Garmin Reacts to Apple Watch Ultra: We Measure Battery Life in Months. Not Hours | Hacker News Reader

Garmin Reacts to Apple Watch Ultra: We Measure Battery Life in Months. Not Hours

macrumors.com

36 pointsBrajeshwar15 comments

Anyone with experience using an apple watch on ultras or other long sustained athletic tracking?

Overall, I expect the article headline is accurate. I used my Garmin 955 extensively for the Longs Peak Summit (keyhole, 12 hrs) and it had the vast majority of the charge left. And I was using maps, GPS, etc during the climb. I've not seen anyone suggesting that the Apple Watch can compete with this. But, perhaps the ultra version will significantly boost the battery.

If an Apple Watch Ultra is the best device for someone's needs, it is trivial to carry a lightweight rechargeable battery around and extend its life for many days.

I don't see battery life past a day of heavy use as a particularly serious concern for anyone.

Apple's "up to 36 hours" of battery life assumes 1 hour of workouts (i.e. using the GPS). By comparison a Garmin Fenix 7 is rated for 57 hours with the GPS on. And that's not even using the reduced polling rate to extend usage. Using the GPS is a huge battery hog on these devices.

For people doing things like ultramarathons or other extreme long distance events and want to track the whole damn thing it could become a problem.

Based on battery comparison between my Garmins and my wife's Apple Watches, I'd say anyone serious about endurance activity tracking of anything over an hour warrants a Garmin.

Never mind the boatload of sensor metrics that Garmin software has that Apple doesn't.

The 36 hour also includes 1.5 hour app use, 1hour music streaming, 8 hour LTE and 28 hour Bluetooth, picking one segment as a whole is not a helpful comparison.

From the announcement: “ Apple Watch Ultra has enough battery life for most users to complete a long-course triathlon, consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and full marathon at 26.2 miles.”

Which is at best what 15 hours GPS time? And I'm pretty sure it's caveated to be in low power mode with reduced GPS polling? The Garmin will last like a month without using the GPS. And there are races longer than 15 hours too...

With the Garmin you can fly to the event, stay there a few days, do the event, rest up a bit and then fly back without needing the charger. That's not gonna happen with the Apple Watch.

Ultra takes the advertised battery life to 36 hours, or 60 hours (utilizing a power saving mode). That’s about double what you could expect from Series 7.

For most people, the Apple Watch current gens don't have the battery life to last through a single full marathon (about 4-5 hours) with continuous GPS tracking.

Meanwhile, even the cheapest Garmin has the battery life to survive a triathlon (10-12 hours of continuous GPS), and the highest-tier Garmins can handle several continuous days of GPS activity.

That doesn't even take into account the fragility of Apple Watches. It's great that Apple provides such "generous" repair policies for these devices, since every single AW owner I know has had to have their AW watch repaired...multiple times...for trivial things. For "scratch proof" screens, the Apple Watches get scratched up more easily than any watch I've ever seen; and don't even try to drop them a few feet. A drop onto rock or concrete that wouldn't phase a Garmin or Polar will shatter an AW.

And specifically to note with respect to ultras: at the Badwater Ultra (a 135 mile run in Death Valley in the summer), the temperatures got so hot that the AW watches worn by people acting as support crews for runners overheated and stopped working. Meanwhile, the watches worn by the athletes (mostly Garmins, but with some Polars and Suuntos in the mix) kept going strong.

Reminds me of BlackBerry’s CEO’s response to the introduction of the iPhone.

I came here to say this exactly. It was so short-sighted, and that attitude killed the company.

4 out of the 5 people I know with Garmin watches need the battery life while tracking to exceed 8 hours (this watch lasts 1 hour).

I doubt any of them are going to see this and swap their Garmin for an Apple watch.

I think the Apple watch and Garmin are aimed at very different markets and with current technology Apple can't provide what Garmin does without compromising their design.

Can Apple improve its battery life faster than Garmin can improve its UI, app ecosystem, and integration with the world’s best selling phone? I think so. I think Garmin is going the way of Blackberry.

Yes, battery life is good on Garmins. But, amazingly, the UX is even better. The Apple watch does many things well while a Fenix does the sports thing very well. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a watch I’m that happy with from the ux perspective. The tiny things like metronome and custom alerts and the way it does timers but also the big things like pacepro or workouts. Garmin understands the needs of an athlete on a much deeper level, I think.

Who'd want a cell phone without a keyboard?

I don’t work out for Months…

Max I’ve done is a 14h hike…

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