Being totally objective here on AW vs Garmin...

[Zelegorm]

You can go to the Garmin forum and see the compliments. Mine are there too . I hope you know this forum. Lots of data for you.

I am adding one thing in addition to that. When there is no workoutdoors app there: I will never go back. This is the best app out there. Highly flexible. I would miss that flexility a lot.

Fenix 7 non ambessedor review:

 

[Lihp8270]

It’s kind of a strange comparison that is seemingly borne out of marketing.

But it depends what you want. Runners etc are going to favour the Garmin, they’re dedicated devices that do that job far better than the Apple Watch.

I find my gps+glonass location, and pacing is significantly more accurate on the Garmin the Apple Watch. But that’s to be expected, I imagine there’s more space dedicated to this hardware in a dedicated running watch vs a smart watch.

But equally, I don’t wear a Garmin as an every day watch. I wear an Apple Watch, as it’s far more useful as daily use watch.

Apple Watch vs Garmin, the winner will always be the use case

 

[Zelegorm]

And that's the point. I am wearing my Apple Watch the whole day. I checked both a while at the same time. The GPS and the wrist based heart rate is so much better on the Apple Watch.
That was the time I saw no reason to switch watches anymore.

If there would be something you can say: That's great on the Garmin. It's not. I haven't found nearly nothing. Bad sensors. Crippled Smart Watch features. LTE? Apple Music streaming? Better GPS - nope. Sleep tracking - nope. Health features - nope. Payments - nope. Even the Apple Watch work outdoors app is so much better than anything on the Garmin. The Garmin store? What a joke...

What's left: A better battery life. Makes sense for a few 0,00001 precent of the people. Maybe the platform? Maybe a few people with the old propriety ANT+ Standard (I would never buy hardware with ANT+ only btw.). And maybe some people love bad displays. Because the Display is really sooo 1980s on the Fenix7

 

[nebo1ss]

Well for me the experience is the important thing, not the device. I don't really care how it's done as long as it is done in the best way possible. I will change the device as soon as there's a better experience somewhere else. I'm sorry to say that I have almost no brand loyalty, perhaps with the exception of cars.

The best experience possible means minimal fuss and maximum output. Once people start with "but you can subscribe to app X and it does the same thing" or "but you can import the data from X to Y" I just lose interest. That's not a good experience for me. I don't want to spend my time doing that.

It's very important to get one good health/fitness app, not several, get everything in there with minimum tracking effort, get as much data and interpretation out of it. That's it. Otherwise I don't bother, it's not worth it.

To give you another example: I like to do sleep tracking especially as it integrates into the training readiness situation. I could not do sleep tracking with an Apple Watch. If I have to take it off in the evening to charge it, you can bet your house that I will fall asleep with the watch in the charger and remember it the next morning. It's a non-feature as far as I'm concerned.

i do sleep tracking with my Apple watch no problem. It is charged first thing in the morning each day and not in the evening as you are doing.

 

[Lihp8270]

And that's the point. I am wearing my Apple Watch the whole day. I checked both a while at the same time. The GPS and the wrist based heart rate is so much better on the Apple Watch.
That was the time I saw no reason to switch watches anymore.

If there would be something you can say: That's great on the Garmin. It's not. I haven't found nearly nothing. Bad sensors. Crippled Smart Watch features. LTE? Apple Music streaming? Better GPS - nope. Sleep tracking - nope. Health features - nope. Payments - nope. Even the Apple Watch work outdoors app is so much better than anything on the Garmin. The Garmin store? What a joke...

What's left: A better battery life. Makes sense for a few 0,00001 precent of the people. Maybe the platform? Maybe a few people with the old propriety ANT+ Standard (I would never buy hardware with ANT+ only btw.). And maybe some people love bad displays. Because the Display is really sooo 1980s on the Fenix7

The gps positioning I find is far better on my Garmin than on the Apple Watch.

Over a 10km run the Apple Watch is usually 80 to 90m out by the end. Where the Garmin is less than 10m. (From a measured and certified 10k course)

 

[Zelegorm]

The gps positioning I find is far better on my Garmin than on the Apple Watch.

Over a 10km run the Apple Watch is usually 80 to 90m out by the end. Where the Garmin is less than 10m. (From a measured and certified 10k course)

This changed with dual frequency gps for me. I had three races and the results from the AWU were spot on.

 

[Lihp8270]

This changed with dual frequency gps for me. I had three races and the results from the AWU were spot on.

Unfortunately for me, this is my 3rd Apple Watch with little improvement in this department.

If the ultra is that much better then that’s fantastic, but it’s expensive for a 4th attempt at the watch for sports use

 

[zerozoneice]

Bad sensors. Better GPS - nope. Sleep tracking - nope. Health features - nope. Payments - nope.

what are you talking about?!

I'm not a runner, but from my plenty of walk workouts with several AW i found out that the bad (AW) GPS is a result of phone tethering. I had much more accurate tracks (close to Garmin lol) if i turned off BT and enabled Airplane Mode on the AW. It forced it to use internal GPS only. Again, there is a solution but annoying. Too much workarounds.

I'd LOVE to have a combination of the both: smooth interface, phone integration, mad battery life, simple app to cover everything..but there isn't such a device (yet) and only Apple is capable of making it happen in the future. Not because they are better than others but because they hold the key to Apple ecosystem and iPhone. For now, Garmin serves my case 95%.

 

[solq]

i do sleep tracking with my Apple watch no problem. It is charged first thing in the morning each day and not in the evening as you are doing.

If I have to charge the watch in the morning, it will stay in the charger until evening. I'm busy in the morning, I don't have time to mind the watch.

So I could track sleep, but at the expense of not doing anything else with it which defeates completely the point of having a smartwatch. You might as well buy an Oura ring.

I had lots of <48h devices and my equilibrium use case for this type of battery life is charging overnight, with the phone. Like I said, sleep tracking on such a device is a non-feature.

It's for fans who for whatever reason love it so much that they're willing to schedule their life around the needs of the device. I don't use this kind of electronics if I have alternatives.

 

[solq]

what are you talking about?!

He doesn't know what he's saying. He's so blindly in love with his Apple Watch that he confuses objective with subjective, so he makes up bad stuff about Garmins.

 

[TAZ911]

If I have to charge the watch in the morning, it will stay in the charger until evening. I'm busy in the morning, I don't have time to mind the watch.

So I could track sleep, but at the expense of not doing anything else with it which defeates completely the point of having a smartwatch. You might as well buy an Oura ring.

I had lots of
It's for fans who for whatever reason love it so much that they're willing to schedule their life around the needs of the device. I don't use this kind of electronics if I have alternatives.

The 48 hr battery life or so is the #1 reason why I gave up on the AW for now. I love the seem less integration with the rest of my Apple devices. I love the simplicity of the interface. Heck even the square design has grown on me over the years. For my use case the GPS accuracy with and without my phone has been good enough. I’m not some elite athlete that’s tracking stuff to the meter. I found the HR to be the most accurate over the widest range of activities, even strength. Apples mojo here is strong IMO. The ekg feature would be nice to have available during exercise. But all that doesn’t add up to something I have to charge every night. My solar instinct 2 runs a week easy and longer if I’m not tracking workouts. That means when I’m out if town I don’t have to wear a different watch (unless I want to) or mess around with another charging cord/device.

I wish Apple could solve the battery life issue, and I’m sure they will eventually.

 

[solq]

The 48 hr battery life or so is the #1 reason why I gave up on the AW for now. I love the seem less integration with the rest of my Apple devices. I love the simplicity of the interface. Heck even the square design has grown on me over the years. For my use case the GPS accuracy with and without my phone has been good enough. I’m not some elite athlete that’s tracking stuff to the meter. I found the HR to be the most accurate over the widest range of activities, even strength. Apples mojo here is strong IMO. The ekg feature would be nice to have available during exercise. But all that doesn’t add up to something I have to charge every night. My solar instinct 2 runs a week easy and longer if I’m not tracking workouts. That means when I’m out if town I don’t have to wear a different watch (unless I want to) or mess around with another charging cord/device.

I wish Apple could solve the battery life issue, and I’m sure they will eventually.

The type of EKG currently available on watches (touch it with the other hand, sit still) isn't really usable during workouts. At least not for me.

However you can get a chest strap that does it in the background: https://uk.fourthfrontier.com/products/frontier-x

I don't care that much about complete sensor accuracy, it just needs to be good enough and I think most Garmins clear or exceed this standard. Certainly mine does.

I care about it being simple to use, having centralised data aggregation, and giving good feedback. Battery life is essential, it allows you to use it basically all the time.

I don't want to mess with apps. People who think that Garmin's app store being underdeveloped is such a put down amuse me - I never even looked at it, I don't care what they sell in there. The device has to be good by itself.

I mean, I never bought a phone app in my life, it would be ridiculous to pay for watch app subscriptions.

 

[DontGetTheCheese]

People defend what they buy. I had Garmin people flame me because I'd point all of the bugs in their software (headphone dropping, sleep tracking, workout app rep counting, unreliable heart rate, etc.). At the same time, Apple people flamed me because I'd point out problems there as well (battery life mainly, but there have been times where the UI pissed me off, interval training, also bad HRM and GPS), etc.

Right now both of them have upgraded their games which is good.

 

[solq]

People defend what they buy.

I don't think you're right. I bought products I didn't like or didn't work for me and I had no problem saying so.

Let me give you an expensive example. I recently bought a Panasonic 9004 UHD player and I think it was a bad purchase. The player itself gives excellent picture quality but it's excruciatingly slow to load, and it goes through several resolution changes/no signal screens when starting a disc. Compared to my old Oppo Bluray player, that can run circles around it. Then the famed audio section of this player is something that was probably true for the 9000, which had AKM DACs, while I'm pretty sure this 9004 has inferior ESS DACs, for the same price. So a double whammy.

There you go. If I say something good about a product is not because I bought it but because that's what I think. Of course the two are correlated, we tend to buy products we like.

 

[Zelegorm]

I would never give my health data to a company like garmin. Next big topic. Never ever 😎

 

[NME42]

Right now both of them have upgraded their games which is good.

Can you elaborate a bit, where you see Garmin upgrading their games during the last few years?

Not meant as a trolling question, I am really interested in your viewpoint.

I was a heavy Garmin user with all their high end products during the last ten years or so and did see no further improvement after things like maps, music and Garmin Pay. All three of them mediocre at maximum and smartwatch capabilities of their watches are very basic.
Stability of their platform got worse with every feature they added.

 

[Zelegorm]

I was a garmin User since more than ten years, too.
Innovation is coming from other companies recently.
Wrist based power? Polar
Track running? Coros
Footpod supported GPS? Coros
Real Battery life? Coros
Dual frequency GPS? Coros vertix 2

Garmin? Anything?

Apple is acting like always. Making great hardware. The best of all. Good software. For a huge user base.
The Apple Watch ultra is the starting point for a more sport watch user focus.

Garmin had already a very bad result this year. How can they compete anymore?
Is their userbase now „ultrarunning“only?

 

[trumptman]

Can you elaborate a bit, where you see Garmin upgrading their games during the last few years?

Not meant as a trolling question, I am really interested in your viewpoint.

I was a heavy Garmin user with all their high end products during the last ten years or so and did see no further improvement after things like maps, music and Garmin Pay. All three of them mediocre at maximum and smartwatch capabilities of their watches are very basic.
Stability of their platform got worse with every feature they added.

I’ll elaborate a bit as someone who has used both and who currently owns the Fenix 7x SS.

So in the “smartwatch” realm they keep adding improvements to Connect IQ. The way I use these is as a follows. I use Amazon Music via my Prime Subscription for free. I download several playlists to the watch and use them when running. It connects with all my Apple headphones (AirPods Pro and PowerBeats Pro) with no problems. I especially like using the Powerbeats Pro since they have volume controls on them.

I also use an app for podcasts call PlayRun. It will downloaded the latest episode of each podcast I enjoy.

Believe it or not the only real problem with any of these apps is they only check in and sync when you charge the watch which can be a couple weeks. You can choose to charge more frequently but that’s the trade-off.

I use an app that does run based power on the watch called RunPowerModel. I very much enjoy the data it provides.

I added my card via Garmin Pay. It works just fine.

In my widget glances I see weather, sunset time, training status, body battery, training readiness, etc. Many of these are based off HRV which requires many more readings than the native Apple Watch will provide. People have talked about a work around where you tell the watch you have Afib and attest that a doctor diagnosed you with this and then it will take HRV readings at an appropriate frequency.

The watch has a touch screen that can be used with all these widgets and much of the user interface. The watch can use maps on board to generate routes of interest for running, walking, riding, etc. You can just say I want to run 5 miles and generate three routes and it will guide you on those routes.

Of course there is the solar charging which is very nice as well. The touch screen is quite responsive.

Garmin should be slammed in some areas. You are right that their Express App is horribly behind. It still believes iTunes exists with regard to managing media on the Mac side of things. They claim they can use audiobooks but I’ve never gotten it to work and so on.

That said Apple magically conjured problems with Spotify with Watch OS 9. Their podcast efforts have been a spectacular fail that literally makes no sense as I can’t seem to get my podcasts to download and and sync across all my Apple devices. Have you ever tried using the Audible app to download a book to your watch? It works….. sometimes but there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

Not only are all the various metrics Apple are tracking spread out across a few different apps, the same is happening with their settings. Good luck explaining to someone the difference between low power mode for the watch and low power mode for selective workouts, the locations of their toggles, how to use them quickly and so on.

