Garmin’s hardware has always been exceptionally good, given epic battery life (~30 days even with all-day heart rate), exceptional sensors, and durability.
Their software has traditionally been pretty rough. That’s coming from a customer and developer. Mainly that was because they had various software platforms for various families of device, so each feature needed to be built for each family of watch separately.
They’ve unified that now to one main platform (picking the Forerunner’s platform), so it will be very interesting to see if they narrow the gap with Apple around software.
The next big innovation will likely be sensors. This still uses the elevate 5 sensor that launched a few years ago.
The software feels a bit clunky but I was very surprised when I plugged my Fenix watch to USB and found it mounted as a storage device with all of the data directly accessible as files. The watch would be perfectly usable without the cloud and using an alternative app like gadgetbridge. This should be the standard, but it isn't, and it is more important to me than a sleek UI
I want to jump on this as the varia is easily the best safety feature for biking i have used beside helmets and arguably supercedes helmet since this warns you before a car shows up.
Its steep price wise but if you are doing a lot of road cycljng on rural roads and fast traffic where one hit is the end its an easy to justify life insurance product.
> Also: the Garmin Varia bike radar is absolute gold. I feel more unsafe without it than I do without a helmet.
Interesting, I didn't know such a thing existed. However, I'm struggling to understand the need. I ride my bike every day but I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.
Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?
US. I ride shoulders on semi-rural highways. Sometimes there will be traffic in the opposing lane creating enough noise that I don't hear the vehicles coming from behind. With my Varia, I get warned well before they show up. It has even detected "hidden" vehicles that I couldn't visibly see -- like a small car trailing a truck.
I have one of the Garmin varia radar lights and feel exactly the same about them.
> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?
UK; It's handy for knowing when on town or country roads without too much traffic; it can typically spot fast moving vehicles before you can hear or see them in mirrors (let alone if relying solely furtive glimpses over shoulder)
Tbh, nice as it is to be notified about approaching vehicles, what I really like is that the light flashes at proportionately faster rates in response to the speed of the approaching vehicles. The changing rate does a better job of attracting the attention of drivers than constant illumination, and is also a psychological hack that makes the driver think they are being watched [0] and consequently behave slightly better when they do pass.
Cumulatively the light/radar combination is a winner because it makes cycling more pleasant _and_ reduces the chances of getting hit by drivers.
[0] In some of the newer units they are being watched as well, as they have camera's in them - apparently unit is a bit chunky and video quality in low-light is ropey.
Especially since engine noise is increasingly a thing of the past - in my part of London, only one out of ~20-ish routes still uses hybrid buses.
Almost all delivery vehicles and taxis round here are BEV too, along with a good chunk of private cars. Can be very hard to hear them above wind noise and general background hubbub, especially when wearing a helmet.
Yeah you probably don't need it in slow moving urban traffic but I saw a video with some bike packers in Australia who used Varia. They were on rural roads shared with road trains.
Road trains a very big, move very fast and they don't stop for anyone on a bike. So knowing they are coming up on you from a distance gives you time to get off the road.
That's a very special usage case but I think any rural road with fast moving traffic would also benefit from the early warning even with just cars to contend with.
I just... dont understand why you dont hear them coming?
Do people with varia use headphones or something?
I don't have issues being aware about upcoming traffic, in either city traffic or rural environments. The only exception would be in heavy headwind situations
Going 35-45kmh, most of what you hear is wind. Cars approaching 80kmh and beyond on a country rode. Garmin warns me 5+ seconds before the car passes me. I hear the car usually around 1s before it does (if that). Listening music (bone conducting) amplifies this.
it works most of the times. Unless its super windy, it's enough to make a long ride more pleasurable with tunes for motivation/boost. I can't listen podcasts on them as I can't make out the individual words. It's better than the alternatives.
Not op but I also have a varia and feel safer for it. Living in Switzerland, cycle a lot on public curvy roads in the alps. Often I don’t hear someone coming if I’m focusing on something else important - like traffic in the other direction - or I don’t realise there’s actually more than one car about to overtake which the Varia also shows. Generally turning your head around to check is a bit dodgy!
The Varia can give you auditory alerts so you don't have to take your eyes off the road and look in your mirror. In addition, it can tell you how many cars are behind you with a range that would be hard to see in your mirror.
Varia can supplement bike mirrors with an early warning that a vehicle is approaching. Some people don't like bike mirrors (they look dorky), but personally I feel half-blind when cycling without a mirror.
I’m in New Zealand. I ride in the road in town and out in the hills at the weekend.
The way I use it is to look down, see if a car is behind, then look behind before pulling out. I don’t bother looking back if there is a car close (the range must be around 100-150m I think?).
It also yells louder if the car is approaching fast. The integrated light changes how it flashes when it sees a car.
In group ride with talking etc, it’s helpful too as it usually doesn’t pick up bikes (unless the guy behind is an absolute unit) and the squawk of an approaching car is helpful for the group.
Electric cars and busses no longer sneak up on me, it’s great use of tech on a bike.
Ugh, I lived in Dunedin for a year, and it's the worst place I've cycled by a considerable margin. Much worse than e.g. Ireland or England, which also isn't exactly bicycle-friendly. The infrastructure isn't even half-bad, but the behaviour of motorists was just the worst. Kiwis are like that old Goofy cartoon where he's all nice and friendly until he gets in his car, after which he becomes a raging maniac.
So yeah, with "New Zealand" as context a device like that makes more sense.
> I'm struggling to understand the need. I ride my bike every day but I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.
Not get rear-ended by a car? There's also model with a camera to collect evidence. I have the one without the camera, just the radar and a light.
> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?
Central and Eastern Europe. Whenever I share the roads with cars. Although I'm more relaxed on outdoor paths or gravel roads where I don't have to keep an eye on cars all the time.
For MTB you probably don't need it, but in road scenarios it's great.
You shouldn't feel safe riding a bicycle without a helmet because because accidents have not fallen since people began wearing helmets. Ski accidents haven't fallen, either, since they started wearing hemets.
You have so many negatives in your statement I had to read it 3 times as a native English speaker to realize it doesn't make sense. We can make cycling safer in multiple dimensions simultaneously: 1. we learn from the Dutch about infrastructure and integrating cycling into the transportation fabric (slow and expensive), 2. the Dutch start wearing helmets (fast and cheap).
This only began to become a problem with the introduction of e-bikes. Old people especially are not wearing them on e-bikes. On regular bikes where you are going 15km/h you should not have to wear a helmet. The infrastructure in the Netherlands protects cyclists enough (in general) and a fall at that speed is not really that dangerous (in general, again).
Though an e-bike goes 25km/h. This is a lot more dangerous and people should definitely wear a helmet when driving one.
who goes a max of 15 km/h on a bicycle? You'd get passed by a very fast runner. I easily go 25+ on my fully loaded bikepacking bike on typical commuting terrain.
My wife enjoys telling the story from her time living in the Hague of watching drunk girls in mini skirts all attempting to ride side-by-side to keep each other upright, and...somehow managing to do it.
The bones of their software are over 20 years old at this point, back to the Forerunner 101 which came out in 2003, predating modern smartphones. You had to plug them into a COM port to download your runs. I have Garmin watches from this time period that still work, but I can't figure out how to get any data from them. They're also issued in some military circles where they're not allowed to connect to a smartphone, and the lack of a microphone is a plus.
I've had multiple Instincts as well as Fenix. I am exceptionally hard on watches. I don't take them off when I'm working on anything out in the shop. The sapphire of the Fenix is not a silver bullet and the case on the Instinct does a lot more to prevent direct hits to the face than you'd think, at least in my experience.
The Instinct is also easier to polish than the sapphire. I've tried to buff out blemishes on Fenix watches I've gone to sell and have had a hard time getting them back to flawless. I've not had the same issue on any Instinct.
That being said I'm really tempted by the new Fenix Pro. I have an inReach device I take with me for backcountry snowmobiling in the mountains and I've forgotten it a time or two. I never forget my watch and always have some extra battery with me.
I just wish I could get basically the same specs as Fenix in a non-color and highly efficient display like Instinct. The 2 Solar is my daily watch and the battery life + built in flashlight make it my almost perfect watch. I don't even care about LTE but if I could get Instinct with inReach that would be a perfect setup IMO.
Garmin does a lot of things right, but pricing is not one of them. Especially given they're moving towards subscriptions which is counterintuitive to their buyer market. I really don't want anything AI in my watch.
Totally with you on everything you’ve said. I’ve had a few Instincts and Fenixes, and yeah - I think the Instinct 2 was my favourite watch of all time (currently using an Apple Watch Mega Super Ultra), but I loved the concept of the 7X… just a shame I couldn’t get used to that red tone on the solar.
I found the same thing too - the instinct face gets protected while the Fenix is almost a brick and rock magnet :(
So far, I think it’s only the black Tacticals that look like they would hide more surface scratches… but I’ve never had one yet.
But, yeah - think if the Instinct 3 Solar came with Sapphire, I’d sleep better at night, so much so that it would probably be my forever watch!
The clunkiness of the software is a feature to me. I don't want my watch to have the slickest apps, I want it to be pretty utilitarian, rugged and functional. My Instinct Crossover is pretty perfect for that.
The only thing that I think could be better (for me) would be a very rudimentary basemap view in addition to the existing breadcrumb trail functionality.
It's not the clunkiness of the software that's the problem, it's the bugs. They frequently introduce regression defects in new releases. Like on my watch, suddenly structured track running workouts stopped tracking speed correctly and it took them like a year to fix it. I get the impression that they have a lack of test automation and too few human QA Engineers to manually test every feature on every release of every one of their many devices.
Yeah I'm still mad at garmin for a bug they introduced to my Oregon 550 GPS which caused data to be lost. They actually broke the track archiving feature so badly it looked like no one had even tested it.
on the flip side, my 12 year old garmin fenix 3 still works great. I finally upgraded to an instinct crossover last year because I wanted the mechanical hands and a smaller face, but the old Fenix is still great.
> The clunkiness of the software is a feature to me.
Yes!
But it seems they are getting more and more in the _smartwatch_ territory.
It took me more time than I wanted to disable any kind of notifications on my new Enduro 3.
And a few weeks ago, with the latest update, I got the "morning thing" and "evening thing" enable automatically, so I had once again to get back in the settings to disable them.
Previously with the Fenix I set a watch face, activities screen and I hadn't to change a thing for years.
It just worked as a watch and an activity recorder.
Exactly what I want from this kind of device.
The software has gotten a lot better since they made that change.
That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Especially without MIP displays.
The Enduro series is now the traditional Fenix series.
Also this Fenix 8 Pro is not getting reviewed well by the usual people (des, ray, etc) it's not a good watch for the price. The sacrifices made for both LTE and the new display are too great.
I hate Garmin with a passion because their watches are effectively region-locked by language support, an insanely consumer-hostile move in this day. I was unable to use any features related to text or whatsapp messages because the watch shockingly could not decode messages in my native language.
