Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking
jooonas.medium.com
jooonas.medium.com
But if I was Garmin I'd be terrified of Apple coming into the space. I was at Fitbit when the first Apple watch came out, and we laughed at how inferior it was to many of our products for the first several releases. Then around series 3 we started saying things like "actually it would be really nice if we had this too", and now (series 8) they're clearly the smartwatch leader in most dimensions.
I hope Garmin can remain competitive in this space, but Apple's massive resources and the long term strategy that enables is very hard to compete with.
One is jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, the other possibly the best civilian gadget for map-on-wrist hiking (apart from 7 series which are way too expensive but stack up on that shininess better).
Plus lets not forget a very important point skimmed in article, where Apple fails even if rest would be comparable - miserable battery life. The topic is about going to wilderness, and gadget desperately needing recharging much more often is simply vastly inferior to one needing less. Also they seem much less rugged, which is pretty bad for outdoors where you bang watches against trees and rock frequently.
So situation for outdoors is unlike in phones segment, where on most fronts (but far from all) when you pay Apple money you get a very decent and capable phone. In watches you get just OK watches within their segment (compared to products from Xiaomi, Samsung etc.)
It's not that you will need 18 days of battery life, it's simply knowing that you have it there. If you're going off for 3-4 days on a hike, there's a possibility your trip is getting extended by bad weather, wild animals, and whatnot. Knowing that's a possibility you always pack extra gear, and the idea of your main map on the trail dying is not an option.
That fits my use. I go on 1- to 4-hour walks pretty regularly and the existing Apple Watch is already helpful for rough distance/time/calorie tracking. If the Apple Watch didn't exist, I'd probably have a Garmin, but I'm pretty happy with the "good enough" tracking features on it. I like that the Ultra shows that they care about this market.
The extra battery life of the Ultra will be nice as will the new apps. Garmin still makes more serious "adventure" watches but for really hard-core mountaineering, I'm not sure to what degree people actually depend on watches that still need periodic charging.
As far as which I'd take backpacking: neither. The Fenix isn't a better UX than our iPhones, and we already take battery backups for the phones + put them on airplane mode with low brightness and get ~2-4 days of battery life out of them that way (usually shutting them down completely at night). The watches aren't worth the grams yet -- it's weight I'd rather spend on a nice phone pocket for my backpack (I like the Prometheus Design Werx SPX Pouch). I'm hopeful that another year of software updates for the Ultra might fix that -- if it did have useable topo maps + dynamic offline route planning, it might be worth it.
The other big benefit I see is cellular. Now, when I go for a run / bike ride / etc I don't actually need my phone, and if I'm confident that I might stop somewhere with Apple Pay, I might not need my wallet either. Back when I was riding pretty seriously, it was common for folks to just bring their ID and some cash. I'm also excited about the prospect of using the watch as a fully-featured bike computer, given it's about the exact same size as the old Polar bike computers I used to love.
On the plus side, it does seem to be widely supported at payment terminals (I’ve yet to find anywhere that accepts card payment that doesn’t accept garmin pay)
Primary reason is that tracking position for the duration drains battery where Garmin can do 50hrs of it. This gives me a .gpx file of the route for future reference and passing to friends.
Second is that while tracking it's 10x easier to check current distance and elevation on a watch vs phone. I head out with a list of mileage for every notable waypoint (water, turns, elevation of passes, etc). I'm constantly checking this and only if I'm questioning my route do I pull out my phone.
Weight: Fenix is heavy- 945 is better, Coros Pace 2 even better.
For a day hike, my Apple Watch 3 is adequate but battery life is a bit marginal. I assume the Ultra will be sufficiently better that day hikes (which is mostly what I do) will be fine.
I totally get all the arguments in favor of the Fenix 7 or related. It's really a question IMO of whether you want a mostly dedicated watch for relatively hardcore outdoor activities or if you want an Apple Watch and its ecosystem to do routine day-to-day smartwatch things while also doing a lot of outdoor activities better than prior Apple Watches though probably not overall as well as a dedicated device.
I was sort of on the fence prior to the latest announcement but, for me, the Ultra seems the pretty clear choice.
Isn't that in UltraTrac mode though which is essentially useless (based on my experience using it with my Fenix 5, anyway)?
