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The feature I love most on the Coros Pace 4 right now is one that I didn’t even notice at first. I knew that it had an extra button compared to the Pace 3, and I knew that I could use it to drop “voice pins” when I was out on my trail runs. I’m always fumbling with buttons to mark water taps or interesting things I find in the woods, so this seemed useful—but once I realized I could also use the feature to record end-of-workout notes, I suddenly became the kind of person who keeps end-of-workout notes.
On the Pace 4, when a workout is over—any workout, be it a trail run or a strength session—you have the option to rate how hard it was. And once you do that, you get an option to record a 60-second voice note with anything you’d like to say about your training. A Coros rep told me in a briefing that it’s meant to help athletes add notes to their training log, since we don’t all have time to remember to come back and add those notes in text.
To be honest, I didn’t realize you could already add notes to training sessions after the fact. But once I knew about this voice feature, I found myself using it all the time. Heck, I started to look forward to that prompt. At first I just logged a few words about how the workout felt, but then I realized I could also use it to bridge the gap between my paper and digital records.
When I do a strength workout, I jot down my sets, reps, and weights in a notebook. Even though I have tons of fitness apps at my disposal, it’s a lot easier to write down “hang power snatch plus snatch” than it is to search through a database of exercises and then try to figure out how to log two exercises in the same rep. (‘ve yet to encounter a strength app that does this well.) It’s easier to have everything on paper.
So now, when my workout ends, I read the highlights of my training log into the voice note. This way, when I look back at the workout on my phone, I have the data I need, plus any little notes I thought to add about my mindset that day, or the intensity, or any modifications I made in the moment.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
The Coros app transcribes the note, so I can skim it as text when I look at my workout later. But the audio file is right there, should I want to listen to it to verify what I said. It’s also kind of a touching slice of life—I can hear my daughter interrupt me in one note, with my “wait sweetie” dutifully transcribed in the middle of a sentence. On another workout, I can hear myself laughing a bit as I describe getting caught by surprise by a muddy trail section.
It’s safe to say I wouldn’t have returned to the app to add a text note about these things, but I do really enjoy being prompted to add them with my voice. Coros has this feature on the Pace 4, Apex 4, and Nomad watches. Amazfit has a similar feature on the T-Rex 3 and T-Rex 3 Pro. Garmin has a voice note feature on newer Forerunner and Fenix watches, but it’s a bit clunkier and doesn’t prompt you at the end of the workout like Coros does. Still, any of them can be a useful addition to your workout routine.