Their software was also so flaky that I was woken up by a faulty vibration alert in the middle of the night multiple times during the few months I wore the Garmin Instinct Solar, and at least twice I was unable to fall back to sleep. That is, the watch was supposed to be in silent or DND mode, but the watch probably crashed or reset in the middle of the night, losing the silent or DND state, allowing an alert to go through. The sleep tracking was also very inaccurate, and sleep tracking is the single most valuable metric for me.
To this day I fantasize posting a video where I smash my Garmin watch to pieces alerting other people how bad it is. Still, the hardware was near perfect and it's hard to hate the watch itself. But because of the software issues, it was no better than a dumb watch to me. I hate Garmin the company.
Garmin devices have historically had two regions for languages: Asia and everywhere else. I suspect this is due to some legacy limitations in their proprietary OS around Unicode support. Years ago, it was very difficult to implement full support for all languages on a single device with very limited hardware and battery power.
Historically, in order to get support for one of the Asian languages, you typically had to buy the watch in the exact right country, not anywhere else.
Same sentiment here. I constantly get 90+ scores when I wake up feeling like shit.
A 20€ chinese smart band combined with Sleep as Android provided much more accurate sleep tracking than a 800€ Garmin.
The only 2 garmin specific features I use are (compared to what I had before):
1. LED flashlight, love always having a pretty good light on my wrist (I'm talking about the actual flashlight some Garmins have, not the "use display as a flashlight" feature)
2. GPS that does not drain phone battery
3. Looks
Everything else for me is worse than a cheap chinese smart band.
That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore.
Depending on your definition of “cohort”, that’s simply not true. I see plenty of late-model Fenix in the wild. And, yeah, there’s a vocal minority of folks that prefer MIPS (often based on outdated or flat wrong assumptions, like “AMOLED isn’t visible in sunlight”, which is how you know the speaker has never used an AMOLED screen).
As to the latest model, “not a good watch for the price” is a gimme when the thing costs two grand (U. S.). I’m at a loss as to what a watch might do to make it worth two grand to me.
The battery life difference is huge between OLED and MIPS. The Fenix 8 Solar gets 30-45 days of battery life. Fenix 8 OLED can get 28 days, if you turn off the always-on display; otherwise, 12 days.
For me it’s not so much about the readability in sunlight, but about being able to glance at your watch without moving your wrist and about the watch not emitting light in dark environments. I find that distracting and I like the stealthiness of MIPS. That being said, if the minimum brightness is low enough and battery life with always-on high enough I think I could live with it, but with wrist gestures completely disabled except during activity.
Fenix 6 Pro MIPS guy here, you can pry that $600 watch from my cold, dead wrist!
I tried AMOLED once - it lasted about 3 weeks and 200 miles before I sold it.
AMOLED is visible in sunlight, yeah, but even with always-on it only brightens when you lift your wrist...which is always infuriatingly late, coming moments after I look at my wrist. And because they want to minimize that annoying latency, it's constantly blinking on and off with false positives demanding attention like a strobe light. Maybe I have poor form with trekking poles or an over-sensitive/miscalibrated IMU, but I remember one particular foggy dawn hike when was triggering with basically every step. The silent morning light and the mist off the lake should have been magical, instead they just reflected the blinky light on my wrist.
I stare at glowing, colorful screens from 9-5 and struggle with distractions that similarly demands my eyeballs in the morning and evening. When I go into the woods it's because I want to leave those screens behind, not put an ever-larger, ever-more-vibrant one on my arm.
(My wrist will probably be dead and very cold someday when the weather changes and I try to push my ultralight 40F bag to lower temps than it is capable of and couldn't send an SOS because my F6P doesn't have sat comms. You shouldn't have to wait long, it's September...jk, don't worry.)
Probably going Coros or Suunto next, Garmin has lost the plot.
One of the frustrations I've had with a few of Garmin's recent releases is how their high-end MIPS watches, Enduro 3 & Fenix 8 Solar, seem to inherit the same thick, glare-y, ultra-durable glass I assume the Fenix 8 OLED uses, which does a number on the readability of their MIPS displays outdoors.
I've never owned the F8 OLED, but I do have an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and the AWU2 is actually more readable than the E3/F8S in all light conditions except high-noon ultra-direct sunlight (which I'm very rarely outdoors in, because, you know, skin cancer).
I ended up returning those, and got an Instinct 3 MIPS earlier this year, which is more readable outdoors across a variety of light conditions.
> so it will be very interesting to see if they narrow the gap with Apple around software.
they might be able to narrow the gap with Apple wrt software, but I don't think (at least in the US) Garmin will ever gain marketshare vs. the Apple Watch, especially now with the Ultra for the simple reason that Garmin just cannot offer an equivalent experience on iPhones because of Apple.
We desperately need antitrust intervention to force Apple to open up iOS to allow other smartwatches to take advantage of the same APIs that the Apple Watch does.
If that happens I think Apple will quickly find that they cannot compete on an even playing field.
I thought this when I had an Apple Watch, but I’ve really not found much that I miss. I occasionally found it useful to action notifications, but dismiss is almost always all I want - and that works. Apple Maps doesn’t seem to care about being useful, but Google Maps does the right thing with notifications so I just use that instead. Music controls work, and they’re more reliable because it’s trying to be less magic. Siri is as useless on the watch as anywhere else. I think the watch worked as a camera control and I might have used that once.
I do agree that Apple should be forced to compete on a fair playing field, but I don’t think they do a good job of taking advantage of it with Apple Watch.
I hope the Edge series will also benefit from that code unification.
I'm missing from Garmin usage of Inertial Navigation System (INS [1]). The sensors are in the devices, accelerometers and gyroscopes. We've using them in airliners for decades (very basic INS was available with the B707, high quality from the B747/A300 onwards), in cheap car navigation (that's why you can drive through tunnels) and most smartphones (you've probably noticed that also your phone handles five kilometer long tunnels well). As far as I know, high quality INS could bring a B747 over the atlantic.
My Edge has an accelermoeter and gyroscope but I see often straight lines in the mountains, in the city-center, in tunnels and garages and when the cloud coverage + trees work together. And it not just the recorded route, it is also the current speed and distance and precise turn-by-turn navigation.
Garmin, Wahoo, Karoo keep adding more of GNSS. GPS, GALILEO, BAIDU, GLONASS, GLONAS 5GHz, Multiband and ground stations (that approach failed). That improved the signal remitance somewheat but the mentioned natural conditions still interrupt or reduce that GNSS quality. Because it is external! External navigation depends on external guidance. You cannot fix that by adding more. And hostile elements figured out, that is easy to jam or spoof[2] the GNSS signals.
Using INS in combination with GNSS should work rather well on a roadbike. Usually mixing the signals from INS and GNSS depending on quality. Except where GNSS is turned off for reasons like jamming/spoofing e.g. in eastern europe. But usually INS needs only to cover a gap of 30 seconds to five minutes. INS is probably less useful on a mountainbike (vibrations and impacts) but especially in the woods GNSS fails...so maybe even here it can help. I think Garmin uses the sensors for other kind of metrics on mountainbikes already (I think the call it grit/flow?).
My smartphone handles a tunnel well. My bike-computer also should do it :)
PS: The integrated LTE-Modem could also benefit security in cycling. There was a sad incident during the last roadbike world-championships in switzerland and a life lost. Cycling computers detect crashes and can send SMS with coordinates but they need a smartphone (radio isn't allowed and smartphones aren't robust).
> Garmin’s hardware has always been exceptionally good, given epic battery life (~30 days even with all-day heart rate), exceptional sensors, and durability.
The battery life thing is really compelling - however I need ECG and AF monitoring and Apple lead the pack here as far as I can tell.
Fitbit seems to come close, but having multiple doctors state the need for an Apple Watch is quite the endorsement.
Check out Withings ScanWatch if you want ECG and a long battery life.
The passive HR monitor, sleep tracking, SpO2, etc. are all shite compared to Apple but the ECG thing should be good enough I guess.
My main selling point is that it lasts forever (20+ days), and even when the battery dies it still works like a watch for weeks. It looks like a proper watch, it has notifications so I need to look at my phone less, and it does the tracking OK enough that it's useful to check it out. They also have a BP monitor with ECG and a stethoscope that automatically recognizes some heart problems - so if you're worried about heart problems might be worth looking into.
I would really like if they could get their HR sensor/activity tracking up there with Apple but it looks like no company out there is able to get into that league.
>When the battery level reaches 10%, you will receive a notification. At 10% you can no longer run a Respiratory Scan. When the battery reaches 0%, your watch activates power reserve mode. Only the analog clock, step, and sleep monitoring features remain available, and only for about a few days. In power reserve mode you will no longer be able to start an ECG or oxygen saturation measurement on demand via the watch display.
It only happened once or twice, I was surprised that once you charge you still see the step tracking stats when it syncs. I remember using it in this mode for over a week when I was moving and couldn't be bothered to find the charger.
MonkeyC was interesting, but at the time (2019?) we couldn't do a real-time type of app, that updated frequently with live data from a mobile app. It was a shame too. I think they have a lot of potential, and wish them luck. I personally just use the Apple Watch out of convenience of being in the Apple ecosystem. I do yearn for at least a week long battery life out of my smartwatch.
Third party app development must be a nightmare, based on how much of a nightmare it is even just to install and use those apps.
But I must say, I wish other appliances would be as intuitive as the built in fitness tracking apps and they controls. Somehow it's just consistent, does the right thing, and works reliably. With only 5 buttons.
I’m a garmin user that moved from android to iPhone several years ago. I really miss the ability to filter notifications that hit the watch, which is still missing on garmin iOS software. I don’t think it’s a restricted api problem, as other smartwatches can filter notifications
The absolute worst experience I had with a Fenix watch (I think the 5x) was that when it could not read my HR from the wrist due to sweat or whatever, which happened often, it would log whatever the last reading was even though it could be wildly incorrect. This completely destroyed my trust in them. Having had experience in aviation I would really expect unreliable readings to be marked as such and rather not display anything than showing incorrect readings.
> Garmin’s hardware has always been exceptionally good, given epic battery life
It is good to know the for measuring sleep, which is not a selling point of Garmin, it's far from being as accurate as Oura. But battery life is so incredible that makes you wonder how someone could wear other expensive smart watches (e.g. Apple/Samsung) for physical activities.
> Their software has traditionally been pretty rough. That’s coming from a customer and developer. Mainly that was because they had various software platforms for various families of device, so each feature needed to be built for each family of watch separately.
The software feels like a dumb terminal from the web, it doesn't work right without an Internet connection.
Has Oura sleep tracking accuracy been independently validated against real medical devices? From what I've seen, all consumer wearable devices give inconsistent data and none are really what you could call accurate.
Yes, there are several studies. One is this [1]. I have not tried the Oura 4 myself but once I test it I can compare with other devices. Clearly sample=1 but I found big errors with some watches.
