But GPS is really hard to get right, especially if you want weeks of battery life.
Garmin have been a decent company (in the ethical/moral sense) to be a customer of for many years, but I think they're slowly losing that reputation. Yes, my 2018 hardware still does everything it did in 2018, no, I don't pay for or currently have a need for Connect+, but they're running out of hardware optimization opportunities to push people to new devices, and appear to be seeking alternative ways to maintain growth.
That being said - feature I LOVE added recently-ish that made really happy I’ve upgraded my many years old garmin was a flashlight (proper one, not screen brightness). It seemed like a gimmick but it’s now one of most used features on my watch - walking dog at night, looking for kids toys under the bed, fixing things around the house, looking for things in the bag, etc.
The only change I'd want from the new watches would be the emergency satellite messenger that the new Fenix 8 Pros have. The feature isn't as good as my dedicated InReach Mini 2, but like the flashlight it would be always on my wrist. However, the new watches are $1300 luxury items now, that's not the price of a fitness watch: it feels like they're no longer marketing to my tax bracket.
I grew up hearing about a luxury watch that had a satellite antenna built into it - the Breitling Emergency - that now costs over $18K and apparently could never have connected to satellites since the signal was too weak. Now a better version of that feature is on a Garmin and an Apple Watch.