Watch/ wearable tracker recommendations

[Ikeameatballlunch]

I've always avoided these but I'm doing more intensive exercise and would appreciate tracking heart rate more closely.

Also if any trackers track and recommend recovery / effort type things. I know Whoop does but it seems a bit out of my price range and more for a real athlete. Also far too much of an input relationship than I think I've time for.

I'm on tamoxifen following breast cancer, sometimes I have weeks when I'm very fatigued. Others when im really quite energetic. I'm also trying to improve vo2 max. Sometimes getting some palpitations which I think is menopause related.

I'm asthmatic and on thyroxine. Bonus if it can track physical anxiety things! (Which I think impact fatigue more than I realise.)

I have a water rower with a Bluetooth plug in and the free version of Strava.

Some threads here seemed to indicate that fit bits aren't as good as they used to be. Garmin website had me muddled they've so much!

I've a garmin forerunner 255, as running is my main form of exercise. It has a lot of the features you want:

After logging an exercise it gives a recommended recovery time

Body battery combines lots of it's stat readings to give you a general "where you're at" number out of 100, it builds up overnight when you sleep and dwindles during the day when you are active. If you're feeling rotten, poor sleep or have a stressful few days this reading tends to be low - for me it seems to know what it's talking about.

It also does suggested work outs, training plans, activity tracking etc.

I've been very impressed with mine. I think the more basic models tend to have all the standard features I list above. As they get more expensive within a range, it's because it includes things like mapping, GPS, longer battery for multi day activities. Which is great, but if you don't need them there's little point paying for them.

I think on the garmin website they have a quiz where you can get an idea of the most suitable "range" of watch for you, then you could look through the models within the range to see what features you would use in addition to the basic (and most useful) ones

Thanks - the number score thing seems to be what I would like!

It's very random for me I find. Didn't sleep well last night but feel more with it than last week where I was sleeping solidly for 8-9 hrs. Doms were really bad then. Doms seem nonexistent today after a heavy row yesterday.

Though I was just looking at Apple Watches and wondering how they compare

Vivoactive 5 seems to be coming out the best, thanks for your advice! Cheapest from JL.