[1] "Accuracy Assessment of Oura Ring Nocturnal Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability in Comparison With Electrocardiography in Time and Frequency Domains: Comprehensive Analysis": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8808342/
The latest Apple optical wrist heart rate sensor is marginally more accurate than Garmin in some situations. But as a practical matter it's kind of moot because anyone who really cares about accurate heart rate data uses an electrical chest strap anyway.
If you've got a Garmin device check out GarminDB [0]. Garmin actually exposes an API that you can access with your credentials and get the raw activity, heart rate, etc data.
As someone who isn't the target market for this, is there significant demand for this? $1200 for a smart watch that'll be e-waste in a few years is steep, plus $8/mo to keep it working (though I guess if you're going to pay four figures for a smart watch the $96/yr probably makes no difference).
I guess if you intend to carry a watch anyway, you can save the few ounces and leave your phone at home? And maybe a few ounces for a battery pack to charge a phone? But at the same time, the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout.
It's more of a PR/interest piece rather than anything that moves the needle for buyers.
Garmin buyers typically choose the brand due to the much longer battery life, however Garmin doesn't have any magic battery technology - the longer battery life is simply from less full time services. If enabling the additional hardware functions that bring it on-par with the ultra, the ultra actually has a longer battery life.
The other issue is that both brands diverge in how they offer satellite connectivity. For iPhones, satellite connectivity includes messaging, sending locations, and carrier-provided functionality via satellite (e.g. SMS), alongside with the road-side assistance and SOS features. These are included at no cost (at this time).
Garmin on the other hand starts with a $40 activation fee, then a minimum per month charge of $8 USD which then still charges 50c per text message, $1 for voice messages and 60c an hour for location tracking. Garmin's also offers a $50 USD per month plan where some of these tariffs are included, but notably voice messages are limited to 50 units before reverting back to $1 each. The $40 activation fee prevents users from saving money by switching off the functionality when not needed.
They are built to last. I've had my Fenix 5 for at least 7 years and it shows no signs of slowing or dying. Battery still lasts 5 days or so with normal use. Think it's just stopped getting software updates.
Admittedly they were a bit cheaper back then (but this will one will be too next year)...
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but I have zero faith that any device whose primary distinguishing feature is a subscription connectivity service will be usable in more than five years.
What does Garmin gain by killing off an older device if the owner still pays for a subscription?
Also, it's not like this is a hypothetical question, they've been around for decades. They do have a track record you can refer to, instead of just blind faith.
It's not as though my cell phone will continue working forever. Nest discontinued Nest Aware. I've gotten bitten by this exact phenomenon more times than I care to admit.
I don't care about Garmin's reputation, it's simply a fact that having satellites talking to specialized devices requires a critical mass of subscriptions. There's a chain of vendors that need to all be on board to support all the hardware that keeps those devices online and updated, and at some point they will be discontinued. Probably sooner rather than later, especially when plenty of new phones make the functionality here redundant.
i'm an owner of their Garmin 945 LTE released over 4 years ago. I have paid the subscription since. The device is still working very well, still got an update a couple of months ago. Battery still lasts about 5 days.
They are well built, work very well, and provide metrics that motivate me to exercise more and monitor my progress. There is a touch screen but the buttons are simply a better and easier way to interact with it. It looks cool, and there definitely is a "garmin watch" tribe. Over time, you build an emotional relationship with it.
I got a Garmin Epix 2 watch 3 years ago as a replacement for the Apple Watch ULtra, which turned out to be a terrible sports watch. The Garmin still has two weeks battery life and gets all the functionality upgrades the newer watches are getting. More importantly, it looks great and does exactly what I want it to do simply, and reliably. At the time I also had a whoop. Now I only have the Garmin and it does all I need. It's one of those things you need to try to truly get.
I'm not sold on the prices involved but I could really do with satellite emergency calling for MTB rides where there's no phone signal.
That's far more common than you might think even in areas that should, on paper, have coverage.
I already take my phone for that reason but I think it's far more likely to be damaged in a crash than a smaller watch.
I currently have a Garmin Epix I've had for a few years that I'm otherwise happy with. I would consider switching for satellite SOS if the prices get less crazy.
I'd even consider an Apple watch despite it not working with my power meter and other sensors.
I think there is demand. Hikers or trail runners may buy this for peace of mind, plus the other capabilities like maps.
> the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout
If you're truly in danger I think there's a button to contact rescue.
$1200 is stupid expensive, my Fenix 6 Pro was half that. The F6P was worth every one of those 60,000 pennies, which is coincidentally approximately how many hours I've worn it since purchasing it in 2018.
I always leave my phone at home for running, biking, hiking, kayaking, etc: not being tethered is part of the appeal.
The subscriptions for this new one or for InReach are infuriating, and they even recently made it worse because you can no longer effectively deactivate it. I only do 3 or 4 real backcountry expeditions in a year, I don't need this activated for 12 months.
I used to carry an InReach until the MBAs decided I was cheating them out of surplus cash that they could demand. Now I have an ACR PLB1 instead, no subscription but it can still call in the cavalry if I break my ankle twenty miles from civilization.
I would buy this if (honestly, when) the price drops by half, or better yet the Enduro version with a MIP screen. Some rich sucker will probably want to trade theirs in when the $3000 Fenix 9 Supreme comes out....
I feel 1200 is not that bad for what it offers. Also if we're talking Fenix 8: there's a cheaper version that has the same software and features but is like 900 or something (simpler design and hardware). The 1200 USD is the most expensive OLED + Titanium with Sapphire glass edition AFAIK.
It beats having to buy a running watch AND a scuba diving computer AND an oxygen saturation sensor AND some kind of sleep monitor. And it's nice for surfing and sleeping better and jetlag recovery tips and heat aclimation and checking the pressure sensor to see when airplane cabin pressure starts dropping and tons more. After a while I noticed tons of other random interesting things too: when HRV goes down for a few days, I'll know I'll be sick 1 to 2 weeks later, when resting heart rate is like 55 or higher (high for me) I probably did exercise too close to bed time or am having sleeping probems, etc.
IMO super cool that it does all of those and more very well.
They've ratcheted the price up each release to change your threshold of what a fitness watch should cost. Same with phones and cars.
A $300 Forerunner 235 did all those things except the scuba stuff, which only a small number of people need (and most of those people really want an actual dive computer when their life is on the line deep underwater).
But the Current Forerunner 165 is $250 and still does most of those things (everything the 235 did), while having upgraded sensors and GPS from the 235. Garmin still makes excellent entry level fitness watches for most people and when I look around my run club, that is what most people buy.
I feel like Garmin watches are kind of slept on by normies. They seem to have a niche for fitness enthusiasts. I got one primarily because it looks like a normal watch and not a tech product. But I do appreciate the fitness tracking.
I've had the same one for 5 years and it's still solid.
I agree, it's the right level of smart for me. That said, while it's squarely in the "fitness tracker" niche, I think it is very popular with anyone who has even a passing interest in running, cycling, etc. The last few years I have seen loads of people around the office wearing one.
If by GPS you specifically mean car navigation. Because almost the entirety of Garmin as a company is built around putting GPS into various things including wearables.
But even in automotive they pivoted to working with car OEMs instead of relying on sale of independent devices.
They were definitely a major player for a long time prior to smartphones becoming the number one GPS solution (for most cars). Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, etc
I am not sure what you can do without an account, because I created an account on day 1.
It connects to the phone over Bluetooth. Many operations need your phone to have internet. There is a kind of primitive app platform. The only app I really use is for Home Assistant, it makes https requests to HA over the phone. I connected it to Strava too, it can realtime send heart rate to that app without going to the internet, but it required jumping a few hoops in settings.
You can use the device as a fitness tracker without registering an account. And you can download activity files with a USB cable. But anything more, including the satellite connectivity, requires registering an account.
I didn't realize this. Just verified on my Forerunner 965, if I put my phone in Airplane Mode, turn off Wi-Fi, leave Bluetooth on, then Garmin Connect disabled the sync button and says "No Internet connection".
This is why when Garmin Connect has outages you can’t sync the watch to the phone, it’s a pretty bad architecture. It should sync to the phone without internet or any services and then use internet to sync from the phone to the cloud.
It's utterly bizarre. I was impacted by that outage a year or so ago and they claimed that they were going provide offline syncing in the future but I still don't see it. It seems the flow is Watch ->(Bluetooth)-> Phone ->(LTE/WiFi) -> Garmin Cloud ->(LTE/WiFi) Phone. There's no reason for the Cloud step other than that Garmin wants your data but the sync won't work without it.
As a rule, non-LTE watches upload data over Bluetooth to the app (offline), which then relays that to whatever cloud service once there’s a connection. If you don’t want the second part, install Gadgetbridge and have your pick of the supported devices[1] (keeping in mind that that support not a boolean but rather feature-per-feature, so check the details).
This has not been my experience. If you know of a fitness tracker or smartwatch that can sync without a cloud account or cellular data connection I would be very interested. But I have not found any devices that meet those criteria.
(And GadgetBridge does not work on iOS. It is Android-only.)
Mi Band with Notify on Android works just fine with no internet access or cloud account. You do need a cloud account at some point to get the key to access the watch though.
I consider it to be so because the product cannot be taken away through any form of update after you have started using it without the cloud account.
At that point it's basically a purchasing account and is functionally useless after that.
Though I do understand the frustration. I hope Pebble releases something that is cloud free and no-service usable.
It’s not, unfortunately, and that sucks. That’s why the Gadgetbridge compatibility list specifically warns about that whenever relevant. (As far as Gadgetbridge not being present on iOS, sorry, you knew what you were buying when you came into the Apple store.)
It is, however, a very mild case of cloud suckage, because the only thing the vendor learns in the process is an association between an email address and a device, after which you (delete the vendor app and) never communicate with them again. (You could in principle use a temporary email address if you’re particularly adventurous and don’t plan to resell.)
I have a 2 year old Amazfit GTR 4. I just disabled wifi & cellular data on my phone, opened the Zepp app, pulled down to sync and it happily downloaded my today's activity to the app. And oh, compared to Apple, I only need to charge it once per two weeks (with almost everything enabled, except always on display).
And...I could not care less. Garmin needs to fix their software, I am a long time garmin user, from using garmin head units on mountain bikes for the last 30 years, using garmin watches, I have had 4 fenix watches over the years, I swapped to a Apple watch ultra this year, and as a ultra distance trail runner and mountain biker, I could not be happier. Yes, the garmin units are more rugged and can handle more abuse, yes, their battery is light years ahead, but, it does not really matter anymore, the apple watch ultra is tough enough and the battery good enough, and the software is so much better. I can download multiple different running apps, and follow a training plan with it (runna workoutoutdoors, or one of the many other ones), I can do my cross training using one of the lifting apps, like heavy or strong, I can use it with golf etc. yes, the fenix range can do all of that aswell, but the experience is just so much nicer on the ultra. I struggle to see, how garmin can compete software wise, as a single company battling the army of independant developers out there building iOS/watchOS apps. And more importantly, my ultra never crash, my fenix went through a phase, where it would randomly reboot, until garmin pushed a fix. Bugs happen, I get it, but...it's been happening now for years with garmin.
