TomTom has been in the GPS business for a long time. Much like Garmin, the company has been using its expertise in location technology to sell fitness trackers for the past couple of years. One of its newest devices, the Spark 3, comes in four different models ranging from basic GPS tracking to a mega-combination of GPS, heart rate, onboard storage, and included wireless headphones. Priced from $130 to $250, the Spark 3 is TomTom's attempt to satisfy two needs that one person might have: daily activity tracking and serious GPS monitoring that lets you leave your smartphone at home.

Design: A touchpad where a touchscreen should be

Most of TomTom's devices are cut from the same cloth, and the Spark 3 is no different. The module is a rounded square that holds the 0.87 x 0.98-inch display in the middle of a thick bezel. Directly below the module is another, smaller rounded square that you tap to navigate the display. This threw me off at first—not because I didn't understand the concept, but because I had no idea where on the small square to press to move around on the display.

Through trial and error, I figured out that pressing the top-middle part brings you to the headphone search page, the left side brings up your daily activity stats, the bottom-middle goes to settings, and the right side enters tracking mode. Even after I understood the Spark 3's layout, pressing the smaller square was difficult, and I sometimes felt like I was pushing the module out of the band. I would have preferred a touchscreen, and hopefully one day TomTom will include that in an updated device.

The model I tested has a built-in heart rate monitor on the underside and 3GB of local storage for holding music, and it came with TomTom-branded wireless headphones. TomTom makes different models of the Spark 3 to suit different needs: the $129 version is just a GPS watch, the $169 model has extra local storage and included headphones, the $189 version includes an optical heart rate monitor, and my $249 model has GPS, music storage, and onboard heart rate. The Spark 3 isn't the only fitness tracker TomTom makes, so I'm impressed that the company provides so many options for this one tracker when it also sells so many other devices.

Aside from the internal differences, all the TomTom Spark 3s have the same look and the same removable strap made from thick silicone. The watchband-style closure has an extra spoke at the end of the buckle that provides a more secure fit. While the bulkiness and the plainness of the Spark 3 deters me from wearing it all day, that band makes it secure and comfortable during workouts. The Spark 3 is also waterproof up to 130 feet, so you can swim with it.

















Features: a trusty indoor and outdoor workout companion

TomTom promotes the Spark 3 as a truly phone-free GPS watch. You can store music on it, but it's also a daily activity tracker that monitors steps, distance, calories, and sleep on a regular basis. The Spark 3 lets you track running, cycling (indoor and outdoor), treadmill runs, swimming, and gym routines. It also has an option for tracking "freestyle" workouts (basically a miscellaneous equivalent category) as well as a stopwatch category. While it won't track as many activities as the Apple Watch Series 2, the Spark 3 encompasses most of the activities you'd do both at a gym or outside on a trail.

The Spark 3 strips down the experience of tracking an activity. Once you choose which activity you want to track, the display tells you to wait for a few seconds while the heart rate monitor takes your pulse (and while the GPS finds your location, if it's an outdoor activity). The device then vibrates, and you can press right of the touchpad to begin the timer. One piece of data fills most of the display, be it average pace, distance, or current heart rate. You can cycle through all of the available options by pressing up or down on the touchpad. Although two small boxes at the bottom of the display show distance and calories burned, I liked the simplicity of having just one piece of data available for me to glance at during my workout.

What's even better is that the Spark 3 was always on-point calculating my distance traveled during a run, either outdoors or on the treadmill. It was always within .05-miles of what my treadmills calculated and what the Apple Watch Series 2 calculated. A new feature that incorporates the GPS lets you download GPX files of running routes from the Internet and apps like MapMyRun or Strava and upload them to the watch. Similarly to uploading music, you'll need to connect the Spark 3 to your computer and the MySport desktop app to do this. Once uploaded, you can choose a route in the "trails" section of the watch, and the Spark 3 will map your progress throughout that route.

The one gripe I had with the Spark 3's GPS is that you have to wait for it to find your location before you can officially start tracking an activity. On average, that took about 30 seconds to complete. It's not terrible, but I prefer a device like Garmin's $250 Vivoactive HR that lets you start a workout while its GPS searches for you.

In contrast to GPS data, heart rate measurements were a little off sometimes. At its worst, the Spark 3 was up to 20 bpm off the Series 2's reading. But that didn't happen very often. The Spark 3 fell into the trap that most devices do, which is being slow to catch up to the high beats per minute of your actual pulse. When leveled out, the Spark 3's monitor was within 5 bpm of the Series 2.

One minor annoyance occurs after you finish a workout: the Spark 3 just takes you back to the clock screen. It doesn't automatically show you a summary of your workout stats, but you can still see that on the watch itself. You can go back into tracking mode, select the activity you just completed, and then press up on the touchpad to reveal your most recently recorded sessions of that exercise. There you can select individual recordings and see stats including duration, distance, average heart rate, and calories burned.

Also on the tracking page, you can press down to set preferences for the session you're about to complete. For example, you can select a playlist stored on the watch for it to automatically play on your earbuds, and you can select a training mode that will judge your performance based on things like heart rate zones, a desired distance to complete, or timing per mile. There are plenty of ways to create customized goals for each session you record with the Spark 3, but you have to search and press on the touchpad to find them.

My model of the Spark 3 came with wireless headphones, and you may want to spring for models that include them if you plan on running phone-free. TomTom's headphones pair easily with the Spark 3 (pressing up from the clock screen automatically makes the device look for available Bluetooth headsets), and the sound quality is decent for pack-in earbuds (fairly even sound, yet muddy bass). You can pair third-party headphones to the Spark 3, but the list of compatible headphones is currently tiny. Getting the bundle of the Spark 3 and the earbuds saves you money in the long run and removes the hassle of pairing different headphones.

A big difference between the Spark 3 and trackers like the Garmin Vivoactive HR and the $250 Fitbit Surge is that it cannot receive smartphone notifications. Garmin's device is the most comprehensive of the three since it can receive all smartphone alerts including call, text, alarm, and social media notifications; the Surge only receives call and text alerts. Considering most fitness trackers, even ones cheaper and less advanced than the Spark 3, get some smartphone alerts, the lack of this feature is glaring. If you wear a Spark 3 all day, you'll just be wearing a bulky, unattractive watch replacement with no extra perks.

A note about battery life: TomTom estimates the Spark 3 can last up to three weeks when it's only tracking daily activities and workouts (that includes heart rate while working out). With the GPS on, you'll get about 11 hours of life. With GPS and music, you'll get five hours. That puts the Spark 3 well above the competition, considering most Fitbit devices only last about a week on a single charge. After wearing the Spark 3 day and night for nearly two weeks, I only had to charge it once when I saw the battery indicator getting a little low.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino