Being totally objective here on AW vs Garmin...

[eyeseeyou]

For your preference and use case, the AW is a bit overkill for you in many ways and not up to standards in the looks and battery life department. The looks and battery life were never impressive to me on the apple watch.

Although I agree with your feedback on wanting the experience to be simple but or that price range, I also want maximum functionality otherwise, I feel like a basic Fitbit would be the direction I'd go.

 

[michelob tfs]

I

This has been proven to be false a number of times by the Quantified Scientist on YouTube. The Apple Watch optical HR is the best in the business and is approx 99% accurate against a chest strap. The best Garmin right now is the Instinct 2 which is approx 83% accurate against a chest strap.

The Fenix 7 is approx 73% and the Epix 2 is a paltry 68%. I've had every model of Fenix, including the Epix 2 and have had to use a chest strap if I wanted any sort of accuracy (and therefore useful metrics). This lack of accuracy from the Garmin Optical HR has a number of implications for the usefulness of their all day metrics such as "Stress" and "Body Battery", which is exclusively recorded from their OHR sensor.

View attachment 2098373

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheQuantifiedScientist

Using the AW, there are useful apps such as "HealthFit" which gives much better health metrics than Apple and will also upload any workout on the AW to pretty much any service you use including strava, Final Surge, 2Peak, Komoot, Runalyze, Suunto, Connect, Training Peaks, Today's plan as well as a number of cloud storage services. I personally use intervals.icu website with which HealthFit will sync to. Intervals.icu is way, way better than connect for analysing data and planning workouts etc.

Intervals.icu

wish I found that. My current series 3 takes a mile to show a normal HR and doesn’t pick one up at all if it’s below freezing

 

[theotherphil]

Post-Doctoral Scientist specialising in Bioinformatics, collects and presents data in a rigorous format: ”The Garmin Optical HR sensors are wrong 20-40% of the time”.

Randoms on the internet with no data, just feelings: “Fake news”. 🤦🏼‍♂️


Anywho, enjoy your expensive watch that tells you what you want to hear. I wouldn’t be relying on any training or health and wellness metrics from the Garmin OHR Sensor. With all of my Garmin’s, I had to use the chest strap for meaningful data.

 

[akidokraja]

AW vs Garmin Heart Rate accuracy based on my experience of having many models of both manufacturers for many years:

99% of time they are identical for running, cycling, etc as long as you don’t change the pace much. Once you start sprinting and heart rate rapidly changes AW is better as it reacts faster to sudden heart rate changes. So, AW is better for HIIT and intervals but worse than chest strap.
When not doing sports they are the same but Garmin has this tendency to have crazy high or low spikes for no reason. This happens only once in a few months and lasts just a couple of minutes but it happened on every Garmin I ever had, from 5 to 6 and now 7X and Epix 2.
Garmin has 1 second update all day long while AW takes the reading every 10-15 minutes. When exercising they both have 1 second update.

Another tidbit about battery that nobody talks about is that while Garmin has much better battery during GPS tracking this goes south very fast if you listening to music through the watch.
Garmin Epix 2 with GPS tracking and listening to music with AOD on battery is only 9 hours. This is shorter than AW Ultra.

 

[Fthree]

I believe I get decent HR data while running with my Garmin (and comparable to my AW), though I swapped my Fenix/Epix for a 955. I do better with the lighter and smaller Forerunners.

Sleep data is a whole different story. I’ve been comparing the AW running watchOS 9 to my Garmin and the results differ greatly, with Garmin generally missing most times I wake up in the middle of the night and the AW getting those right. To the extent Garmin factors in sleep when calculating its recovery data, it has me questioning how good that information really is.

i love the 955 but need the ruggedness of the fenix

 

[Fozziebear71]

This has been proven to be false a number of times by the Quantified Scientist on YouTube.

“YouTube Scientist” or my actual real life experiences. Gee, wonder which one I should ignore…

 

[Fthree]

Post-Doctoral Scientist specialising in Bioinformatics, collects and presents data in a rigorous format: ”The Garmin Optical HR sensors are wrong 20-40% of the time”.

Randoms on the internet with no data, just feelings: “Fake news”. 🤦🏼‍♂️


Anywho, enjoy your expensive watch that tells you what you want to hear. I wouldn’t be relying on any training or health and wellness metrics from the Garmin OHR Sensor. With all of my Garmin’s, I had to use the chest strap for meaningful data.

I think its super important for all of us insanely well tuned athletes to have nothing but perfect HR measurements.... Use what works for you sometimes just a placebo makes a difference.

 

[PatrickNSF]

i love the 955 but need the ruggedness of the fenix

I only run marathons and the occasional 50K, so the 955 works well. I prefer the looks of the Epix, but the better accuracy of the 955’s GPS and HR sensor won out in the end.

