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MikeKusold

Garmin has been crushing it with their smartwatches.

* App store with 3rd party apps and faces.

* Always on screen

* Physical buttons (Vivoactive is mostly touchscreen oriented, but all their "athlete" watches use buttons)

* Week long battery life - Even running GPS tracking for 12 hours straight leaves enough battery for the next day.

The biggest downside to the Garmin is trying to figure out which watch to buy. They stupidly gate certain activities to specific watches. For example Garmin has a Hike activity on their Fenix line, but not their Vivoactive so I need to track my hikes as a Walk.

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I've also switched to a Garmin when Pebble went kaput, and one of my todo list items is to port some of the more fun Pebble faces over to Connect IQ.

However, as you've noticed, each device feature set is determined by overzealous marketing. My Forerunner 245, despite having tons more memory than my ancient Fenix 3 and considerably faster, has less data screens for running. It doesn't have an altimeter, but the cheaper Vivoactive series has an altimeter because fitness users want to count floors climbed. It has Bluetooth but is not allowed to connect to bike power meters, because then it would overlap with Garmin's much more expensive triathlete watches.

This leads to app store problems, because each app and watch face has to be explicitly compiled for each watch - even when the watches have the same display size and feature set. Buying a new device often means that you'll have fewer options than someone with an older one.

I had 3 Pebbles, and a Kickstarter pledge in for a fourth that they cancelled and refunded me when they sold out.

I spend the refund money on a small but fun collection of old soviet mechanical watches. The kinda ubiquitous Vostok Amfibia, a "Big Zero", and a pretty poor fake of the Sturmanski Yuri Gagarin wore.

I get much "more joy" from these - even the fake Yuri watch - than I ever got from a "smart watch".

My usual story about smart watches was that I jumped on the very first Pebble Kickstarter, because I thought it'd be useful while riding a motorcycle to be able to see who's calling/texting my phone when it was vibrating in my pocket, so I could decide whether I wanted to stop and answer it. Turns out, the answer was _always_ "No!". Even if it _was_ someone I'd normally pick up for, I was either gonna arrive at my destination in 10 or 20 mins and would deal with it then, or I was on a trip and wasn't gonna be stopping until the tank was empty - possibly at a place with no reception - and I'd deal with it late that evening or in a few days when I got back to town.

2nding mechanical watches, though my preferred value brand is Orient, but nothing wrong with Vostok. Seiko seems overpriced these days, Orient seems like the new Seiko (though Orient and Seiko are both owned by the same holding company, which happens to be Epson (yeah, as in Epson printers)).

While mechanical and real watches are fun, smartwatches' biggest selling point for me is body telemetry. Steps taken, floors climbed, pulse, activity tracking, etc.

I've disabled everything notifications and phone-control wise on my MiBand. I exclusively use it for a body telemetry device and I love it.

While I miss my proper watches, I just can't leave the MiBand at home.

I've loved every mi band I've had - they are great simple devices.

I loved the first one (or the 2nd revision of the 1st) that just had vibration and 3 coloured led.

It meant I turned vibration off in my phone, and I set the band to vibrate and flash 3 times white for sms, green for WhatsApp and red for calls. But if any of those were from my wife (who was pregnant at the time) it would vibrate longer and flash for 20 seconds.

It was so simple to feel and glance and get the info I needed - no need to squint and try read. It annoys me in meetings when people think they are being subtle reading a full notification from the apple watch or similar. If it is important just get your phone out it will be quicker to read and reply.

Actually, the NavMe app for Pebble was really useful as a navigator when riding a motorcycle. It would vibrate to yr attention when you were approaching the next turn and the turn info was easy to see on the watch while riding. It was a brilliant solution that would take you to your final destination without y having to stop once in a while and take out your phone to see what's next. I always used it when going places I never been or were unfamiliar with.

My main problem with Garmin, and the one that gets me really hard when camping, is the fact that Connect requires internet in order to be able to see even basic statistics. I absolutely love my Garmin Vivomove Style, but because of the small screen I can't really see any activity other than very basic things, which requires that I fall back to my phone app... which doesn't work when camping or hiking because I don't have cellphone reception.

If they could fix this one problem, I'd buy more of their sports-oriented watches, but this is the one thing that I find really hard to deal with.

Otoh, the watch is phenomenal and beautiful, and I love having a watch that lasts 5+ days on a single charge and looks like a normal watch, but tells me my calendar and such, and can be used to track running and hiking.

I was bitten by this just the other weekend. Out in the middle of nowhere for an organised event, and the organisers said we had to use the backup route. I had it downloaded to my phone, but Garmin Connect won't work at all without an internet connection.

Ended up just using my phone for navigation, and even though I was recording GPS and heart rate the whole time, I'd only used 50% battery after 14 hours riding. Nice.

There was another guy at the campsite who was looking for someone who had downloaded the route. I AirDropped it to him, and he transferred it to his Wahoo bike computer with no trouble.

For shorter rides/runs, I use the WorkOutdoors app on the Apple Watch. It's only battery life that's an issue when the activity is longer than 6 hours. Just this morning I had the opportunity to go for a run a bit out of my normal zones, so within a minute I had sketched out a route on the phone and transferred it over to the watch. (That some of the paths I'd used didn't actually exist anymore was a separate issue, but I've already updated OpenStreetMap to fix that.)

Similar experience on my side. I was sitting on the fence between an Apple Watch and the Garmin 945. I'm quite pleased with the Garmin 945 all day tracking, the ability to track activities for over 12 hours (GPS, routing, and bunch of metrics), and good battery life. While the software ecosystem in Garmin feels a bit rough, it's usable. It's the software that makes it stand apart from these lower priced offerings. Even the Garmin VivoActive has interesting metrics when paired with software Garmin Connect.

After going with Android Wear and seeing how they made everything worse with WearOS, I switched to a Garmin Fenix 2 years ago.

It's the best thing if you're sporting an Android phone. 3rd party apps are mostly weather apps and apps mimicking features of more expensive Garmin watches to be used on cheaper models. And don't expect apps to talk to the apps on your phone - you mostly have to enter all details into the Garmin apps again (using the Connect software on your phone).

However, I recently switched to an iPhone and bought an Apple Watch and it's so much better if you are more into smart watches instead of a fitness tracker with smart features. Yes, the battery has to be recharged as often as I do. And yes, it's a touchscreen that's utterly useless in a downpour or when swimming. But apart from that, and I don't say this easily, I get more from the Apple Watch than from my Garmin then-top-of-the-line model.

What I have heard and experience makes me not so sure. For example, a kid’s Vivofit regularly crashes on the countdown timer and skips or repeats numbers on the stopwatch. Then there’s the thing where they paid $10 million to unlock a ransomware attack.

Yes, I had friends affected that were unable to access years of running data during that attack, which made them think maybe having a local copy of their data was a better idea.

That’s not specific to Garmin, though. It could happen to almost anyone.

I’ve enjoyed the Garmin instinct. It “just works”.

Yeah I love my Instinct...great as a basic everyday watch (always on, easy to read, never have to think about charging it), full-featured as a GPS running watch, nice addition in the backcountry as it integrates with my inReach satellite device. Sending and receiving text messages from my wrist while on the side of a mountain 50 miles from the last trace of cell service is kind of fun.

I resisted the idea of a smartwatch for years and bought this mostly for outdoor stuff, but I've found myself wearing it all the time.

This. It is absolutely my favorite piece of gear when hunting, hiking or fishing because it just works. I have the Solar Version and while it can’t fully recharge from solar with GPS in full power tracking, it’s amazing how long it’ll run in expedition mode.

More importantly it looks like a G Shock and is similarly tough.

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