TomTom launched its Spark fitness watch range at just last month IFA 2015, and today launched the range locally at an event hosted by Australian athlete and TomTom ambassador Matt Shirvington with an appearance from water skiier and boxer, Lauryn Eagle.
TomTom’s big push with the Spark is music, with 3GB (~500 songs) of storage available in the Music variants of the watch to store your workout tracks and playing them on Bluetooth headsets. Both Matt and Lauryn explained that the Spark was an invaluable companion for their somewhat solitary workouts and training in their respective sports, as well as its fitness tracking capabilities.
Shirvington joked that the Spark has become his best friend to a few giggles from the gathered press, but he’s quite serious – TomTom previously explained to us that music elevates your exercise, and its addition to your workout can help motivate and encourage you through a slump.
The company’s Asia-Pacific Vice-President Chris Kearney was on hand to talk about to TomTom’s commitment to sports, going back a few years now with a number of fitness watches. The Spark is the latest to combine the company’s well-known GPS prowess with sensors to track a number of different workout types like running, cycling, swimming, treadmill, gym, and indoor cycling. If you’re doing something else, you can activate Freestyle mode to track the workout. It’ll also track your steps, distance, active minutes and calories burned as well as sleep duration, 24/7 while worn.
Battery-wise, TomTom’s eager to point out that the watch will last around a month on a charge if all you’re doing is step counting. Using other features like GPS and Bluetooth will of course drain that battery faster, but it’ll still outlast most Bluetooth headsets.
The Spark is being offered in a number of SKUs that can contain Cardio (heart rate monitoring), Music (3GB storage, with Running Trax supplied by Ministry of Sound included) and a set of Bluetooth headphones if you don’t already have one.
- Spark GPS Fitness Watch: $229
- Spark Cardio GPS Fitness Watch: $299
- Spark Music GPS Fitness Watch: $299
- Spark Music GPS Fitness Watch with Bluetooth headphones: $349
- Spark Cardio + Music GPS Fitness Watch: $349
- Spark Cardio + Music GPS Fitness Watch with Bluetooth headphones: $399
No, this is not Android Wear. In fact it doesn’t have smart notifications at all. None, not even calls or text. If it did, I was going to consider getting one too. Sick of the Fitbit Surge.
I was thinking of buying a Surge. What, may I ask, is so annoying about the Surge? Would you consider a Sony SmartWatch 3?
Hi TheCatMan. The thing that’s driving me crazy about the Surge is that after the latest firmware updates the notifications completely broke down. Basically, I used to get call and text notifications on the Surge (albeit few seconds delayed) but after the update they stopped. I had to spend a week back and forth with Fitbit trying to sleve the issue and finally they updated their Android app and added further notifications (Whatsapp, Skype etc). But now there is a constant notification banner in the notification shade, which is very annoying. In comparison, my wife’s Garmin Vivosmart has always been… Read more »
Thanks for the information. Your critique is enough for me not to consider the Surge. I will also look at the new Garmin. One thing I will tell you though, do not purchase the Sony Smartwatch 3. Cheap, yes but missing a lot features such as HR monitoring, sleep monitoring and the glass cannot possibly be Gorilla Glass 3 as advertised. I mowed the lawn on the weekend, a small piece of SOIL flicked up and hit the watch. Now I have a small scratch on it. Would have accepted if a stone had hit it but soil? Not happy… Read more »
Thanks TheCatMan, I’ll keep that in mind. Honestly, since I really want the 24/7 HR monitoring on any device I’m looking for none of the smart watches were on my radar. I don’t know if any of them actually do that. Even if they did, the already short battery lives would be even worse (the best of the smart watches with a proper LCD/OLED screen goes for about 2 days max as far as I can see). The Garmin Forerunner 235 claims 10-12 days depending on what you do, so I’m thinking I might be able to get about 7… Read more »
I read in another blog, that a software update will allow it to receive sms and call notifications… However, I´m interested in its ability to store music, sometimes I just carry a phone for the music when I´m wearing a GPS watch.
Okay I think I’m sold on this. But as others are also asking, where can I buy?
OK, this might be the running watch I’ve been waiting for. Where can we buy it? TomTom still lists it as available soon on their website with no indication of price.
Is it an android wear device?
According to the article, they claim a month long battery life if it’s only used for step counting. I would say it most likely isn’t running Android Wear.
The 1 month battery life made me wonder, too, if it’s Android Wear.