 

[Significant1]

to be fair, neither Apple nor Garmin detect daytime naps.

Actually Apple does. I can see that going through sleep in the health app.

 

[Significant1]

The Epix is a great watch, but I was only getting about 5 days battery life. (I keep AOD activated on all my watches, and Garmin’s wrist activation isn’t nearly as good as Apple’s).

It is exactly the same. I have both and they react exactly the same. It is still not good enough for me though. I want to glance and the gesture is still to demonstrative. So I use AOD and disable the screen when napping/sleeping. Charging is no problem for me.

Epix still has an impressive battery-life for me with AOD. It is workouts with dual-band gnss that eat battery. Still way more battery-life than I need and I like the improved precision.

 

[ssmed]

The Epix is a great watch, but I was only getting about 5 days battery life. (I keep AOD activated on all my watches, and Garmin’s wrist activation isn’t nearly as good as Apple’s).

Turn continuous pulse oximetry off and check the expected battery life before and after and you may be pleasantly surprised. It is a useless statistic in most circumstances.

 

[PatrickNSF]

Turn continuous pulse oximetry off and check the expected battery life before and after and you may be pleasantly surprised. It is a useless statistic in most circumstances.

I only had PulseOX on while sleeping. To be fair, I was marathon training at the time so likely getting a bit more GPS usage than some users do. In the end the 955 was a better fit once I gave up trying to make the Epix work as a smartwatch and went back to my AW for daily wear (with the Garmin relegated to workouts and races).

 

[dj1891]

This has been proven to be false a number of times by the Quantified Scientist on YouTube. The Apple Watch optical HR is the best in the business and is approx 99% accurate against a chest strap. The best Garmin right now is the Instinct 2 which is approx 83% accurate against a chest strap.

The Fenix 7 is approx 73% and the Epix 2 is a paltry 68%. I've had every model of Fenix, including the Epix 2 and have had to use a chest strap if I wanted any sort of accuracy (and therefore useful metrics). This lack of accuracy from the Garmin Optical HR has a number of implications for the usefulness of their all day metrics such as "Stress" and "Body Battery", which is exclusively recorded from their OHR sensor.

View attachment 2098373

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheQuantifiedScientist

Using the AW, there are useful apps such as "HealthFit" which gives much better health metrics than Apple and will also upload any workout on the AW to pretty much any service you use including strava, Final Surge, 2Peak, Komoot, Runalyze, Suunto, Connect, Training Peaks, Today's plan as well as a number of cloud storage services. I personally use intervals.icu website with which HealthFit will sync to. Intervals.icu is way, way better than connect for analysing data and planning workouts etc.

Intervals.icu

This is interesting looking at that list. I wonder if this is the reason it was always recommended to use a chest strap with Garmin to get the most accurate results? It’s because a lot of their sensors are so bad. Look at them Apple Watches top of the list, even the old SE. Surly you don’t even need a chest strap with most of them some watches accuracy is so good.

 

[azhava]

I only had PulseOX on while sleeping. To be fair, I was marathon training at the time so likely getting a bit more GPS usage than some users do. In the end the 955 was a better fit once I gave up trying to make the Epix work as a smartwatch and went back to my AW for daily wear (with the Garmin relegated to workouts and races).

If you do that, don't you miss out on a lot of the training load/effect and recovery metrics of the Garmin, though? It would seem to me that if you weren't tracking sleep, RHR, Sp02, etc. with the Garmin, all those metrics would be a lot less accurate, if they're even present.

 

[azhava]

...Using the AW, there are useful apps such as "HealthFit" which gives much better health metrics than Apple and will also upload any workout on the AW to pretty much any service you use including strava, Final Surge, 2Peak, Komoot, Runalyze, Suunto, Connect, Training Peaks, Today's plan as well as a number of cloud storage services...

Minor correction - HealthFit doesn't upload/export to Garmin Connect....it's the one service that's conspicuously absent for them. Garmin doesn't want anything but Garmin devices putting data in their app. People have repeatedly asked for it on the Garmin forums, and the Garmin reps have made it pretty clear that they have no intention of ever doing it. You might be able to backdoor it by uploading .fit files to Dropbox and then importing them into Connect manually every day, but ain't nobody got time for that.

Actually Apple does. I can see that going through sleep in the health app.

I take afternoon naps on an almost daily basis, I've never seen one of them show up in the Health app. I haven't tried using Sleep Focus during my naps, but I can say with certainty that it doesn't auto-detect them.

 

[Significant1]

Minor correction - HealthFit doesn't upload/export to Garmin Connect....it's the one service that's conspicuously absent for them. Garmin doesn't want anything but Garmin devices putting data in their app. People have repeatedly asked for it on the Garmin forums, and the Garmin reps have made it pretty clear that they have no intention of ever doing it. You might be able to backdoor it by uploading .fit files to Dropbox and then importing them into Connect manually every day, but ain't nobody got time for that.

