GPS sports watches have been enthusiastically adopted by endurance athletes since they hit the market over the last decade or so as an advanced training tool for providing workout information in terms of speed, pace, distance, elevation and route mapping.

Unfortunately there are not as many Ladies GPS watches that provide the qualities that active females usually seek.

The vast majority of female athletes have the following needs and requirements:
Having sleeker wrists (in general) than men, women require smaller watches with sleeker designs and wrist straps Ladies demand a much more comfortable fitting watch than the average male tends to tolerate Ladies want more paler, feminine colors and designs Female watches usually have smaller watch faces and buttons

A fundamental design problem in creating a GPS watch for girls is the difficulty of fitting a bulky GPS aerial into a miniature sized watch that is comfortable enough to wear while partaking in physical activity.

Some sports watch manufacturers side-step the problem, by packaging the GPS receptor into an arm band which is simply a GPS receiver case mounted on an adjustable elastic band. With the GPS external from the wristwatch, the designers can keep the wrist piece small, while offering the benefits of GPS. A two-piece system is not a bad choice, provided you are comfortable wearing a bulky device on your person.

Other popular sport watches like the Garmin Forerunner line, mount the GPS in the actual wristwatch itself. While Garmin have recently gone to great lengths to make their sports GPS wristwatch smaller, the Garmin watches do still tend to sit quite heavily on the wrist.

There are of course other alternatives that do not require GPS at all. A wireless accelerometer foot pod device fits externally into an athlete's shoelaces. It measures a runner's leg speed through the air and with a little calibration, accurate speed and distance can be measured. A foot pod is more comfortable than an external GPS and about as accurate for measuring speed and distance, it also does not stop working around large objects, an issue encountered with GPS systems whenever the GPS satellite signal is obstructed.

But a foot pod suffers a couple of drawbacks. In some cases it must be calibrated for accurate readings. Calibration is not a big deal, but is not required in a GPS watch. A foot pod also does not measure altitude as it cannot track your 3D location like a GPS watch can, therefore it cannot plot your training route on a map. On the other hand a foot pod option is often a superior alternative to cheaper GPS watches that cannot measure altitude or record routes.

In summary, GPS watch can provide some truly powerful benefits to athletes who want the full range of information on their fitness training. While female athletes may need to accept a few compromises, the positives will far outweigh the drawbacks for many active girls.

We provide much more information on ladies GPS watches on our website including three popular watches that we consider great choices for female athletes.