I have bought my share of fitbit, Band etc. The only way to make wearables tolerable is making them less smart and more accurate.
Accurately measure my heart rate and stop bugging me about a stupid text!
Accurately measure my heart rate and stop bugging me about a stupid text!
The only wearable I have is a Xiaomi Band 2, and the only reason I use it is for its 18 day battery, detects when I go to sleep so I don't have to toggle it every night, that it vibrates when I get a call so I can have my phone on silent and has a clock. I rarely check how many steps I take even though that's what is supposed to be it's primary functionality.
I use that wearable to make my life easier, not to interrupt me every time I get a notification, and I certainly don't want to charge it every few days.
Yes---all of these failed and failing players keep trying to push some overly ambitious platform vision, and no one is focused on perfecting the health tracking app that is getting them in the door in the first place. And for god's sake, give us the option to keep our own data locally. I don't want the Cloud to know every time I go to the bathroom.
Plus, as the icing on the cake: you can easily get a week or more of use with a single charge, if you don't use the GPS.
Automatic sleep tracking is abysmal (regularly off by >4 hours, sometimes more). The wrist heart rate monitor tends to have inaccurate spikes at least once a day, and when the watch doesn't detect motion the wrist heart rate sensor is essentially turned off (sampling rate goes to greater than once every 30 minutes). Resting heart rate is calculated in at least 3 different ways in various parts of the UI (and none of them seem accurate). And then there's the tons and tons of bugs (and terrible iOS companion app).
Honestly the hardware is ok, but I get the impression that Garmin just hasn't invested in (or doesn't know how to do) software. It's not worth the (very high) asking price in my opinion.
It works almost flawlessly. GPS pickup is less than 30 seconds in nearly all situations. The wrist-based HR is accurate to within 1-2 BPM during activities when measured against Wahoo Tickr and Polar heart-rate straps (but the flaw: it's slow to pick up sudden jumps in HR, such as during intervals). The battery lasts at least a week with 2 hours of active GPS use a day (and almost 2 weeks with battery saving features enabled and GLONASS off). I've dropped it on asphalt, concrete, and rock and it doesn't even have a scratch.
My guess is that most of your problems are on the iOS end. Apple is notorious for breaking interoperability with wearables through iOS "updates" since the iWatch was released. Polar and Suunto watches also seem to have issues for iPhone users that don't crop up for people syncing their watches with their computers or Androids.
Garmins are buggy though, but once you get used to working around the most common bugs they are quite reliable.
I think Garmin just had the best devices in the early days, and now rely more upon brand loyalty (myself included) than technical advances. Touch bezels in the Forerunner range deserve a special place in design hell though.
(Granted I'm not the average Garmin user as I'm more interested in ultra-distance.)
They're regressing.
The Charge 2 does cost more at retail presently, however.