> my fenix went through a phase, where it would randomly reboot, until garmin pushed a fix
This is something that just can't happen for this kind of use case, and the fact that bugs like this repeatedly happen with Garmin is mind-blowing to me. This company makes glass cockpits- if you ask me, they need to borrow someone from that team to show their consumer electronics team how to test their product and have a sense of urgency when things break.
They're using geostationary satellites, but their Inreach stuff is using Iridium. Anyone know which satellites they're using for this, and if the coverage can be expected to increase in the future?
It's Skylo, which makes me really sad about this. This 'breaks' the InReach name completely if they're selling both global pole-to-pole Iridium and limited Skylo coverage devices under the same umbrella, and almost angling it as if you should put more faith in "just carry one less thing!" when it might doom you when you need it.
Wow. Full coverage of the contiguous US is nice, but other than that you can mostly send emergency messages in places that are already close to civilization. Places that probably have cell coverage anyways
In a ten minute drive from Issaquah, WA (major suburb 20 minutes from Seattle), I can be in the woods with no cell coverage on a mountain frequented by many hikers (parts of Cougar Mt. are especially dead to cell phones). Let alone driving another half hour and having no cell coverage at all once you walk from the trailhead.
And cell service is surprisingly poor at my home in the heart of Redmond suburbs, even. If you rely on a cell phone to get out of a tight spot, stay out of the woods, at least in the U. S. West.
Yea I don’t even hike or do anything woodsy and I frequently have zero coverage in western WA. It’s a real issue, common even, depending on where you live (I’m near the capital)
The US in general has much less cell service than you might think. I'm on a major carrier, I get 1 bar at home, there are places in my neighborhood that effectively have none, and I'm within a few miles of state forest where there is definitely no service.
If you never leave a city or major transportation routes, you might not realize how much "dark" space there is. Those red maps the mobile service providers like to promote seem to me to be extremely deceptive.
Side: The 15.05 firmware upgrade is causing severe battery drain in some models. From 8 days battery life it got down to 1. Multiple reports can be found here[1].
Support's response is "go to your region-local support shop".
No, but it does require you to hold your arm in a particular way. I would be unsurprised if they're factoring in the capacitance and ground plane effect of the "big bag of saltwater" in their antenna design!
It uses the magnetic compass, accelerometer, and GPS to help you aim it at the satellite (south, ~35 degrees above the horizon).
I frequently leave my phone at home and rely on my Apple Watch for the occasional texts, map, etc. I’d prefer a Garmin but not being able to use your existing phone number is a dealbreaker.
The price is a little steep and I wonder how well a watch with its smaller antenna will work in difficult terrain. My InReach Mini often doesn’t connect in narrow canyons and I assume the smaller watch will be even worse. An emergency device that doesn’t work in an emergency is pretty useless. That’s why the iPhone satellite messaging doesn’t work for me either. In my backcountry tests it was a crapshoot whether it worked or didn’t.
That’s because after Apple Watch Edition sold like dog poop sandwiches, even Apple isn’t going to try and charge $2K for a watch. When I bought the original Apple Watch Ultra at $800, I thought that was pricey. And then Garmin these past few years has said, “hold this…”
There were terror attacks which caused significantly increased regulations towards them. We saw the exact same thing in the United States after the airplane strikes on the World Trade Centers but focused on air travel restrictions.
Laws follow events. This is what will eventually kill bitcoin, when someone sets up payments for the deaths of world leaders or large scale population deaths and it actually works. At that point the financial gain of participants is outweighed by everyone else calling for it's removal.
That won’t kill Bitcoin. It’s decentralized. You truly can’t kill it. That's the beauty of building decentralized applications and it's the answer whenever some tech bro wonders why "a central relational database" wouldn't be better than Bitcoin. Yes we know it would perform better but that's not the point and not what it was engineered for.
Wouldn’t want any revolutionaries communicating over uncontrolled channels that the government can’t switch off. At least that’s what I assume the law is trying to prevent.
Once you stray out of 2.4GHz there are a lot of restrictions on wireless communication. In many countries, I would even suspect the US, there are restrictions on which 5GHz channels are allowed to be used outside, how certain channels may be used even indoors etc. usually your consumer router/AP handles this for you but if you purchase an item in a different jurisdiction and then travel with it you may in reality not be compliant with local laws even with wifi.
Satellite/UHF etc has even more restrictions.
Disclaimer there is actually limits on 2.4GHz as well but I’m generally referring to wifi where the conventional channels are pretty universal
I mean, maybe they do, but I had such an awful time with Garmin software on their cycling devices that they will never see another dime of my money.
The Apple Watch is an imperfect replacement for a purpose-built hiking or cycling tracker, for sure, but that gap seems to be getting smaller. And people outside the endurance nerd community are more willing to sport an Apple Watch with regular clothes than the traditionally clunky Garmin models.
(A certain degree of the Garmin clunkiness is an outgrowth of their better-suitedness to, for example, long hiking trips -- but as with everything, specialization comes with tradeoffs.)
For $450 you can have Instinct 2X Solar, which is a very useful tool watch, surprisingly functional without phone connection and with a month of battery life. Can probably be used without ever connecting to a smartphone, I'm not 100% sure but everything seems to be configurable from the watch itself. Almost useless for reading text messages though. Basically a polar opposite to Apple Watch for a similar price.
Pebble is nice as a concept, with E-Ink and easily programmable watchfaces, but its hardware is arguably quite ugly, and has way less sensors.
The target market is affluent endurance athletes and outdoor enthusiasts. It's a limited niche but Garmin has a bunch of other smart watches targeting different customers at a range of price points.
I got really disappointed in Apple's hardware when my mom bought an Apple Watch.
The software is entirely user-unfriendly. For one example: she wanted to use a photo as the standard background image. However, the clock digits could only be positioned such that they appeared over the faces in the photo. I cannot believe that Apple created such bad UX. This is really amateur level.
Garmin’s hardware has always been exceptionally good, given epic battery life (~30 days even with all-day heart rate), exceptional sensors, and durability.
Their software has traditionally been pretty rough. That’s coming from a customer and developer. Mainly that was because they had various software platforms for various families of device, so each feature needed to be built for each family of watch separately.
They’ve unified that now to one main platform (picking the Forerunner’s platform), so it will be very interesting to see if they narrow the gap with Apple around software.
The next big innovation will likely be sensors. This still uses the elevate 5 sensor that launched a few years ago.
The software feels a bit clunky but I was very surprised when I plugged my Fenix watch to USB and found it mounted as a storage device with all of the data directly accessible as files. The watch would be perfectly usable without the cloud and using an alternative app like gadgetbridge. This should be the standard, but it isn't, and it is more important to me than a sleek UI
I have used their watches, but the bike computer and radar are the same, and it’s really helpful.
You can plug in and access folders and files.
Also: the Garmin Varia bike radar is absolute gold. I feel more unsafe without it than I do without a helmet.
I want to jump on this as the varia is easily the best safety feature for biking i have used beside helmets and arguably supercedes helmet since this warns you before a car shows up.
Its steep price wise but if you are doing a lot of road cycljng on rural roads and fast traffic where one hit is the end its an easy to justify life insurance product.
> Also: the Garmin Varia bike radar is absolute gold. I feel more unsafe without it than I do without a helmet.
Interesting, I didn't know such a thing existed. However, I'm struggling to understand the need. I ride my bike every day but I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.
Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?
US. I ride shoulders on semi-rural highways. Sometimes there will be traffic in the opposing lane creating enough noise that I don't hear the vehicles coming from behind. With my Varia, I get warned well before they show up. It has even detected "hidden" vehicles that I couldn't visibly see -- like a small car trailing a truck.
I have one of the Garmin varia radar lights and feel exactly the same about them.
> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?
UK; It's handy for knowing when on town or country roads without too much traffic; it can typically spot fast moving vehicles before you can hear or see them in mirrors (let alone if relying solely furtive glimpses over shoulder)
Tbh, nice as it is to be notified about approaching vehicles, what I really like is that the light flashes at proportionately faster rates in response to the speed of the approaching vehicles. The changing rate does a better job of attracting the attention of drivers than constant illumination, and is also a psychological hack that makes the driver think they are being watched [0] and consequently behave slightly better when they do pass.
Cumulatively the light/radar combination is a winner because it makes cycling more pleasant _and_ reduces the chances of getting hit by drivers.
[0] In some of the newer units they are being watched as well, as they have camera's in them - apparently unit is a bit chunky and video quality in low-light is ropey.
Buses! The front of the bus arrives much earlier than the engine up the back where most of the noise comes from
Especially since engine noise is increasingly a thing of the past - in my part of London, only one out of ~20-ish routes still uses hybrid buses.
Almost all delivery vehicles and taxis round here are BEV too, along with a good chunk of private cars. Can be very hard to hear them above wind noise and general background hubbub, especially when wearing a helmet.
> I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.
With a headwind I often don’t hear cars behind me at all, so I can see the use case
Yeah you probably don't need it in slow moving urban traffic but I saw a video with some bike packers in Australia who used Varia. They were on rural roads shared with road trains.
Road trains a very big, move very fast and they don't stop for anyone on a bike. So knowing they are coming up on you from a distance gives you time to get off the road.
That's a very special usage case but I think any rural road with fast moving traffic would also benefit from the early warning even with just cars to contend with.
I just... dont understand why you dont hear them coming?
Do people with varia use headphones or something?
I don't have issues being aware about upcoming traffic, in either city traffic or rural environments. The only exception would be in heavy headwind situations
Going 35-45kmh, most of what you hear is wind. Cars approaching 80kmh and beyond on a country rode. Garmin warns me 5+ seconds before the car passes me. I hear the car usually around 1s before it does (if that). Listening music (bone conducting) amplifies this.
You find the bone amplifying music works in wind? I figure it just adds more noise? Always tempted… its better than in ear for sure for safety.
it works most of the times. Unless its super windy, it's enough to make a long ride more pleasurable with tunes for motivation/boost. I can't listen podcasts on them as I can't make out the individual words. It's better than the alternatives.
For running they're much better!
What sort of cycling do you do?
Coupd that make hearing cars easier somehow?
The Caria is good in noisy situations or with multiple cars approaching. Unusually fast car approach get an extra alert.
I have used it with headphones but usually don’t. You detect the cars far earlier than you do by hearing them.
Not op but I also have a varia and feel safer for it. Living in Switzerland, cycle a lot on public curvy roads in the alps. Often I don’t hear someone coming if I’m focusing on something else important - like traffic in the other direction - or I don’t realise there’s actually more than one car about to overtake which the Varia also shows. Generally turning your head around to check is a bit dodgy!
