Ardent Pulse Track review: the most accurate GPS we have measured, wrapped in mediocrity

Almost every GPS watch is accurate enough on an open road. The differences appear where the signal does not: between buildings, under trees, and on a track, where the true distance is known to the centimetre and the watch has nowhere to hide.

1.4m

Average drift, 400 m track

Class average: 6.2 m

9s

Heart rate lag on intervals

26h

Multi-band GPS battery

The track test

Twenty-five laps of a certified 400 m track in lane one, watch on the left wrist, compared against the known distance. Then the same watch through a city loop with tall buildings on both sides, and a wooded trail section under full canopy.

Test	Result	Class average
Track drift, average	1.4 m	6.2 m
Track distance error	0.3%	1.4%
Urban drift, average	3.8 m	11.9 m
Wooded drift, average	4.1 m	9.7 m
Time to first fix	4 s	9 s

25 laps of a certified 400 m track, plus 5 km urban and 5 km wooded loops, repeated three times. Reference is the mean of five multi-band watches between $350 and $600.

These are the best positioning numbers we have recorded, and not marginally. A 0.3% distance error over a session means a marathon measured to within 130 metres, which is inside the variation caused by your own running line.

Heart rate, which is the other half of a running watch

Steady state is fine — within 2 bpm of a chest strap for the whole of a 45-minute easy run. Intervals are not. On 400 m repeats the optical sensor takes about nine seconds to catch a rise and about the same to catch the fall, which means the number on your wrist describes the previous repetition.

The app

Ardent requires an account before the watch will finish setup. Activity history is stored on Ardent’s servers rather than on the phone; deleting the app removes local access to everything. Exporting your own data in a standard format is part of a $4.99 monthly tier.

We would score this harshly on any product. On a $399 one it is difficult to justify, and it is the single reason we cannot recommend the Pulse Track to someone who is not specifically buying it for the positioning.

Battery and build

Twenty-six hours with multi-band GPS active, eleven days as a watch. Both are mid-pack and both matched the claims. At 47 g with the supplied strap it disappears on the wrist, and after seven weeks including one hard contact with a doorframe the screen is unmarked.

The verdict

A specialist instrument sold as a general-purpose watch. If you run where GPS struggles, nothing else comes close. If you do not, you are paying $399 for a chipset you will never notice and an app you will resent.