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The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watc

The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watches have excellent battery life and solar charging. I use a Garmin smartwatch. One of the surprising things about Garmin is that they don't have a proper app store. They have an app where you can load apps into your watch, but it's rather crippled by having no payment system. That would be fine if all the apps are free, but they're not: a lot of the prettier watch faces (for example) expect cash - but there's no easy way to pay for them. I recently added a watch face which stopped working after a few days because the author wanted cash sent through some dubious third party website. I presume they do this to avoid issues with Android / Apple rules about payment, but it's a poor experience.

caturopath 3y ago
I am so satisfied with my Garmin Fenix. It's comically expensive, but it has been a dream compared to the Fitbits I used for years. Garmin has lots of lower-end watches, too, which would have resolved most of my headaches and many still have great battery life compared to the competition. I haven't touched the "smart watch" features, though. Garmin conducts themselves really well, too. They make good stuff and do little to lock it down: you don't have to use their cloud shit if you don't want (I do use it and like it), they created a peripheral standard in ANT+ that became widely adopted, without actually privileging their own stuff, etc.
- xur17 3y ago
  Same here. I had a Samsung Android watch for years that I would use for tracking runs, and I was never very happy with it. Slow gps fix, horrible battery life (the thing died on a bike ride when I started with it fully charged), and the touch screen was hard to use while running. I wear my Garmin all day, and charge it every other week. Physical buttons are a game changer, and the activity tracking software feels like it was made by someone that actually uses it.
- danielbln 3y ago
  I've got the Garmin Forerunner 735XT and while the software is a little clunky at times, it's a total work horse. Battery lasts for a week when worn all day and with at least 30 minutes of GPS tracked running activity per day, the display is extremely well to read outside in the sun and the smart features I use are the app notifications and that's it. No complaints, that thing is indestructible and I would buy it again. The prices at times are truly comical though, then again I've got this watch since 2017 and it's still going strong, I'm sure I would have gone through at least a couple of Apple Watches or Android Wear watches in the meantime.
  - JimtheCoder 3y ago
    "while the software is a little clunky at times" Are you talking about Garmin Express? If so, a "little clunky" would be a massive understatement based on my experience... I love my Garmin watch, but I wish the Garmin software was lot more...usable.
- mechhacker 3y ago
  Really happy with my Fenix as well. It's only crashed once when recording where it lost data (3+ hour long GPS session), but other than that I haven't really had serious issues. I will force a reboot occasionally but the user experience is so much better than the Samsung watch I tried. And battery life...I can put it in low power mode and it just works as a watch until I want to record an activity. And it has power for ~a month that way.
- chimprich 3y ago
  I had a very strange, mixed experience with Garmin customer services recently. My watch died after 2 1/2 years. I'd heard that Garmin will, unofficially, replace broken watches for a bit longer than the official warranty (and so they should, because 1 year life expectancy would be terrible for a smart watch), so I contacted them. The said they'd replace it for free and gave me a label to download (great!) However, I was travelling and the label wasn't valid for where I was. I asked if I could send it myself or get the label re-allocated when I got back (it had a time limit). We then exchanged a dozen or so emails where Garmin CS kept ignoring my suggestions and giving me stupid instructions (terrible) until we eventually agreed they'd give me another label when I got back (ok). I got back home and requested another label. CS demanded payment equivalent to the cost of a new watch (terrible!) I repeatedly asked why they were suddenly asking for payment when they'd previously offered it for free and they kept ignoring the question (argh!) I'd have been much less annoyed if they'd just said up front that it was out of warranty, as then I wouldn't have wasted weeks and dozens of emails. I eventually noticed that the original label still seemed to be valid, so I took up their original offer, sent my watch off and got an apparently new replacement within a day or two (great! I think.) So, very mixed views! It's a lot like trying to write a Garmin app. They've got some nice API documentation (with a tutorial) but very incomplete as soon as you try to do something non-trivial.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
For me GPS is a must-have. I want the tracking of my walks/rides. Looking at the Garmin specs, the two-week battery life is sans-GPS. With GPS enabled the battery life is the same as the Apple Watch.
- izacus 3y ago
  It absolutely isn't the same as Apple Watch, not sure what you've been looking at. Apple Watch lasts hours with active GPS tracking while Garmin will last for a day (or even several days when in so-called Expedition mode). Nothing from Apple comes close to Garmin's battery life at same usage.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Hours?! That’s definitely not true, I am by no means a Marathon runner, but mine has definitely managed to track quite long distances. Although the two are not directly comparable of course, when is more of a fitness watch, the other is a general smart watch with fitness functionality.
    - izacus 3y ago
      Apple Watch Ultra has juice for about 10-13 hours of active GPS activity tracking time. Non-Ultra Apple Watch does less. My Garmin Epix2 can do about 24 hours with full battery, Fenix series does a bit more.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      My ex would leave on GPS tracking when we'd go out so he could re-draw his route later, and his Apple Watch would almost always be dead before dinner. Just my N+1 anecdata, and he was using an older (Series 3?) model.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Apple Watch 8 is rated at 18 hours mixed usage. My Venu 2 is rated at 20 hours with the GPS on the entire time. My experience bears that out. I lose about 5% an hour battery when tracking my bike rides. Mixed usage, I'm getting 5 days out of it. Apple said their GOAL was 18 hours (mixed usage). Good grief.
hammock 3y ago
>The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watches have excellent battery life and solar charging. Just get one without a screen. Iirc there are a bunch of G SHOCK digital watches that can show phone notifications. You can even get solar for a never ending battery life

caturopath 3y ago

I am so satisfied with my Garmin Fenix. It's comically expensive, but it has been a dream compared to the Fitbits I used for years. Garmin has lots of lower-end watches, too, which would have resolved most of my headaches and many still have great battery life compared to the competition. I haven't touched the "smart watch" features, though. Garmin conducts themselves really well, too. They make good stuff and do little to lock it down: you don't have to use their cloud shit if you don't want (I do use it and like it), they created a peripheral standard in ANT+ that became widely adopted, without actually privileging their own stuff, etc.