Why not just use a side mirror? I use one and it is so convenient
The Varia can give you auditory alerts so you don't have to take your eyes off the road and look in your mirror. In addition, it can tell you how many cars are behind you with a range that would be hard to see in your mirror.
Varia can supplement bike mirrors with an early warning that a vehicle is approaching. Some people don't like bike mirrors (they look dorky), but personally I feel half-blind when cycling without a mirror.
Are modified ebikes popular where you live yet? They can be very fast, very quiet and will do a lot of damage if you collide with one.
> Where in the world do you live
I’m in New Zealand. I ride in the road in town and out in the hills at the weekend.
The way I use it is to look down, see if a car is behind, then look behind before pulling out. I don’t bother looking back if there is a car close (the range must be around 100-150m I think?).
It also yells louder if the car is approaching fast. The integrated light changes how it flashes when it sees a car.
In group ride with talking etc, it’s helpful too as it usually doesn’t pick up bikes (unless the guy behind is an absolute unit) and the squawk of an approaching car is helpful for the group.
Electric cars and busses no longer sneak up on me, it’s great use of tech on a bike.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/698001/
Ugh, I lived in Dunedin for a year, and it's the worst place I've cycled by a considerable margin. Much worse than e.g. Ireland or England, which also isn't exactly bicycle-friendly. The infrastructure isn't even half-bad, but the behaviour of motorists was just the worst. Kiwis are like that old Goofy cartoon where he's all nice and friendly until he gets in his car, after which he becomes a raging maniac.
So yeah, with "New Zealand" as context a device like that makes more sense.
> I'm struggling to understand the need. I ride my bike every day but I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.
Not get rear-ended by a car? There's also model with a camera to collect evidence. I have the one without the camera, just the radar and a light.
> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?
Central and Eastern Europe. Whenever I share the roads with cars. Although I'm more relaxed on outdoor paths or gravel roads where I don't have to keep an eye on cars all the time.
For MTB you probably don't need it, but in road scenarios it's great.
Anywhere that has cyclists sharing the road with cars.
Would you say it is better or worse than a mirror?
Better but circumstance dependent. Its for rural roads, and less busy roads. Not urban traffic
You shouldn't feel safe riding a bicycle without a helmet because because accidents have not fallen since people began wearing helmets. Ski accidents haven't fallen, either, since they started wearing hemets.
You have so many negatives in your statement I had to read it 3 times as a native English speaker to realize it doesn't make sense. We can make cycling safer in multiple dimensions simultaneously: 1. we learn from the Dutch about infrastructure and integrating cycling into the transportation fabric (slow and expensive), 2. the Dutch start wearing helmets (fast and cheap).
There's so much the world can learn from the dutch when it comes to traffic
First and last and only time I saw actual brain on a street was in Rotterdam. I did wear a helmet in NL.
and the Dutch can learn to use helmets from the rest of the world instead of making fun of them (I'm Dutch).
This only began to become a problem with the introduction of e-bikes. Old people especially are not wearing them on e-bikes. On regular bikes where you are going 15km/h you should not have to wear a helmet. The infrastructure in the Netherlands protects cyclists enough (in general) and a fall at that speed is not really that dangerous (in general, again).
Though an e-bike goes 25km/h. This is a lot more dangerous and people should definitely wear a helmet when driving one.
I’m far from being the quickest cyclist out there and and my commutes are in the 30kmh range when it isn’t windy.
There are plenty of e-bikes that pass me, and I’d estimate they are doing 40kmh.
Not wearing a helmet would be mad.
What infrastructure can protect you from hitting the ground with your head when you're on a bike?
who goes a max of 15 km/h on a bicycle? You'd get passed by a very fast runner. I easily go 25+ on my fully loaded bikepacking bike on typical commuting terrain.
also, nit: you don't drive a bicycle
My wife enjoys telling the story from her time living in the Hague of watching drunk girls in mini skirts all attempting to ride side-by-side to keep each other upright, and...somehow managing to do it.
The bones of their software are over 20 years old at this point, back to the Forerunner 101 which came out in 2003, predating modern smartphones. You had to plug them into a COM port to download your runs. I have Garmin watches from this time period that still work, but I can't figure out how to get any data from them. They're also issued in some military circles where they're not allowed to connect to a smartphone, and the lack of a microphone is a plus.
What, that's amazing. Sounds like my next watch will probably be a Garmin.
I just wish their “most rugged watch” (the Instinct) was sapphire like the Fenix :(
I've had multiple Instincts as well as Fenix. I am exceptionally hard on watches. I don't take them off when I'm working on anything out in the shop. The sapphire of the Fenix is not a silver bullet and the case on the Instinct does a lot more to prevent direct hits to the face than you'd think, at least in my experience.
The Instinct is also easier to polish than the sapphire. I've tried to buff out blemishes on Fenix watches I've gone to sell and have had a hard time getting them back to flawless. I've not had the same issue on any Instinct.
That being said I'm really tempted by the new Fenix Pro. I have an inReach device I take with me for backcountry snowmobiling in the mountains and I've forgotten it a time or two. I never forget my watch and always have some extra battery with me.
I just wish I could get basically the same specs as Fenix in a non-color and highly efficient display like Instinct. The 2 Solar is my daily watch and the battery life + built in flashlight make it my almost perfect watch. I don't even care about LTE but if I could get Instinct with inReach that would be a perfect setup IMO.
Garmin does a lot of things right, but pricing is not one of them. Especially given they're moving towards subscriptions which is counterintuitive to their buyer market. I really don't want anything AI in my watch.
Totally with you on everything you’ve said. I’ve had a few Instincts and Fenixes, and yeah - I think the Instinct 2 was my favourite watch of all time (currently using an Apple Watch Mega Super Ultra), but I loved the concept of the 7X… just a shame I couldn’t get used to that red tone on the solar.
I found the same thing too - the instinct face gets protected while the Fenix is almost a brick and rock magnet :(
So far, I think it’s only the black Tacticals that look like they would hide more surface scratches… but I’ve never had one yet.
But, yeah - think if the Instinct 3 Solar came with Sapphire, I’d sleep better at night, so much so that it would probably be my forever watch!
Did it mount as MTP or USB mass storage?
"This should be the standard"
well the reason its not common is because they cant charge you their subscription fee integration or something like that
The clunkiness of the software is a feature to me. I don't want my watch to have the slickest apps, I want it to be pretty utilitarian, rugged and functional. My Instinct Crossover is pretty perfect for that.
The only thing that I think could be better (for me) would be a very rudimentary basemap view in addition to the existing breadcrumb trail functionality.
It's not the clunkiness of the software that's the problem, it's the bugs. They frequently introduce regression defects in new releases. Like on my watch, suddenly structured track running workouts stopped tracking speed correctly and it took them like a year to fix it. I get the impression that they have a lack of test automation and too few human QA Engineers to manually test every feature on every release of every one of their many devices.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...
Yeah I'm still mad at garmin for a bug they introduced to my Oregon 550 GPS which caused data to be lost. They actually broke the track archiving feature so badly it looked like no one had even tested it.
Garmin routinely stops all development for even the flagship model just a few years back, bugs be damned
my Fenix6 still doesn't work correctly, no more updates
People dropping $1000+ on a Garmin better understand that's just for a few years, not a decade
On my Fenix 6, Bluetooth volume control broke after a few years, and now the volume slider does nothing, which the hivemind confirmed.
So, it is in fact worse than not getting upgrades, the software actually deteriorated over its lifecycle.
on the flip side, my 12 year old garmin fenix 3 still works great. I finally upgraded to an instinct crossover last year because I wanted the mechanical hands and a smaller face, but the old Fenix is still great.
> The clunkiness of the software is a feature to me.
Yes!
But it seems they are getting more and more in the _smartwatch_ territory.
It took me more time than I wanted to disable any kind of notifications on my new Enduro 3. And a few weeks ago, with the latest update, I got the "morning thing" and "evening thing" enable automatically, so I had once again to get back in the settings to disable them.
Previously with the Fenix I set a watch face, activities screen and I hadn't to change a thing for years. It just worked as a watch and an activity recorder. Exactly what I want from this kind of device.
The software has gotten a lot better since they made that change.
That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Especially without MIP displays.
The Enduro series is now the traditional Fenix series.
Also this Fenix 8 Pro is not getting reviewed well by the usual people (des, ray, etc) it's not a good watch for the price. The sacrifices made for both LTE and the new display are too great.
How much better is it now?
I hate Garmin with a passion because their watches are effectively region-locked by language support, an insanely consumer-hostile move in this day. I was unable to use any features related to text or whatsapp messages because the watch shockingly could not decode messages in my native language.
Their software was also so flaky that I was woken up by a faulty vibration alert in the middle of the night multiple times during the few months I wore the Garmin Instinct Solar, and at least twice I was unable to fall back to sleep. That is, the watch was supposed to be in silent or DND mode, but the watch probably crashed or reset in the middle of the night, losing the silent or DND state, allowing an alert to go through. The sleep tracking was also very inaccurate, and sleep tracking is the single most valuable metric for me.
To this day I fantasize posting a video where I smash my Garmin watch to pieces alerting other people how bad it is. Still, the hardware was near perfect and it's hard to hate the watch itself. But because of the software issues, it was no better than a dumb watch to me. I hate Garmin the company.
Garmin devices have historically had two regions for languages: Asia and everywhere else. I suspect this is due to some legacy limitations in their proprietary OS around Unicode support. Years ago, it was very difficult to implement full support for all languages on a single device with very limited hardware and battery power.
Historically, in order to get support for one of the Asian languages, you typically had to buy the watch in the exact right country, not anywhere else.
So how bad is it if you're "just" eastern european? I.e. latin alphabet but extra squigglies and ofc not an en_US locale.
Same sentiment here. I constantly get 90+ scores when I wake up feeling like shit.
A 20€ chinese smart band combined with Sleep as Android provided much more accurate sleep tracking than a 800€ Garmin.
The only 2 garmin specific features I use are (compared to what I had before):
1. LED flashlight, love always having a pretty good light on my wrist (I'm talking about the actual flashlight some Garmins have, not the "use display as a flashlight" feature) 2. GPS that does not drain phone battery 3. Looks
Everything else for me is worse than a cheap chinese smart band.
are you talking about the titan pg or equivalent? I've seen reviews so far saying GPS and HRM are not that accurate?
That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore.
Depending on your definition of “cohort”, that’s simply not true. I see plenty of late-model Fenix in the wild. And, yeah, there’s a vocal minority of folks that prefer MIPS (often based on outdated or flat wrong assumptions, like “AMOLED isn’t visible in sunlight”, which is how you know the speaker has never used an AMOLED screen).
As to the latest model, “not a good watch for the price” is a gimme when the thing costs two grand (U. S.). I’m at a loss as to what a watch might do to make it worth two grand to me.