This. I seldom if ever leave the house with a phone during a normal day or on my bike rides. I use my Apple Watch SE on moderate rides (50 to 100 miles), use NFC during rest stops, and pull up the occasional map when I forget a turn. Cellular is a big plus. And if one day in the future, I can get a cellular enabled Apple Watch that is standalone and not dependent on having an iPhone, I'm first in line. I have no reason to carry an iPhone with me.
Not sure what you mean here, but right now Apple Watch cellular models can be set up to be independent of the iPhone that set them up (meaning a different number & alerts), although you are still reliant on having that phone to configure them.
In my perfect world, I purchase a cellular enabled Apple Watch, login to some eSIM provider portal or Apple, provide them my MEID and then the watch provisions. Then I can configure notifications, apps, etc... via iCloud.com or from my MacBook.
I honestly do not need a mobile phone at this point in my life and my Apple Watch is just absolutely perfect for my day to day needs outside the home.
Not to mention they don’t sunset their products after 12 months… your watch will get updates for a long time. They’re also -very- repairable to boot.
Any Garmin app developers worth their salt should be scrambling to port their existing apps to the Apple Watch platform. It’s currently an under-supplied market, and failing to tap into that opportunity is a bad business strategy.
Totally agree re: the current state of repairability and support, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they extend the user repair program to this sector.
Also, it’s a bit disingenuous to claim that they sunset their products after 12 months. They might refresh them, but that doesn’t change the software support cycle.
Apple does not hold a candle to Garmin’s software for sports and training… they have everything from an actual desktop app that works (gasp) without an internet connection, an online portal where you can freely download all of YOUR data (gasp) if you choose the connected option, and the sports and training analytics is light years ahead of Apple.
And besides, Apple can’t receive ANT+ signals from connected sensors, and BLE battery life is abysmal in comparison.
The only thing Apple has on Garmin is the have app stores full on apps, but that’s it. Nobody is using their Garmin to play Candy Crush but that misses the point.
Apple Health data is very easy to download and share with 3rd parties (say a 3rd party that has better analytics than Apple Health offers, for instance…). I don’t get the battery complaints either. I only ever charge mine while I’m in the shower, and I don’t really have any problems. The only instance I found it an issue was in 24+ hour ultras, but I don’t think that’s what most people are complaining about…
Imo, the advantage that Apple has over the more well equipped Garmin models is that it’s comfortable to wear all day and sleep with. I never liked wearing the chunkier Garmins outside of training.
TheQuantifiedScientist on his YouTube channel has great tests for many wearable devices and their sensors. His assessment has been very favorable for AW Ultra on HR, location and sleep when compared to Garmin devices: for sleep tracking Garmin is very inaccurate, for HR and location Fenix 7 and Ultra are identical. Fenix 6 and older are poor.
Blood oxygen and temperature seems to be quite inaccurate on both.
They ate the business Thinkpad. They ate the Blackberry. They ate some portion of the SLRs.
And each time they weren't serious.
Is the target market really concerned about this? I’ll chew through a $200-300 pair of shoes in 4-6 weeks, and I’m more-or-less a casual runner. The cost of attending events is much more than that. I probably would buy a Garmin if I was really taking things seriously, but the Apple Watch does what I need, and even if I brought a brand new one every year it wouldn’t have much impact on the costs of this hobby.
Experts recommend you replace your running shoes every 500 to 750 kilometers. That's roughly every 300 to 500 miles, which equates to approximately four to six months for someone who runs 20 miles a week.
What are you doing replacing your shoes every 4 weeks?
Edit: I probably go through shoes slightly faster than most runners, because I weigh a bit more than most runners. But I don’t think that’s a huge factor.
> I typically run about 100km/week
This feels pretty naive or disingenuous. I'm pretty sure vanishingly few people understand 100km/week to be "casual". While you may not feel like you're a "pro" or have a competitive mindset, I'd argue averaging more than an hour a day at pretty much literally anything moves you out of "casual".
As for the target market, I’m torn whether Apple is seriously going after athletes or whether it’s actually mostly marketing, as with their “pro” laptops.
> it’s not so different from that of all the other casual marathon runners out there
Maybe this is the disconnect? People who have ever run a marathon at all are < 1%, and people who continually run marathons casually are a niche within that niche. If the audience is "people who run more than 50km per week" then I think "casual" probably gets the right idea across, that's just a teeny tiny audience.
Perhaps most of them don’t train in their race shoes, but that’s honestly a bad practice.