xur17 3y ago
Same here. I had a Samsung Android watch for years that I would use for tracking runs, and I was never very happy with it. Slow gps fix, horrible battery life (the thing died on a bike ride when I started with it fully charged), and the touch screen was hard to use while running. I wear my Garmin all day, and charge it every other week. Physical buttons are a game changer, and the activity tracking software feels like it was made by someone that actually uses it.
danielbln 3y ago
I've got the Garmin Forerunner 735XT and while the software is a little clunky at times, it's a total work horse. Battery lasts for a week when worn all day and with at least 30 minutes of GPS tracked running activity per day, the display is extremely well to read outside in the sun and the smart features I use are the app notifications and that's it. No complaints, that thing is indestructible and I would buy it again. The prices at times are truly comical though, then again I've got this watch since 2017 and it's still going strong, I'm sure I would have gone through at least a couple of Apple Watches or Android Wear watches in the meantime.
- JimtheCoder 3y ago
  "while the software is a little clunky at times" Are you talking about Garmin Express? If so, a "little clunky" would be a massive understatement based on my experience... I love my Garmin watch, but I wish the Garmin software was lot more...usable.
mechhacker 3y ago
Really happy with my Fenix as well. It's only crashed once when recording where it lost data (3+ hour long GPS session), but other than that I haven't really had serious issues. I will force a reboot occasionally but the user experience is so much better than the Samsung watch I tried. And battery life...I can put it in low power mode and it just works as a watch until I want to record an activity. And it has power for ~a month that way.
chimprich 3y ago
I had a very strange, mixed experience with Garmin customer services recently. My watch died after 2 1/2 years. I'd heard that Garmin will, unofficially, replace broken watches for a bit longer than the official warranty (and so they should, because 1 year life expectancy would be terrible for a smart watch), so I contacted them. The said they'd replace it for free and gave me a label to download (great!) However, I was travelling and the label wasn't valid for where I was. I asked if I could send it myself or get the label re-allocated when I got back (it had a time limit). We then exchanged a dozen or so emails where Garmin CS kept ignoring my suggestions and giving me stupid instructions (terrible) until we eventually agreed they'd give me another label when I got back (ok). I got back home and requested another label. CS demanded payment equivalent to the cost of a new watch (terrible!) I repeatedly asked why they were suddenly asking for payment when they'd previously offered it for free and they kept ignoring the question (argh!) I'd have been much less annoyed if they'd just said up front that it was out of warranty, as then I wouldn't have wasted weeks and dozens of emails. I eventually noticed that the original label still seemed to be valid, so I took up their original offer, sent my watch off and got an apparently new replacement within a day or two (great! I think.) So, very mixed views! It's a lot like trying to write a Garmin app. They've got some nice API documentation (with a tutorial) but very incomplete as soon as you try to do something non-trivial.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

For me GPS is a must-have. I want the tracking of my walks/rides. Looking at the Garmin specs, the two-week battery life is sans-GPS. With GPS enabled the battery life is the same as the Apple Watch.

izacus 3y ago
It absolutely isn't the same as Apple Watch, not sure what you've been looking at. Apple Watch lasts hours with active GPS tracking while Garmin will last for a day (or even several days when in so-called Expedition mode). Nothing from Apple comes close to Garmin's battery life at same usage.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Hours?! That’s definitely not true, I am by no means a Marathon runner, but mine has definitely managed to track quite long distances. Although the two are not directly comparable of course, when is more of a fitness watch, the other is a general smart watch with fitness functionality.
  - izacus 3y ago
    Apple Watch Ultra has juice for about 10-13 hours of active GPS activity tracking time. Non-Ultra Apple Watch does less. My Garmin Epix2 can do about 24 hours with full battery, Fenix series does a bit more.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    My ex would leave on GPS tracking when we'd go out so he could re-draw his route later, and his Apple Watch would almost always be dead before dinner. Just my N+1 anecdata, and he was using an older (Series 3?) model.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
Apple Watch 8 is rated at 18 hours mixed usage. My Venu 2 is rated at 20 hours with the GPS on the entire time. My experience bears that out. I lose about 5% an hour battery when tracking my bike rides. Mixed usage, I'm getting 5 days out of it. Apple said their GOAL was 18 hours (mixed usage). Good grief.

hammock 3y ago

>The title should really be the quest for a cheap smartwatch with battery life, which seems to be what the author was looking for. The more expensive Garmin watches have excellent battery life and solar charging. Just get one without a screen. Iirc there are a bunch of G SHOCK digital watches that can show phone notifications. You can even get solar for a never ending battery life