The battery life difference is huge between OLED and MIPS. The Fenix 8 Solar gets 30-45 days of battery life. Fenix 8 OLED can get 28 days, if you turn off the always-on display; otherwise, 12 days.
A good reminder here for people who don't do lots of activities on their watch and think that we just don't want to charge for a month.
GPS uses battery. So having a watch that can last a month, for us means it will last a couple weeks of constant running/cycling/etc.
This is in stark comparison to a smart watch.
For me it’s not so much about the readability in sunlight, but about being able to glance at your watch without moving your wrist and about the watch not emitting light in dark environments. I find that distracting and I like the stealthiness of MIPS. That being said, if the minimum brightness is low enough and battery life with always-on high enough I think I could live with it, but with wrist gestures completely disabled except during activity.
Fenix 6 Pro MIPS guy here, you can pry that $600 watch from my cold, dead wrist!
I tried AMOLED once - it lasted about 3 weeks and 200 miles before I sold it.
AMOLED is visible in sunlight, yeah, but even with always-on it only brightens when you lift your wrist...which is always infuriatingly late, coming moments after I look at my wrist. And because they want to minimize that annoying latency, it's constantly blinking on and off with false positives demanding attention like a strobe light. Maybe I have poor form with trekking poles or an over-sensitive/miscalibrated IMU, but I remember one particular foggy dawn hike when was triggering with basically every step. The silent morning light and the mist off the lake should have been magical, instead they just reflected the blinky light on my wrist.
I stare at glowing, colorful screens from 9-5 and struggle with distractions that similarly demands my eyeballs in the morning and evening. When I go into the woods it's because I want to leave those screens behind, not put an ever-larger, ever-more-vibrant one on my arm.
(My wrist will probably be dead and very cold someday when the weather changes and I try to push my ultralight 40F bag to lower temps than it is capable of and couldn't send an SOS because my F6P doesn't have sat comms. You shouldn't have to wait long, it's September...jk, don't worry.)
Probably going Coros or Suunto next, Garmin has lost the plot.
Yeah my 7x is going to last me a very very long time.
It's MIP not MIPS and you are very misinformed on the reasons we prefer it.
One of the frustrations I've had with a few of Garmin's recent releases is how their high-end MIPS watches, Enduro 3 & Fenix 8 Solar, seem to inherit the same thick, glare-y, ultra-durable glass I assume the Fenix 8 OLED uses, which does a number on the readability of their MIPS displays outdoors.
I've never owned the F8 OLED, but I do have an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and the AWU2 is actually more readable than the E3/F8S in all light conditions except high-noon ultra-direct sunlight (which I'm very rarely outdoors in, because, you know, skin cancer).
I ended up returning those, and got an Instinct 3 MIPS earlier this year, which is more readable outdoors across a variety of light conditions.
The solar glass has definitely been a downgrade on the MIPS display.
The MIP display is disappearing from the Instinct range too, I hope they keep at least one very rugged MIP unit.
Aren’t the Instinct 3 Solar their MIP version?
> so it will be very interesting to see if they narrow the gap with Apple around software.
they might be able to narrow the gap with Apple wrt software, but I don't think (at least in the US) Garmin will ever gain marketshare vs. the Apple Watch, especially now with the Ultra for the simple reason that Garmin just cannot offer an equivalent experience on iPhones because of Apple.
We desperately need antitrust intervention to force Apple to open up iOS to allow other smartwatches to take advantage of the same APIs that the Apple Watch does.
If that happens I think Apple will quickly find that they cannot compete on an even playing field.
I thought this when I had an Apple Watch, but I’ve really not found much that I miss. I occasionally found it useful to action notifications, but dismiss is almost always all I want - and that works. Apple Maps doesn’t seem to care about being useful, but Google Maps does the right thing with notifications so I just use that instead. Music controls work, and they’re more reliable because it’s trying to be less magic. Siri is as useless on the watch as anywhere else. I think the watch worked as a camera control and I might have used that once.
I do agree that Apple should be forced to compete on a fair playing field, but I don’t think they do a good job of taking advantage of it with Apple Watch.
I hate this argument. Android exists. It’s 50% of the phones out there.
If Garmin’s products are so amazing why aren’t they killing it with Android users?
From other people in these comments sounds like their own software quality is holding the back.
If not being on the iPhone was truly the main problem, they’d be doing way better.
Garmin is killing it across the market, their revenue growing YoY despite commanding price premium that goes to 2-3x the price of apple watches.
I hope the Edge series will also benefit from that code unification.
I'm missing from Garmin usage of Inertial Navigation System (INS [1]). The sensors are in the devices, accelerometers and gyroscopes. We've using them in airliners for decades (very basic INS was available with the B707, high quality from the B747/A300 onwards), in cheap car navigation (that's why you can drive through tunnels) and most smartphones (you've probably noticed that also your phone handles five kilometer long tunnels well). As far as I know, high quality INS could bring a B747 over the atlantic. My Edge has an accelermoeter and gyroscope but I see often straight lines in the mountains, in the city-center, in tunnels and garages and when the cloud coverage + trees work together. And it not just the recorded route, it is also the current speed and distance and precise turn-by-turn navigation.
Garmin, Wahoo, Karoo keep adding more of GNSS. GPS, GALILEO, BAIDU, GLONASS, GLONAS 5GHz, Multiband and ground stations (that approach failed). That improved the signal remitance somewheat but the mentioned natural conditions still interrupt or reduce that GNSS quality. Because it is external! External navigation depends on external guidance. You cannot fix that by adding more. And hostile elements figured out, that is easy to jam or spoof[2] the GNSS signals.
Using INS in combination with GNSS should work rather well on a roadbike. Usually mixing the signals from INS and GNSS depending on quality. Except where GNSS is turned off for reasons like jamming/spoofing e.g. in eastern europe. But usually INS needs only to cover a gap of 30 seconds to five minutes. INS is probably less useful on a mountainbike (vibrations and impacts) but especially in the woods GNSS fails...so maybe even here it can help. I think Garmin uses the sensors for other kind of metrics on mountainbikes already (I think the call it grit/flow?).
My smartphone handles a tunnel well. My bike-computer also should do it :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system [2] At least GALILEO has some protection against spoofing?
PS: The integrated LTE-Modem could also benefit security in cycling. There was a sad incident during the last roadbike world-championships in switzerland and a life lost. Cycling computers detect crashes and can send SMS with coordinates but they need a smartphone (radio isn't allowed and smartphones aren't robust).
> Garmin’s hardware has always been exceptionally good, given epic battery life (~30 days even with all-day heart rate), exceptional sensors, and durability.
The battery life thing is really compelling - however I need ECG and AF monitoring and Apple lead the pack here as far as I can tell.
Fitbit seems to come close, but having multiple doctors state the need for an Apple Watch is quite the endorsement.
Check out Withings ScanWatch if you want ECG and a long battery life.
The passive HR monitor, sleep tracking, SpO2, etc. are all shite compared to Apple but the ECG thing should be good enough I guess.
My main selling point is that it lasts forever (20+ days), and even when the battery dies it still works like a watch for weeks. It looks like a proper watch, it has notifications so I need to look at my phone less, and it does the tracking OK enough that it's useful to check it out. They also have a BP monitor with ECG and a stethoscope that automatically recognizes some heart problems - so if you're worried about heart problems might be worth looking into.
I would really like if they could get their HR sensor/activity tracking up there with Apple but it looks like no company out there is able to get into that league.
> and even when the battery dies it still works like a watch for weeks
Wha? The watch part is mechanical?
Or you mean the smart part turns itself off way before you completely run out of battery, saving some power to keep moving the hands for "weeks" ?
Power reserve mode, not mechanical.
>When the battery level reaches 10%, you will receive a notification. At 10% you can no longer run a Respiratory Scan. When the battery reaches 0%, your watch activates power reserve mode. Only the analog clock, step, and sleep monitoring features remain available, and only for about a few days. In power reserve mode you will no longer be able to start an ECG or oxygen saturation measurement on demand via the watch display.
It only happened once or twice, I was surprised that once you charge you still see the step tracking stats when it syncs. I remember using it in this mode for over a week when I was moving and couldn't be bothered to find the charger.
Thanks for this.
The Garmin Fenix 8 device covered in this article has an ECG.
https://share.google/IRWeaZMatrAD7Oyxr
Thanks for this.
MonkeyC was interesting, but at the time (2019?) we couldn't do a real-time type of app, that updated frequently with live data from a mobile app. It was a shame too. I think they have a lot of potential, and wish them luck. I personally just use the Apple Watch out of convenience of being in the Apple ecosystem. I do yearn for at least a week long battery life out of my smartwatch.
Apple put an overpower, power hungry SOC in their smartwatch, so in term of software, i dont think Garmin can reach their level.
But what Garmin can do, do really well.
Third party app development must be a nightmare, based on how much of a nightmare it is even just to install and use those apps.
But I must say, I wish other appliances would be as intuitive as the built in fitness tracking apps and they controls. Somehow it's just consistent, does the right thing, and works reliably. With only 5 buttons.
It truly is. You're forced to use Monkey-C, a homebrewed language that's probably the single worst language that anyone has to program in: https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/monkey-c/
I’m a garmin user that moved from android to iPhone several years ago. I really miss the ability to filter notifications that hit the watch, which is still missing on garmin iOS software. I don’t think it’s a restricted api problem, as other smartwatches can filter notifications
In IOS, you can not get list of installed app, so you can not do notif filter purely from app.
Notif is delivered by OS itself, through ANCS.
> Their software has traditionally been pretty rough.
I remember when one of their products was actually quite nice, until they lost the whole team...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196996
Those comments are funny to read 15 years later.
Wow. Cookiecaper has some insane comments in that thread. Imagine changing your whole life just because your employer expects you to. No thanks.
The absolute worst experience I had with a Fenix watch (I think the 5x) was that when it could not read my HR from the wrist due to sweat or whatever, which happened often, it would log whatever the last reading was even though it could be wildly incorrect. This completely destroyed my trust in them. Having had experience in aviation I would really expect unreliable readings to be marked as such and rather not display anything than showing incorrect readings.
> Garmin’s hardware has always been exceptionally good, given epic battery life
It is good to know the for measuring sleep, which is not a selling point of Garmin, it's far from being as accurate as Oura. But battery life is so incredible that makes you wonder how someone could wear other expensive smart watches (e.g. Apple/Samsung) for physical activities.
> Their software has traditionally been pretty rough. That’s coming from a customer and developer. Mainly that was because they had various software platforms for various families of device, so each feature needed to be built for each family of watch separately.
The software feels like a dumb terminal from the web, it doesn't work right without an Internet connection.
"As accurate as Oura" or "as is Oura"? The missing word is adding some ambiguity here :)
(Edited :) )
Has Oura sleep tracking accuracy been independently validated against real medical devices? From what I've seen, all consumer wearable devices give inconsistent data and none are really what you could call accurate.
