TomTom Touch Cardio

Hear about a fitness band from a GPS wizard like TomTom or Garmin and you might expect it to be a massively feature-packed sports device that will fill your wrist and empty your pocket. The TomTom Touch Cardio is much friendlier than that, though.

It’s a simple fitness band, more like a Fitbit than a TomTom runner’s watch. The TomTom Touch Cardio is the simplest entry in the series, shedding the body fat analyzer feature of the TomTom Touch band we reviewed previously.

At $89.99/£79.99/AU$149 it’s the right price for a fitness tracker with a heart rate sensor. It’s not as fun to use day-to-day as a Fitbit, though.

Design

• Smart, simple look
• Water resistant, but not for swimming

Most fitness bands like the TomTom Touch Cardio have a similar make-up. They’re little plastic bricks inside rubbery silicone straps. The question becomes: what’s on that little plastic brick and how big is it?

You can see for yourself in this case. The glossy part of the TomTom Touch Cardio’s front shows you the rough outline of the module part, and the rest is silicone strap.

It’s quite a pure design, and looks better than the model up, which has a silvery pad below the screen to deliver the body-scanning feature missing in this more affordable band. In its place, there’s just a finger-welcoming indent.

You press this to wake the TomTom Touch Cardio up.

As the TomTom Touch Cardio is so slight compared with some more feature-packed watches, it seems unlikely many will have comfort problems here.

However, the module isn’t molded to the shape of your wrist. This actually seems deliberate, though, leaving some much-needed ventilation gaps that are missing in the solid strap.

It uses a familiar plastic-pronged fastener, common in this kind of fitness band.

The TomTom Touch Cardio is water resistant to the IPx7 standard, meaning you can wear it in the shower. We tried this: it survived. However, TomTom is also clear that the band should not be worn while swimming. It can handle sweat, but not the swimming pool or sea.

Screen

• Small but clear monochrome screen
• Slim rectangular shape with great contrast
• Not an always-on display

One of the TomTom Touch Cardio’s neatest features is the way its OLED screen merges into its pure black surround. If it had an LCD screen you’d see a halo of light around the screen’s surface, revealing its dimensions.

Here you have to angle the tracker very carefully to tell the display from its surround. It’s a good look.

This is a monochrome display, with bright white pixels that have no tonal variation. In parts of the TomTom Touch Cardio’s interface you’ll see a patchwork pattern of lit and unlit pixels to simulate grey for a bit of variation, though.

Using OLED gives the TomTom Touch Cardio an important touch of class, but there are some issues with the display. First, this isn’t an always-on screen.

You have to press the little indent below the screen to get the clock to appear. It needs to be a pretty full-fingered press too, and the screen only stays awake for a couple of seconds.

TomTom likely did this deliberately so the Touch Cardio isn’t forever turning on in your pocket, but it does make the band feel a little unresponsive until you realize how picky the pad is.

There’s some of this effect in general touchscreen use too. The whole of the TomTom Touch Cardio’s front is a touch-sensitive surface, not just the circle below the screen.

Up and down swipes cycle through the ‘pages’ of the interface. Try to flick too fast and the TomTom Touch Cardio will miss a gesture. You have to be quite slow and deliberate, which isn’t great if you want to see stats during a workout.

Most of the time the TomTom Touch Cardio feels fine to use, but don’t expect smartphone-like reactions here.

Features and interface

• Simple but heavily paginated software
• One stat per screen layout
• Basic notifications

The TomTom Touch Cardio could be quicker and more reactive but this is typical of very simple fitness tracker software. There’s not much to remember here either, as the TomTom Touch Cardio is operated almost exclusively using up/down swipes and taps on the panel below the screen.

Wake the TomTom Touch Cardio up by pressing the main panel and you’ll see the clock face. A lot of the time, this is all you’ll need. It shows the time and a little graphic depicting how close you are to reaching your daily steps goal.

Above this screen there are two ‘active’ homepages. One starts tracking your heart rate, the other lets you track a specific activity, such as a run.

There’s no GPS in this band so you don’t actually get any metrics not covered by standard daily tracking. However, it does register this tracking period as a separate activity in the TomTom app, making it a good way to keep track of workouts.

Head below the watch face rather than above it and you’ll find a few pages that give you ongoing daily tracking stats. These are your step count, calories burnt, distance traveled, the number of minutes you’ve been active and how long you slept last night.

This covers just about everything you’d want to see from a fitness tracker that doesn’t have more advanced sensors like an altimeter or GPS. But given you can’t actually flick between them that quickly thanks to the slightly slow-moving interface, getting down to the bottom screen feels laborious.

It makes you wonder whether multiple stats could have been crammed into one screen. It’d push the 128 x 32 display to its limits, but as-is we’re frankly put off using about half of the interface screens.

There’s also a drop’s worth of smartwatch-like features to the TomTom Touch Cardio. The display shows an icon when you receive a call or text. However, as this doesn’t stretch to notifications from WhatsApp and other apps, you may not find this particularly useful.

Fitness tracking and performance

• Simple but solid metrics
• Fair HR performance

The TomTom Touch Cardio’s fitness tracking capabilities are limited. All its metrics are based on two sets of data: your heart rate and the number of steps taken.

There’s no altimeter, no GPS, so this isn’t really a tracker for someone training for a marathon. They’d be much better off with a TomTom Runner 3 or TomTom Spark 3, watches with GPS for much more accurate run tracking.

