Garmin Forerunner 920XT boasts triathlon training and smartwatch skills

The long awaited follow up to the popular Garmin Forerunner 910XT has gone live, with the imaginatively named Garmin Forerunner 920XT hitting the GPS giant's online store.

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Packing in a wealth of triathlon training as you'd expect, the Forerunner 920XT also taps one foot on the smartwatch party dance-floor by offering smartphone notifications such as incoming call alerts, text messages, emails and calendar reminders up on its big colour screen.

That screen, a far-cry from the monochrome affair of the three year-old 910XT, is a 1.36-inch 205 x 148 colour display.

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Blending in features from its Vivofit and Vivosmart devices, the Forerunner 920XT also offers lifestyle tracking functions such as calorie counting, step recording and sleep monitoring; with the usual goal and inactivity alerts on board as well.

Triathlon king

But it's the training tech that most 920XT wanters will be interested in and they're not likely to be disappointed. On the running front you'll get the high-quality running dynamics that you've come to expect from a flagship Garmin wearable including cadence, vertical oscillation and ground contact time. Check out our guide to GPS watch jargon if you're not sure what these mean.

Using the same tech found in the Forerunner 620 and the Fenix 2, the running aspects extend to a metronome with alerts for your cadence training, a race predictor built from the VO2 max, and a recovery advisor which will stop you going out and running when you really should be resting.

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In the water you can pre-program drills and track distance, pace, stroke count, stroke rate and your SWOLF score and there are rest and distance alerts on offer too.

On the bike you can make use of the built-in altimeter for precise ascent, descent and gradient data during your cycles and, this being a Garmin device, it will of course play nicely with existing bike accessories such as the Vector ANT+ power meters; so you really can expect a hugely in-depth set of results.

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On that note it also, as you'd expect, works in tandem with Garmin's VIRB action camera range and the excellent heart-rate monitors the company already offers.

There's also a nifty real-time reporter on the app, letting friends and family track your location when you're training or taking part in a race.

Priced at £389.99 (or £419.99 with the heart rate monitor), the Garmin Forerunner 920XT is available to order online now.

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