Yes, there are several studies. One is this [1]. I have not tried the Oura 4 myself but once I test it I can compare with other devices. Clearly sample=1 but I found big errors with some watches.
[1] "Accuracy Assessment of Oura Ring Nocturnal Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability in Comparison With Electrocardiography in Time and Frequency Domains: Comprehensive Analysis": https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8808342/
Apple is now 10 years into Apple Watch, and it is just so far behind Garmin.
Heart monitoring is somewhere Garmin is trailing.
The latest Apple optical wrist heart rate sensor is marginally more accurate than Garmin in some situations. But as a practical matter it's kind of moot because anyone who really cares about accurate heart rate data uses an electrical chest strap anyway.
> anyone who really cares about accurate heart rate data uses an electrical chest strap anyway.
I want to check, but not for exercise, for AF detection. Surely no one wears a chest strap full time.
It's 2k.
If you've got a Garmin device check out GarminDB [0]. Garmin actually exposes an API that you can access with your credentials and get the raw activity, heart rate, etc data.
[0]: https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB
As someone who isn't the target market for this, is there significant demand for this? $1200 for a smart watch that'll be e-waste in a few years is steep, plus $8/mo to keep it working (though I guess if you're going to pay four figures for a smart watch the $96/yr probably makes no difference).
I guess if you intend to carry a watch anyway, you can save the few ounces and leave your phone at home? And maybe a few ounces for a battery pack to charge a phone? But at the same time, the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout.
It's more of a PR/interest piece rather than anything that moves the needle for buyers.
Garmin buyers typically choose the brand due to the much longer battery life, however Garmin doesn't have any magic battery technology - the longer battery life is simply from less full time services. If enabling the additional hardware functions that bring it on-par with the ultra, the ultra actually has a longer battery life.
The other issue is that both brands diverge in how they offer satellite connectivity. For iPhones, satellite connectivity includes messaging, sending locations, and carrier-provided functionality via satellite (e.g. SMS), alongside with the road-side assistance and SOS features. These are included at no cost (at this time).
Garmin on the other hand starts with a $40 activation fee, then a minimum per month charge of $8 USD which then still charges 50c per text message, $1 for voice messages and 60c an hour for location tracking. Garmin's also offers a $50 USD per month plan where some of these tariffs are included, but notably voice messages are limited to 50 units before reverting back to $1 each. The $40 activation fee prevents users from saving money by switching off the functionality when not needed.
They are built to last. I've had my Fenix 5 for at least 7 years and it shows no signs of slowing or dying. Battery still lasts 5 days or so with normal use. Think it's just stopped getting software updates.
Admittedly they were a bit cheaper back then (but this will one will be too next year)...
Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but I have zero faith that any device whose primary distinguishing feature is a subscription connectivity service will be usable in more than five years.
The oldest still supported Garmin inReach device is the original DeLorme inReach from 2011 (Garmin bought DeLorme).
That at least bodes well for long term support.
I suspect that subscription supported devices will actually get better support than standard Garmin products.
What does Garmin gain by killing off an older device if the owner still pays for a subscription?
Also, it's not like this is a hypothetical question, they've been around for decades. They do have a track record you can refer to, instead of just blind faith.
Selling you a new $1200 device.
See: Garmin nüvi.
It's not as though my cell phone will continue working forever. Nest discontinued Nest Aware. I've gotten bitten by this exact phenomenon more times than I care to admit.
I don't care about Garmin's reputation, it's simply a fact that having satellites talking to specialized devices requires a critical mass of subscriptions. There's a chain of vendors that need to all be on board to support all the hardware that keeps those devices online and updated, and at some point they will be discontinued. Probably sooner rather than later, especially when plenty of new phones make the functionality here redundant.
> See: Garmin nüvi.
You'll have to elaborate, that's a wide product line. And they still sell map updates for many Nuvi devices: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1456/pn/010-D0743-00/#devices
i'm an owner of their Garmin 945 LTE released over 4 years ago. I have paid the subscription since. The device is still working very well, still got an update a couple of months ago. Battery still lasts about 5 days.
At least LTE doesn't require involvement on Garmin's part to keep it working.
They are well built, work very well, and provide metrics that motivate me to exercise more and monitor my progress. There is a touch screen but the buttons are simply a better and easier way to interact with it. It looks cool, and there definitely is a "garmin watch" tribe. Over time, you build an emotional relationship with it.
I got a Garmin Epix 2 watch 3 years ago as a replacement for the Apple Watch ULtra, which turned out to be a terrible sports watch. The Garmin still has two weeks battery life and gets all the functionality upgrades the newer watches are getting. More importantly, it looks great and does exactly what I want it to do simply, and reliably. At the time I also had a whoop. Now I only have the Garmin and it does all I need. It's one of those things you need to try to truly get.
I'm not sold on the prices involved but I could really do with satellite emergency calling for MTB rides where there's no phone signal.
That's far more common than you might think even in areas that should, on paper, have coverage.
I already take my phone for that reason but I think it's far more likely to be damaged in a crash than a smaller watch.
I currently have a Garmin Epix I've had for a few years that I'm otherwise happy with. I would consider switching for satellite SOS if the prices get less crazy.
I'd even consider an Apple watch despite it not working with my power meter and other sensors.
I think there is demand. Hikers or trail runners may buy this for peace of mind, plus the other capabilities like maps.
> the absolute last time I'd ever want to be tapping out a text message on my watch is when I'm in need of rescue through satellite message. In the most genuine sense possible, I really don't know who the actual target audience is that's not just buying it for the clout
If you're truly in danger I think there's a button to contact rescue.
$1200 is stupid expensive, my Fenix 6 Pro was half that. The F6P was worth every one of those 60,000 pennies, which is coincidentally approximately how many hours I've worn it since purchasing it in 2018.
I always leave my phone at home for running, biking, hiking, kayaking, etc: not being tethered is part of the appeal.
The subscriptions for this new one or for InReach are infuriating, and they even recently made it worse because you can no longer effectively deactivate it. I only do 3 or 4 real backcountry expeditions in a year, I don't need this activated for 12 months.
I used to carry an InReach until the MBAs decided I was cheating them out of surplus cash that they could demand. Now I have an ACR PLB1 instead, no subscription but it can still call in the cavalry if I break my ankle twenty miles from civilization.
I would buy this if (honestly, when) the price drops by half, or better yet the Enduro version with a MIP screen. Some rich sucker will probably want to trade theirs in when the $3000 Fenix 9 Supreme comes out....
I feel 1200 is not that bad for what it offers. Also if we're talking Fenix 8: there's a cheaper version that has the same software and features but is like 900 or something (simpler design and hardware). The 1200 USD is the most expensive OLED + Titanium with Sapphire glass edition AFAIK.
It beats having to buy a running watch AND a scuba diving computer AND an oxygen saturation sensor AND some kind of sleep monitor. And it's nice for surfing and sleeping better and jetlag recovery tips and heat aclimation and checking the pressure sensor to see when airplane cabin pressure starts dropping and tons more. After a while I noticed tons of other random interesting things too: when HRV goes down for a few days, I'll know I'll be sick 1 to 2 weeks later, when resting heart rate is like 55 or higher (high for me) I probably did exercise too close to bed time or am having sleeping probems, etc.
IMO super cool that it does all of those and more very well.
They've ratcheted the price up each release to change your threshold of what a fitness watch should cost. Same with phones and cars.
A $300 Forerunner 235 did all those things except the scuba stuff, which only a small number of people need (and most of those people really want an actual dive computer when their life is on the line deep underwater).
But the Current Forerunner 165 is $250 and still does most of those things (everything the 235 did), while having upgraded sensors and GPS from the 235. Garmin still makes excellent entry level fitness watches for most people and when I look around my run club, that is what most people buy.
Edit Corrected to 165, not 265.
garmin has been selling $1200 watches for a long time, so they must have some data by now on whether or not it's a good plan.
I feel like Garmin watches are kind of slept on by normies. They seem to have a niche for fitness enthusiasts. I got one primarily because it looks like a normal watch and not a tech product. But I do appreciate the fitness tracking.
I've had the same one for 5 years and it's still solid.
I agree, it's the right level of smart for me. That said, while it's squarely in the "fitness tracker" niche, I think it is very popular with anyone who has even a passing interest in running, cycling, etc. The last few years I have seen loads of people around the office wearing one.
Garmin sort of intentionally did this to set up a moat, after their GPS business went the way of the dodo.
Garmin it's still heavily used in boats among other things.
I wouldn't want to go into the lobster season without the ability to track my pods.
If by GPS you specifically mean car navigation. Because almost the entirety of Garmin as a company is built around putting GPS into various things including wearables.
But even in automotive they pivoted to working with car OEMs instead of relying on sale of independent devices.
Never seen a Garmin car navigation device.
Aerospace, Garmin was, is, and probably will be big
They were definitely a major player for a long time prior to smartphones becoming the number one GPS solution (for most cars). Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-sGHMivwo
I remember their in car navigation being huge in the 2000s in the US, maybe 2005 or so. Probably a lot of people know the brand just for that.
It actually is what appealed to me in how it is presented. Can you give me an idea on how open it is? Do I need register an account to run it?
I am not sure what you can do without an account, because I created an account on day 1.
It connects to the phone over Bluetooth. Many operations need your phone to have internet. There is a kind of primitive app platform. The only app I really use is for Home Assistant, it makes https requests to HA over the phone. I connected it to Strava too, it can realtime send heart rate to that app without going to the internet, but it required jumping a few hoops in settings.
Thank you. This is useful to me. I will look into it more closely, but I think that will likely not be for me.
You can use the device as a fitness tracker without registering an account. And you can download activity files with a USB cable. But anything more, including the satellite connectivity, requires registering an account.
Care to explain how does a normal watch look like nowadays and does a fitness product? I guess I am clueless in this. I wear Mi Band 4.
Mine is a Garmin Fenix 6s.
If you do a quick Google images for Garmin Fenix 6s and then for mi band 4, I think you will see the visual contrast we're talking about.
Still waiting on literally anyone but Apple to make a fitness watch/tracker that syncs over Bluetooth.
(Stealing the cellular data connection over Bluetooth to sync to the cloud does not count. True Bluetooth sync works when there is no cell service.)
I didn't realize this. Just verified on my Forerunner 965, if I put my phone in Airplane Mode, turn off Wi-Fi, leave Bluetooth on, then Garmin Connect disabled the sync button and says "No Internet connection".
This is why when Garmin Connect has outages you can’t sync the watch to the phone, it’s a pretty bad architecture. It should sync to the phone without internet or any services and then use internet to sync from the phone to the cloud.
It's utterly bizarre. I was impacted by that outage a year or so ago and they claimed that they were going provide offline syncing in the future but I still don't see it. It seems the flow is Watch ->(Bluetooth)-> Phone ->(LTE/WiFi) -> Garmin Cloud ->(LTE/WiFi) Phone. There's no reason for the Cloud step other than that Garmin wants your data but the sync won't work without it.
