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Comment by asveikau | Hacker News Reader

I feel like Garmin watches are kind of slept on by normies. They seem to have a niche for fitness enthusiasts. I got one primarily because it looks like a normal watch and not a tech product. But I do appreciate the fitness tracking.

I've had the same one for 5 years and it's still solid.

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I agree, it's the right level of smart for me. That said, while it's squarely in the "fitness tracker" niche, I think it is very popular with anyone who has even a passing interest in running, cycling, etc. The last few years I have seen loads of people around the office wearing one.

Garmin sort of intentionally did this to set up a moat, after their GPS business went the way of the dodo.

If by GPS you specifically mean car navigation. Because almost the entirety of Garmin as a company is built around putting GPS into various things including wearables.

But even in automotive they pivoted to working with car OEMs instead of relying on sale of independent devices.

Never seen a Garmin car navigation device.

Aerospace, Garmin was, is, and probably will be big

They were definitely a major player for a long time prior to smartphones becoming the number one GPS solution (for most cars). Garmin, TomTom, Magellan, etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u-sGHMivwo

I remember their in car navigation being huge in the 2000s in the US, maybe 2005 or so was their peak, before that they were very expensive. Probably a lot of people know the brand just for that.

Might be US-specific thing then, or at least they were not very present in the Central/Eastern Europe

Garmin it's still heavily used in boats among other things.

I wouldn't want to go into the lobster season without the ability to track my pods.

Probably their largest business segment at the moment is aviation tech, as well.

It actually is what appealed to me in how it is presented. Can you give me an idea on how open it is? Do I need register an account to run it?

I am not sure what you can do without an account, because I created an account on day 1.

It connects to the phone over Bluetooth. Many operations need your phone to have internet. There is a kind of primitive app platform. The only app I really use is for Home Assistant, it makes https requests to HA over the phone. I connected it to Strava too, it can realtime send heart rate to that app without going to the internet, but it required jumping a few hoops in settings.

Thank you. This is useful to me. I will look into it more closely, but I think that will likely not be for me.

You can use the device as a fitness tracker without registering an account. And you can download activity files with a USB cable. But anything more, including the satellite connectivity, requires registering an account.

Care to explain how does a normal watch look like nowadays and does a fitness product? I guess I am clueless in this. I wear Mi Band 4.

Mine is a Garmin Fenix 6s.

If you do a quick Google images for Garmin Fenix 6s and then for mi band 4, I think you will see the visual contrast we're talking about.

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