Compared with a phone tracking the same distances traveled from inside your pocket, the TomTom Touch Cardio records roughly 10% more steps. However, it’s within the normal accuracy range for a wrist-worn tracker.

Heart rate (HR) accuracy is reasonably good for a wrist model too. LifeQ makes the modules for these TomTom Touch models and they are very solid for analyzing resting heart rate, and not too bad for tracking during activity either.

It’s still a way off the accuracy of a chest strap sensor, but the results during a treadmill run are significantly better than those of some smartwatch HR sensors. It needs to bed in a while and can struggle with quick decreases in heart rate, but over a treadmill session you can get a decent read.

The app

• Inviting cartoony app
• Not as fun as Fitbit

As standard, the TomTom Touch Cardio sets you a daily goal of 10,000 steps, the old standard before companies started whittling this down to make the less active feel less guilty. You can set your own goals too, for distance or active time, and over the period of up to a month.

However, TomTom’s software doesn’t quite have the motivational boost of, for example, Fitbit’s platform.

Where Fitbit was built from the ground up for this kind of basic fitness tracker, with lots of effort put into egging-on people that, say, have paid for gym memberships that went by barely-used, TomTom’s is aimed at sportier people, but has tried to appear friendlier with cartoony visuals.

It lacks the fun challenges you get with Fitbit and seems more aimed at those who are committed to getting fit than those who need some pushing. Which is fine, except the TomTom Touch Cardio itself is a basic tracker that fitness fanatics are unlikely to buy.

There’s nothing wrong with the TomTom Sport app as such, but it’s not as engaging as some rivals, and it fits better with the TomTom Spark 3 and Runner 3, which can make more of the substantial activity-tracking part of the TomTom platform.

Like any of these apps, you can track your stats over the days and weeks, which is handy for monitoring your progress from couch potato to aspiring 5K runner. Or whatever your ‘journey’ may be.

Battery life and compatibility

• 3-day battery
• Works with Android and iOS

TomTom says the Touch Cardio will last for up to five days of general use. In our experience, which includes using it as a watch, making it light up to tell us the time a whole bunch of times a day, this claim is a little ambitious.

Two and a half to three days is more like the reality, making it a little too close to a smartwatch in terms of battery upkeep. The TomTom Runner 3 lasts several days longer, as does the Fitbit Alta.

To charge the TomTom Touch Cardio you pop out the module from the strap and simply plug the cable into the micro USB port on one of the sides.

The tracker will work with iPhones and Androids, any that are not ancient. They need to run iOS 8 or newer, or at least Android 4.3 (though the TomTom app requires Android 4.4).

TomTom publishes a specific list of phones on its website, but it’s not worth paying too much attention as masses of phones not listed will work just fine.

Verdict

The TomTom Touch Cardio is a fitness tracker with good features for its price, like water resistance and a heart rate sensor.

On paper at least, it’s hard to beat, and thanks to its OLED screen it will work as a watch too.

In use it’s a decent fitness tracker, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. Battery life is disappointing and the interface can be a bit of a pain to use: it’s not that responsive and there are a lot of pages to show just a few stats.

Who's this for?

The TomTom Touch Cardio is for people who want a basic fitness tracker rather than a GPS watch, but want a little more than the step counting stats you can get from almost any phone.

It’s also a good fit for those on a tighter budget, being a little cheaper than some of the alternatives. That said, the basic TomTom Runner 3 is the better choice for those working up to a 5K run or marathon, as its GPS is more useful than a heart rate sensor.

Should you buy it?

If you can’t stomach the extra expense of the Fitbit Alta HR, the TomTom Touch Cardio is a sound buy. We’d probably recommend it over the more expensive fat-level-tracking TomTom Touch model, as its extra sensor isn’t very accurate and makes the design less appealing.

A little patience is needed here, though. The TomTom Touch Cardio’s battery life is not great for such a simple tracker and the touchscreen part can feel fiddly, particularly if you’re trying to operate it while exercising.

The TomTom Touch Cardio is well-priced, but light on features, so the following three trackers may better suit your needs.

Fitbit Alta HR

The closest Fitbit alternative is the Alta HR, which is significantly more expensive than the TomTom Touch Cardio. However, it looks a bit cooler, has better battery life, more fun software and more useful phone notifications.

If offered either, we’d take the Fitbit. However, if you’re just dipping your toes into fitness tech the lower price of the TomTom could make it more appealing.

• Read our full Fitbit Alta HR review

Misfit Ray

More affordable and with a look that’s more jewelry-like, the Misfit Ray has a real appeal for those just after basic step and sleep tracking. Its batteries last for up to six months too, although after that you’ll have to replace (rather than recharge) them.

There’s no heart rate sensor here though, so you don’t get extra useful information for tracking your gym sessions.

• Read our full Misfit Ray review

Garmin Vivofit 3

In some ways, the Garmin Vivofit 3 is the polar opposite of the TomTom Touch Cardio. In others, they’re extremely close.

This tracker doesn’t have an HR sensor, notifications or a particularly smart look. However, its battery life is in a completely different league, lasting for up to a year off a cell battery, and the screen offers better visibility in bright sunlight.

Beyond that, they’re both basic, affordable trackers, which will do a solid job of starting you off on your fitness journey.

• Read our full Garmin Vivofit 3 review

First reviewed: June 2017