I have read Healthfits reasoning, but rungab (ios) and syncmytracks (Android) can. Unfortunately rungab requires subscription.

I take afternoon naps on an almost daily basis, I've never seen one of them show up in the Health app. I haven't tried using Sleep Focus during my naps, but I can say with certainty that it doesn't auto-detect them.

It is shown on the same graph. Due to health reason, I must also nap daily. It is a thing that annoys me with Garmin, because it always give poor sleep rating due to too little sleep, when not considering I may have slept a bit during the day.

 

[ssmed]

If you do that, don't you miss out on a lot of the training load/effect and recovery metrics of the Garmin, though? It would seem to me that if you weren't tracking sleep, RHR, Sp02, etc. with the Garmin, all those metrics would be a lot less accurate, if they're even present.

Everything you mention works with o2 saturation off - you just don't have Spo2 data. How would SpO2 make these other things more accurate?

 

[TTTedP]

Please give an example of a glitch within connect maybe I am missing something.

I love my Garmin stuff but here’s things I’ve experienced this weeks alone ;

- Swim pace doesn’t show in summary
- Swim records don’t update @750m
- Synch doesn’t always happen automatically
- Swim intervals grouping wrong 25 vs 100 vs 150
- Training status varies between devices (after multiple synchs)
- HRV, readiness, stress, BB don’t synch between devices (F7 vs 955)
- Connect tiles in iOS app not updating at times. Needs multiple refreshes

TBF, I’ve also experienced more bugs on iOS 16 than any I can remember in a while. At least with Apple Health it can ingest any input and show synched data and 3rd party apps extract more value but IMO, it’s too much to manage.

I love Garmin for the same reasons OP mentioned, and used to think people complaining about Garmin bugs were just that. But the last few releases of Fenix FW seem to have regressed.

 

[Indianwin2001]

I’ve had many Garmins and three Apple watches. I totally lost trust in Garmin's software. just look at their forums they fix one thing and break 3 other things constantly rebooting phone, and waiting for another software update to fix what they broke.

 

[TTTedP]

I’ve had many Garmins and three Apple watches. I totally lost trust in Garmin's software. just look at their forums they fix one thing and break 3 other things constantly rebooting phone, and waiting for another software update to fix what they broke.

You’re not wrong. I have a Wahoo/Apple combo I am comparing against my F7/530 for that reason. Still, finding it hard to give up Garmin.

 

[zerozoneice]

I’ve had many Garmins and three Apple watches. I totally lost trust in Garmin's software. just look at their forums they fix one thing and break 3 other things constantly rebooting phone, and waiting for another software update to fix what they broke.

remember, for every user complaining on some internet forum there are 100 others which have absolutely no problem.
valid for any brand.
i never had to reboot phone for anything Garmin related lol. Or AW for that matter.

But look at the bright side: Garmin can update Connect app even daily if they want/need. Apple needs to wait for a whole iOS update to do the same thing.

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

I love Garmin for the same reasons OP mentioned, and used to think people complaining about Garmin bugs were just that. But the last few releases of Fenix FW seem to have regressed.

The Marq and the 6 had heart rate accuracy issues, headphone disconnection issues and other's I'm forgetting. Lots of problems there. The Epix, from what I've experienced, was pretty solid, however.

 

[Indianwin2001]

The Marq and the 6 had heart rate accuracy issues, headphone disconnection issues and other's I'm forgetting. Lots of problems there. The Epix, from what I've experienced, was pretty solid, however.

This MIGHT be true but since the Epic costs $1000, I'll pass.

 

[Significant1]

The Marq and the 6 had heart rate accuracy issues, headphone disconnection issues and other's I'm forgetting. Lots of problems there. The Epix, from what I've experienced, was pretty solid, however.

Headphone is still weak on Epix, but works fine when wearing on right wrist so my body doesn't obstruct the signal. Heart rate is better, I had to wear my 245 on the underside for some workouts. Epix software has been pretty solid for me, even Alphas. That isn't the case with my 955, but to be fair I didn't get Epix till 6 months after release. But still, 955 shares same hardware as Fenix, so it should have been easy to have a solid experience from the start.

This MIGHT be true but since the Epic costs $1000, I'll pass.

That is the top end model and yes that is needed for dual band gnss, but unless you buy directly from garmin they can be found cheaper. I saved 25% on Sapphire model.

 

[zerozoneice]

Wearables compared: Apple Watch Ultra vs. Garmin Fenix 7 (and Epix/Enduro 2)

How does the Apple Watch Ultra hold up as a premium sports watch vs. the Garmin Fenix 7, Epix, and Enduro 2? Here is what you should know!

connectthewatts.com

and no, i didn't write it