I'll take my multiple weeks of battery life for a single charge on the Forerunner 965. The data and analytics are fantastic as well.
It fits well into my general philosophy of smartphone notifications, where real humans are allowed to buzz or make noise (phone calls / text messages) and everything else waits silently in the notification drawer until I choose to look at the phone.
I recently renewed my Garmin watch and I did the same: disable all the phone related features.
And one of the Reddit comments quoted in the article says the same:
> Apple Watch is a Smartwatch with fitness features, Garmin is a Fitness watch (with admittedly lacking) smartwatch features.
People still buy Garmin watches instead of Apple Watch because they don't want the "smart" stuff, they want the fitness stuff first.
And yeah, the battery life is also a big factor!