How can they call 36 hours of battery life "long"? The $799 version Garmin Fenix 7 solar (which they seem to be targeting) has an 18-22 days of battery life.
The irony is that AirPods have a really great battery life (especially the carrying case) despite the small form factor, and are my go-to for long runs.
What's a good consumer device nowadays for that use case? I remember looking for some good sleep tracking (and heart health tracking) a couple of years and got hopelessly lost.
He’s a professional scientist specialising in sleep research and the reviews concentrate on data/accuracy only.
This. This is how they will beat Putin. Sleep apps.
I don't really want a smartwatch (ugh, slack on my wrist? no thanks), but a backpacking safety companion would be awesome!
Additionally, you can do simple ad-hoc routing on the watch itself, while you're out on the trail, also totally offline.
For more complex ad-hoc routing, it can be easier to design a route on the Garmin Explore app on your phone and then sync it to your watch via Bluetooth. This works (also totally offline), but the problem is that Garmin Explore's UI and trail labeling kind of sucks, at least on iOS.
My preferred approach, if I'm out on a hike and want to set a new route to someplace, is to draw routes on Gaia GPS (which also has offline maps), then sync them to my Fenix 7 over Bluetooth for navigation. I wrote a Pythonista script to make this work well on iOS: https://github.com/mshroyer/pythonista-scripts/tree/master/G...
Only in "smartwatch" mode - ie. pretty much everything is turned off. In GPS mode, you get 73 hours (which is more than the 60 you get on the Watch Ultra in conservation mode, yes, but vastly lower than "18-22 days"!)
You can leave the other sensors like HRM and pulseox enabled when outside of "activities," and bluetooth is connected by default when in an activity or not, so I don't know where your "everything is turned off" assertion comes from.
So this is 73 hours of actually being active. Even if you're moving all day, you wouldn't ever set it to record GPS data while you're resting, and you'd over double the battery life from what you describe.
I'm a moderately active person, riding and/or running several hours a week, and have an older Garmin device with HRM always on and pulseox enabled during sleep. I charge the thing maybe once a week, usually during a shower after a run. There's really just no way you can squint at this and come to the conclusion that Apple is in the same ballpark on battery life.
I know, I've owned and used Garmin watches since 2011.
> your "everything is turned off" assertion comes from.
Garmin's own measure of battery life - GPS, Pulse Ox, etc. all turned off => smartwatch mode.
> There's really just no way you can squint at this and come to the conclusion that Apple is in the same ballpark on battery life.
Indeed not.
Normal use WITH an iPhone present. I have a feeling the Apple Watch by itself in GPS mode will be much less.
That will be an interesting figure to find out when people start reviewing them.
Retina display with 2k nits. I guess it looks awesome.
I prefer my garmin too. I charge it like two times a month and my gps fixes very fast and is very accurate
/s but only so slightly
This? Very informative website. Also I thought we talk about smart watches with GPS. Like 50 years ago we already had high precision mechanical watches that you dont need to charge ever...
Well, I never heard of that too. I wear Citizen. [0]
> Also I thought we talk about smart watches with GPS
I had a lengthy response here, but it was throttled.
To sum up: since the smartwatches became a thing I attempted multiple times to justify why I should buy one, but the need to constantly monitor it's charge level, along with my smartphone and whatever else (bt-headset, tablet, another smartphone - depending on the period) always killed the idea. I still use a wired earphones with the same reasoning - I don't want to bother with charging them, I just plug them in and they work.
And the main point is still what I don't [yet?] have a killer feature in any smartwatches what would offset the charging hassle. Especially if it needed to be charged everyday (I don't think anyone lives on a 36h cycle and forgetting to charge them in the evening means they would die around noon).
https://www.citizenwatch.com/us/en/product/AU1065-58E.html?c...
If you're concerned about battery life then Garmin has models which can run for over a month, and have solar charging.
That said the Apple watch is a nicer experience than the Phoenix which I don't tend to take out of the house too often outside of activities now. Indeed the Apple watch is claiming to be usable for recreational scuba for which the Phoenix is not and you would need to use an alternative Garmin watch
Perhaps the next iteration of the ultra watch will have features to extend battery life beyond the 60 hours in low battery mode it claims and hopefully towards 100 hours (14 hours * 7 days) of usage on low battery
Sporadic GPS usage, I'm guessing, since Garmin themselves only claim 13 hours of GPU usage (can't tell if it has UltraTrac though - the 5x non-plus can do 50 hours in UltraTrac mode.)
That said, even in normal GPS only mode (no Gallileo/GLONASS), the 5 when it was new would get 30 hours of recording. Enough for most ultras, 3 days of backpacking if you record 8 hours/day, and also enough for a week trip with an hour of running every day.
The explorer focus was just wacky.
Without any gloves too.
So my guess is their thinking is:
- Garmin has 10 times the battery life
- We have a 10 times better user experience
- Most "outdoorsy people" (or prosumers or, let's face it, lazy people who want to look cool) will prefer user experience over battery life
- So we prioritize on that
It’s totally valid to think that a different product more clearly suits your needs - you don’t have to fake incredulity about it.
Granted, it does have fewer features, but how good are all those whiz-bangs if the battery is dead?
I've been using a Skagen Jorn Hybrid smartwatch for the last few years. No digital display, but the time/date are set via bluetooth, and it has phone call notification, which is mostly what I want. I don't need to read emails or SMSs on my wrist. 6 months of battery life from a replaceable coin cell.
Honestly though, this is the first apple watch to appeal to me. Proper waterproofing, ruggedness, long enough battery life to go away for a weekend without a charger, always on screen. It's almost getting back to where Pebble was - they just need to stretch that battery a bit more with an ultra-low power mode. The cost is fairly high considering the functions I want though, so I'll need to use it in person before I put any money down. I do occasionally scuba dive too, so the dive functionality is actually fairly appealing as I don't own a dive computer any more.
But you don't need 18 days for that. Like I said, I understand wanting a few days. Why do you need a few weeks? It seems like at that point it becomes even more likely that you would forget to charge because it never becomes a routine.
(which just happened to me)
Recharging every 36 hours seems reasonable to me, even in very austere conditions.
That, and I was really doubtful that the Apple product would 100%-for-sure-no-excuses make it through a marathon, and I'm fast enough to qualify for Boston. No way it would have made it through the five hour trail marathon I ran a few weeks ago.
So I really, really want the Apple Watch Ultra just so I can pare down to one watch. But the Garmin 945 isn't even a year old, so we'll see what Apple has to offer next year.
I have a Series 4. I stick it on the charger in the evening when I've settled down on the couch to do the NYT crossword puzzle, watch TV, and read. I inevitably fall asleep sometime during that. Sometime in the next two hours I'll wake up to go pee, see that the watch is charged, and put it on, go pee, maybe go get a drink of water, and head to bed.
When I'm in bed I have the watch in theater mode and with notifications silenced.
When I'm awake, but not exercising, I generally have it in theater mode with notifications not silenced. I'll toggle it out of theater mode if I'm doing something where I'll want to look at the watch more than sporadically.
When I'm exercising I turn off theater mode. That's typically about 40 minutes every morning.
Most evenings when I stick it on the charger it is above 50%. A fair number of days it is above 66%.
I’d still like a month of battery life though!