Endurance sports is a pretty boujee hobby. Running is the cheapest one, but it’s not that cheap if you really get into it.
You do not rank "quite well". You rank in the 0.1%, and even amongst fitness enthusiasts, you also rank easily amongst the top 10%. Not necessarily in terms of speed, but in raw distance done.
I run a lot because I love to run. But I don’t set a competitive pace in any of the events I attend. I would claim to have rather strong knees, but that doesn’t translate into pace or fitness, just into mileage and a certain level of resistance to knee injuries.
Garmins repair costs are much more reasonable and for things like broken screens there are third party options.
""" AppleCare+ for Apple Watch, Apple Watch Nike, and Apple Watch Ultra extends your coverage3 and includes unlimited incidents of accidental damage protection. Each incident is subject to a $69 service fee plus applicable tax for Apple Watch and Apple Watch Nike, and $79 service fee plus applicable tax for Apple Watch Ultra.2 In addition, you’ll get 24/7 priority access to Apple experts by chat or phone. """
The first generations of the Garmin Fenix actually supported charging in use with a very overcomplicated charging cable: https://youtu.be/S9haDnwIuSQ
Garmin absolutely has better battery life. But if you can see your way to charging the Apple Watch more frequently it seems more interesting for a combination of regular smartwatch use and day activities. And, if you are climbing huge mountains in the middle of nowhere, I assume purchasing a specialized watch if you want one is the least of your expenses. (Or something like an InReach.)
It's been a while since I've done any high-altitude mountaineering. I honest don't know what people actually use these days. Certainly GPS watches didn't exist when I was climbing. Not sure if people use power-hungry watches that need to be charged these days or not.
Perhaps you say "when it stops working". Well if that were the bar then we would still be producing computers from the 90s. Ok so maybe you say "no, when it stops running the apps I want to run". Sounds reasonable enough. So when should the app makers stop supporting the older hardware? Presumably at the point when maintaining the old hardware starts costs more than they make from the support.
This point will be reached sooner or later, and you might disagree with it because you still see the product as fully capable, but ultimately the phone will stop making economic sense at some point and production will stop.
Apple still provides security updates for the iPhone 5s from 2013.
Maybe that's feasible for the larger tech companies but not the smaller ones.
The watch still has many helpful features outside of being your exclusive postage-stamp-sized map system.
Along comes the Ultra with a massive footprint and a temperature sensor (albeit one only useful for monitoring averages). My time has finally arrived.
And then it turns out that the usable screen size is essentially a rounding error compared to the Series 7 and the temp sensor is limited to reproductive tracking (guessing this is a regulatory thing).
Ah well, maybe next year.
I suppose I’ll have to see it in person, but the pixel jump between the Ultra and the 7 is sub-2% while the jump between 6-7 was 16-17% iirc.
I also read a worrying mini-review comment on 9to5Mac from an Ultra owner that some of the watch faces are somehow displaying SMALLER than on the poster’s 7. Can’t direct link the comment so I quoted the relevant snippet below. Obv I’m taking it with a grain of salt until I see confirmation but it would be an odd thing to lie about so specifically.
“Face on Metropolitan is indeed smaller on the Ultra. 28mm diameter on Ultra, 29mm on 45mm Series 7!”
Having said that, one dangerous area where Garmin is missing a boat is their Garmin IQ store - that ecosystem is basically dead with very few useful apps.
Large screen, incredible battery life, and OSM maps when off road just beat everything except Ordnance Survey in the UK.
I do have a Fenix 5, but it's not very good TBH. I did try an older Apple watch and similarly not very good. I thought about Suunto but they seemed more watersports oriented.
The best of the outdoor devices I have has no hiking features. That's my Hammerhead bike computer. The software is great, the maps are OSM, the hardware is great. If that came with a neck collar loop and a hiking profile it would be my single device for outdoor things.
- cellular only (first in this space that no one speaks of with this battery capacity)
- them catering to planners/trainers in their adversing.
Sure Apple is pricey and they don’t make for everyone, but no one markets with bullseyes like Apple in tech. I hope Garmin truly welcomes the competition. It’s getting sad and I would love pressure on Apple to really continue attempting to push the space of wearables and not get idle from being on a market island
I think that there's a big enough market where the Garmin devices and the Apple Watch Ultra will both coexist and fill their own niches. I'm looking forward to what we see on the Ultra here in the future. this was a fun article and I love seeing users already working on this.