A major developer of a fantastic app on here Workoutdoors has complained that the action button has ZERO official documentation for developers at his level at this time. He’s stuck cribbing information together.

It’s also shocking and sad that as a one man project he has managed to do what Apple as a massive company has not with teams of developers on the Apple Watch for nearly a decade now.

So I can absolutely see the problems with Garmin. The fact remains that Apple has barely upgraded the processor in their watch nor major aspects of the operating system for nearly half a decade now. The upgrades they’ve been pushing out have been haphazard, undocumented and sporadic. It literally feels like if they don’t think they can make some money on it then they won’t worry about that part of the Fitness app or other concerns for another 5-9 years.

 

[solq]

Can you elaborate a bit, where you see Garmin upgrading their games during the last few years?

Just this year they had fairly revolutionary watches launched, like the Epix 2 or the Enduro 2. Several models with highly precise, multi–band GPS. On-board memory has increased to download topographical maps for whole continents (I think the 32Gb models can do the whole world?). In any case I loaded the “map” on my 32Gb Epix 2 and that was it. I only used it in Europe so far, but it’s amazing, the tiniest hiking trails are there.

The Epix 2 has an AMOLED screen which is really good (high resolution, works well in sunlight) and it still has a ton of battery life. The Enduro 2 has awesome, next-gen battery life. There are new optical sensors for SpO2 and HR.

Since I got the Epix 2 early this year, just in terms of software features, we got HRV and training readiness along with other widgets and stuff like incident detection. I’d say the overall training analytics are probably best in class as you have much better recommendations and recovery metrics from your device. I personally don’t run but I understand running power is coming (in beta or already there), this time without a chest strap, if for whatever reason you don’t want one.

Garmin has definitely upped their game in the last few years since I got into using their stuff.

 

[solq]

PS: not sure how many can read the WSJ but they have an article on the Garmins and their popularity with athletes in today’s edition: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cu...martwatches-over-apple-or-samsung-11667088984

This has been my experience as well, having done crossfit for a long time. Almost everyone who tracks workouts has a Garmin. Apple Watch is actually less common than Whoop.

 

[sarc]

The fact remains that Apple has barely upgraded the processor in their watch

What do you do that requires the process to be updated?

 

[theotherphil]

If I have to charge the watch in the morning, it will stay in the charger until evening. I'm busy in the morning, I don't have time to mind the watch.

So I could track sleep, but at the expense of not doing anything else with it which defeates completely the point of having a smartwatch. You might as well buy an Oura ring.

I had lots of <48h devices and my equilibrium use case for this type of battery life is charging overnight, with the phone. Like I said, sleep tracking on such a device is a non-feature.

It's for fans who for whatever reason love it so much that they're willing to schedule their life around the needs of the device. I don't use this kind of electronics if I have alternatives.

I charge my AWU when I jump in the shower 2-3x per day depending on workouts, and it's SOC recovers >90% every time. I used this same pattern with all my Garmin's, albeit every 2-3 days instead of daily, so I have never once had "battery anxiety" and the charging never interrupts my day.

This way, I can be sure that I have sufficient battery to last through those unexpected events as well as allow 24/7 monitoring including sleep.

I love how people say 'Not enough battery for me' though (looking at some of the other comments in this thread). I recall some analysis from Strava data showing the typical Garmin Fenix user does an average run of 35mins, cycle of around 90mins. Less than 4% of Fenix owners did triathlons and of those that did, less than 0.2% did a half Ironman or longer. The AWU seems to be able to cover 99% of the use cases of the average Garmin user. It's interesting how most Garmin users I come across put themselves in the top 1% of users needing battery life in days 🤷🏼

 

[theotherphil]

What do you do that requires the process to be updated?

This interests me also. The processor has had way more performance than needed for at least the last 3 generations and is probably the most performant smart/ fitness watch processor currently.

 

[trumptman]

What do you do that requires the process to be updated?

I don’t need the processor to do more. I need it to do less. They should have added a mode now where it has a couple super low power cores that would allow the Watch to last for days on end.

 

[akidokraja]

Unfortunately for me, this is my 3rd Apple Watch with little improvement in this department.

If the ultra is that much better then that’s fantastic, but it’s expensive for a 4th attempt at the watch for sports use

Ultra shows the exact same distance as Fenix 7 and Enduro 2 for runs and biking. Regular AW had a hard time compared to Garmin but not Ultra, it's exactly the same.