Name: NDR Trace ///
Rating: 5 (6 reviews)
Author: NDRLabs

NDR Trace is a grid instrument face for round AMOLED: a bracketed clock, a rail of registers across the top, and twelve hours of your day drawn as a trace beneath, on a true-black dial with no ornament on it.

TWELVE HOURS, NOT ONE NUMBER

Most faces tell you what your heart rate is now. This one also shows the twelve hours behind it. Heart rate, steps and altitude each keep their own trace, so a resting morning stops looking like a hard afternoon. Body Battery and the watch battery take the same slots as a ten bar gauge, because there what matters is the level now.

MAKE IT YOURS, ON THE WATCH

Hold MENU to open Customize and rebuild the face standing up: fill the ten slots, set the accent, choose how far always-on goes. No phone, nothing to sync. Connect IQ Mobile offers the same options in the same order.

The seconds beside the clock can go, and so can the NDR mark. In 12 hour mode the hour reads 1:23 or 01:23, your choice.

TAP THROUGH TO THE DETAIL

Press any reading and your watch opens Garmin's own screen for it: Body Battery to its drain history, Sleep Score to last night, VO2 Max to the training detail. (On touch models that allow watch-face touch.)

WHAT YOU CAN PUT ON IT

Ten slots, thirty-five metrics, and any slot can be left empty.

Two edge arcs, at 12 and 6, and one full ring at the left: Heart Rate, Steps, Battery, Body Battery, Floors, Intensity Minutes, Stress, Pulse Ox, Sleep Score, Recovery or Humidity.

Two trace fields, the wide strip under the register and half the bottom band: Heart Rate, Steps or Altitude as a twelve hour trace, Body Battery or Battery as a ten bar gauge.

Four cells across the register and the bottom band, plus the stacked column beside the clock, take all thirty-five. Heart Rate, Resting HR, Body Battery, Stress, Respiration, Pulse Ox, Sleep Score. Steps, Distance, Calories, Floors Up, Floors Down, Ascent, Intensity Minutes, Active Today, Move Bar. Recovery, VO2 Run, VO2 Bike, Weekly Run, Weekly Bike. Weather, Feels Like, High and Low, Humidity, Wind, UV Index, Altitude, Pressure, Sunrise and Sunset. Second Time Zone with sixteen cities, Battery, Notifications, Alarm, Calendar Event.

The clock and the date are always on the bracket, and cost you no slot.

FOURTEEN ACCENTS

Amber, Blue, Red, White, Green, Cyan, Purple, Pink, Yellow, Steel, Magenta, Lime, Coral and Volt. The accent is yours; the readings stay where you put them. Every one was checked against the low battery warning, so a nearly flat watch still reads as a warning, not as your theme.

A REAL ALWAYS-ON DISPLAY

In always-on you keep the same instrument, turned down. Not a stripped-back second face, and not the same one at full brightness. Choose the whole panel or the clock alone. It uses under a fifth of Garmin's always-on light budget, measured, and the whole dial steps a few pixels every minute to guard against burn-in. Live data, not a frozen screenshot.

BUILT LIKE AN APP, NOT A WALLPAPER

Every reading runs live, never a static number. The face asks your watch which metrics its firmware provides and does not offer the ones it cannot deliver, so a slot never shows a dash where another watch shows a number. Your settings survive reboots and updates.

NATIVE GARMIN DATA, PRIVATE BY DEFAULT

Every metric comes from Garmin's own services on your watch. This face has no network permission at all, so it could not reach the internet if it tried. It never asks for your position, and it runs no background service, so no code of ours runs while your screen is off. No accounts, no keys, no tracking. One-time purchase, no subscription.

45 AMOLED DEVICES

fenix 9 and 9 Pro, fenix 8 and 8 Pro, fenix E, epix Gen 2 and Pro, MARQ Gen 2, Venu 2, 2 Plus, 3, 3S and 4, vivoactive 5 and 6, Instinct 3 AMOLED, Forerunner 70, 165, 170, 265, 570, 965 and 970, D2 Air X10 and Mach 1, 2 and 2 Pro, Approach S50 and S70, Descent G2 and Mk3. AMOLED only by design, English only.

By NDRLabs