In my experience, airplane mode also disables Bluetooth. You would just need to turn wifi off to test this.
IME it very much doesn't. Bluetooth headphones/earphones in the airplane while on airplane mode are now part of near every flight.
As a rule, non-LTE watches upload data over Bluetooth to the app (offline), which then relays that to whatever cloud service once there’s a connection. If you don’t want the second part, install Gadgetbridge and have your pick of the supported devices[1] (keeping in mind that that support not a boolean but rather feature-per-feature, so check the details).
[1] https://gadgetbridge.org/gadgets/wearables/
This has not been my experience. If you know of a fitness tracker or smartwatch that can sync without a cloud account or cellular data connection I would be very interested. But I have not found any devices that meet those criteria.
(And GadgetBridge does not work on iOS. It is Android-only.)
Mi Band with Notify on Android works just fine with no internet access or cloud account. You do need a cloud account at some point to get the key to access the watch though.
> You do need a cloud account at some point...
This is not "without a cloud account."
I consider it to be so because the product cannot be taken away through any form of update after you have started using it without the cloud account. At that point it's basically a purchasing account and is functionally useless after that. Though I do understand the frustration. I hope Pebble releases something that is cloud free and no-service usable.
It’s not, unfortunately, and that sucks. That’s why the Gadgetbridge compatibility list specifically warns about that whenever relevant. (As far as Gadgetbridge not being present on iOS, sorry, you knew what you were buying when you came into the Apple store.)
It is, however, a very mild case of cloud suckage, because the only thing the vendor learns in the process is an association between an email address and a device, after which you (delete the vendor app and) never communicate with them again. (You could in principle use a temporary email address if you’re particularly adventurous and don’t plan to resell.)
I have a 2 year old Amazfit GTR 4. I just disabled wifi & cellular data on my phone, opened the Zepp app, pulled down to sync and it happily downloaded my today's activity to the app. And oh, compared to Apple, I only need to charge it once per two weeks (with almost everything enabled, except always on display).
Works with a Samsung watch and their app. (I wouldn't really recommend it, though.)
> Still waiting on literally anyone but Apple to make a fitness watch/tracker that syncs over Bluetooth.
Huh? Do not all FitBits do this?
And...I could not care less. Garmin needs to fix their software, I am a long time garmin user, from using garmin head units on mountain bikes for the last 30 years, using garmin watches, I have had 4 fenix watches over the years, I swapped to a Apple watch ultra this year, and as a ultra distance trail runner and mountain biker, I could not be happier. Yes, the garmin units are more rugged and can handle more abuse, yes, their battery is light years ahead, but, it does not really matter anymore, the apple watch ultra is tough enough and the battery good enough, and the software is so much better. I can download multiple different running apps, and follow a training plan with it (runna workoutoutdoors, or one of the many other ones), I can do my cross training using one of the lifting apps, like heavy or strong, I can use it with golf etc. yes, the fenix range can do all of that aswell, but the experience is just so much nicer on the ultra. I struggle to see, how garmin can compete software wise, as a single company battling the army of independant developers out there building iOS/watchOS apps. And more importantly, my ultra never crash, my fenix went through a phase, where it would randomly reboot, until garmin pushed a fix. Bugs happen, I get it, but...it's been happening now for years with garmin.
> my fenix went through a phase, where it would randomly reboot, until garmin pushed a fix
This is something that just can't happen for this kind of use case, and the fact that bugs like this repeatedly happen with Garmin is mind-blowing to me. This company makes glass cockpits- if you ask me, they need to borrow someone from that team to show their consumer electronics team how to test their product and have a sense of urgency when things break.
Ever used a Forerunner?
yup
The coverage map isn't that impressive though: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/connectivity/fenix8pro/coverage...
They're using geostationary satellites, but their Inreach stuff is using Iridium. Anyone know which satellites they're using for this, and if the coverage can be expected to increase in the future?
It's Skylo, which makes me really sad about this. This 'breaks' the InReach name completely if they're selling both global pole-to-pole Iridium and limited Skylo coverage devices under the same umbrella, and almost angling it as if you should put more faith in "just carry one less thing!" when it might doom you when you need it.
Skylo:
https://www.skylo.tech/newsroom/skylo-expands-collaboration-...
Wow. Full coverage of the contiguous US is nice, but other than that you can mostly send emergency messages in places that are already close to civilization. Places that probably have cell coverage anyways
In a ten minute drive from Issaquah, WA (major suburb 20 minutes from Seattle), I can be in the woods with no cell coverage on a mountain frequented by many hikers (parts of Cougar Mt. are especially dead to cell phones). Let alone driving another half hour and having no cell coverage at all once you walk from the trailhead.
And cell service is surprisingly poor at my home in the heart of Redmond suburbs, even. If you rely on a cell phone to get out of a tight spot, stay out of the woods, at least in the U. S. West.
Yea I don’t even hike or do anything woodsy and I frequently have zero coverage in western WA. It’s a real issue, common even, depending on where you live (I’m near the capital)
The West has much less cell service than you think especially in the pretty places.
The US in general has much less cell service than you might think. I'm on a major carrier, I get 1 bar at home, there are places in my neighborhood that effectively have none, and I'm within a few miles of state forest where there is definitely no service.
If you never leave a city or major transportation routes, you might not realize how much "dark" space there is. Those red maps the mobile service providers like to promote seem to me to be extremely deceptive.
Even in the SF Bay Area, a short road bike ride into the hills can quickly get you into areas with zero cell coverage.
Side: The 15.05 firmware upgrade is causing severe battery drain in some models. From 8 days battery life it got down to 1. Multiple reports can be found here[1].
Support's response is "go to your region-local support shop".
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/1mspank/venu_3_seve...
In some European markets, Garmin is the dominant smartwatch brand having dethroned Fitbit.
Apple does not care about being first to market.
Waiting for Coros to come out with one of these too.
I'm assuming from the blurb that its for emergencies, which makes sense.
But, given the amount of power that needs to be emitted from that watch to make it to the Satellite I assume you need to take it off your wrist first?
No, but it does require you to hold your arm in a particular way. I would be unsurprised if they're factoring in the capacitance and ground plane effect of the "big bag of saltwater" in their antenna design!
It uses the magnetic compass, accelerometer, and GPS to help you aim it at the satellite (south, ~35 degrees above the horizon).
I frequently leave my phone at home and rely on my Apple Watch for the occasional texts, map, etc. I’d prefer a Garmin but not being able to use your existing phone number is a dealbreaker.
The price is a little steep and I wonder how well a watch with its smaller antenna will work in difficult terrain. My InReach Mini often doesn’t connect in narrow canyons and I assume the smaller watch will be even worse. An emergency device that doesn’t work in an emergency is pretty useless. That’s why the iPhone satellite messaging doesn’t work for me either. In my backcountry tests it was a crapshoot whether it worked or didn’t.
Dup? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45118469
Technically the Garmin Forerunner 945 LTE existed years ago.
They also beat Apple to market a smartwatch with microLED.
That’s because after Apple Watch Edition sold like dog poop sandwiches, even Apple isn’t going to try and charge $2K for a watch. When I bought the original Apple Watch Ultra at $800, I thought that was pricey. And then Garmin these past few years has said, “hold this…”
Illegal in India?
Not just in India - https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=Dq3CEPZjfRAhtToGD4Yrz9
They were made illegal after the 2008 Mumbai Terror attacks using Thuraya based ones.
And Thailand
Why would it be? Genuine question here, is there some specific legislation in India about satellite connectivity?
Yes, illegal to have a comms device that India can’t shut off (in essence): https://www.irunfar.com/trail-and-ultrarunners-warned-not-to...
This is an insane law. I thought it was an anachronism from the 1933 law but nope they kept it in as late as 2023.
There were terror attacks which caused significantly increased regulations towards them. We saw the exact same thing in the United States after the airplane strikes on the World Trade Centers but focused on air travel restrictions.
Laws follow events. This is what will eventually kill bitcoin, when someone sets up payments for the deaths of world leaders or large scale population deaths and it actually works. At that point the financial gain of participants is outweighed by everyone else calling for it's removal.
That won’t kill Bitcoin. It’s decentralized. You truly can’t kill it. That's the beauty of building decentralized applications and it's the answer whenever some tech bro wonders why "a central relational database" wouldn't be better than Bitcoin. Yes we know it would perform better but that's not the point and not what it was engineered for.
Wouldn’t want any revolutionaries communicating over uncontrolled channels that the government can’t switch off. At least that’s what I assume the law is trying to prevent.
India has a big terrorism problem. It's easier to see everything from a western perspective.
As if Western countries don't have terrorism problems?
Not as bad as India.
The west just likes to pretend the problem isn't real.
Once you stray out of 2.4GHz there are a lot of restrictions on wireless communication. In many countries, I would even suspect the US, there are restrictions on which 5GHz channels are allowed to be used outside, how certain channels may be used even indoors etc. usually your consumer router/AP handles this for you but if you purchase an item in a different jurisdiction and then travel with it you may in reality not be compliant with local laws even with wifi.
Satellite/UHF etc has even more restrictions.
Disclaimer there is actually limits on 2.4GHz as well but I’m generally referring to wifi where the conventional channels are pretty universal
Yes. For example you can't use satellite phones in India.
And who is to know? Seems a bit withouth teeth.
I have no idea how they detect it but surprised tourists get arrested there all the time for that.
So did Google..
I mean, maybe they do, but I had such an awful time with Garmin software on their cycling devices that they will never see another dime of my money.
The Apple Watch is an imperfect replacement for a purpose-built hiking or cycling tracker, for sure, but that gap seems to be getting smaller. And people outside the endurance nerd community are more willing to sport an Apple Watch with regular clothes than the traditionally clunky Garmin models.
(A certain degree of the Garmin clunkiness is an outgrowth of their better-suitedness to, for example, long hiking trips -- but as with everything, specialization comes with tradeoffs.)
> starting at $1,200
So I am not their target market. I'll stick with Pebble, then.
For $450 you can have Instinct 2X Solar, which is a very useful tool watch, surprisingly functional without phone connection and with a month of battery life. Can probably be used without ever connecting to a smartphone, I'm not 100% sure but everything seems to be configurable from the watch itself. Almost useless for reading text messages though. Basically a polar opposite to Apple Watch for a similar price.
Pebble is nice as a concept, with E-Ink and easily programmable watchfaces, but its hardware is arguably quite ugly, and has way less sensors.
The target market is affluent endurance athletes and outdoor enthusiasts. It's a limited niche but Garmin has a bunch of other smart watches targeting different customers at a range of price points.
I got really disappointed in Apple's hardware when my mom bought an Apple Watch.
The software is entirely user-unfriendly. For one example: she wanted to use a photo as the standard background image. However, the clock digits could only be positioned such that they appeared over the faces in the photo. I cannot believe that Apple created such bad UX. This is really amateur level.