahoo Elemnt Rival Multisport GPS watch’s dazzling feature is the multi-port handoff feature that allows you to seamlessly transition from swimming to cycling to running. No other watch in the triathlon space has this capability.
This watch automatically detects when you’re transitioning to a new activity and even sends your data to a nearby device, such as the Wahoo Elemnt Room. In terms of convenience, this watch is arguably the best watch for triathletes.
Unfortunately, the multi-sport hand-off is the only standout feature of this watch. The rest is pretty average for this price point.
And compared to some of the cheaper watches later on this list, you might want some more features for this price.
The watch’s tri-specific features aside, there’s a range of pre-loaded activity profiles to choose from. The watch is stylish and we found the soft strap very comfortable for a long time.
You can control a music playlist from the watch, but you have to make the track selection on your mobile.
9.Garmin Forerunner 255
The Forerunner 255 does everything a triathlete needs, without the bells and whistles, although you can opt for a version with onboard music.
There are also standard 10mm and smaller 41mm diameter formats to suit your wrist size and range of color options.
The display is a non-touchscreen color memory in a pixel screen with 260 x 260 pixels. You can choose which GPS network to use, resulting in tracking for a claimed period of between 16 hours with maximum accuracy with all constellations and multi-band GPS and 30 hours if you use just single-band GPS GNSS.
4GB of onboard memory isn’t the most spacious (the Forerunner 965 boasts 32GB), but it’s enough to store 500 songs in the version with music.
There’s also optical HRM and Plus Aux sensors, and you get Garmin Fitness and Activity Tracking and a full suite of Garmin Coach functionality.
10. Garmin Fenix 7
The Garmin Fenix 7 excels in durability and battery life, ideal for rugged use and extended training sessions. Its Power Glass technology extends battery life and the new endurance feature helps monitor energy levels during intense activities.
Although it’s a bit bulky, its sturdy construction and innovative features make it perfect for triathletes who need a tough and reliable watch.
11. Polar Vintage V2
The Polar Vantage V2 is ideal for triathletes focused on recovery and performance optimization. This comprehensive training facilitates and offers recovery insights, essential for peak performance.
Although its design is efficient and lightweight, it may not appeal to those seeking a more stylish option. Overall, the Vantage V2 provides good value with its advanced tracking and recovery capabilities.
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