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What is the use-case now in 2025 for an e-ink watch? I have a Garmin Epix pro gen 2 which gets about a month of battery life and has a gorgeous AMOLED, has prof

• zevon 1y ago
  It's not e-ink but a transreflective LCD. As to "why": I'm not interested at all in Garmin's sports and health features and their cloud stuff. Pebbles work well, get out of the way and have a nice, friendly and slightly quirky interface. There are many apps and watchfaces out there. As of the new ones, the OS is open source. Reasons enough for me. ;)
  • JeremyNT 1y ago
    Absolutely. I likely will continue to use my Garmin watch because I rely heavily on the fitness stuff that they do so well, but outside of that the Garmin is "just OK." If you want a fitness tracker that is also a smartwatch the Garmin is a great choice. If you want a smartwatch and don't care about fitness tracking then you're wasting a lot of money on stuff you don't care about with Garmin, for just an OK and extremely locked down device.
  • bornfreddy 1y ago
    What is not e-ink? GP said that Garmin is AMOLED and according to [0] pebbles are e-ink/e-paper. Can you clarify? Otherwise I agree. I would love an opensource fitness watch though, but I understand why this is not (yet?) possible. [0] https://store.repebble.com/ https://store.repebble.com/
    • PlatinumHarp 1y ago
      e-ink is not a synonym of e-paper. Reflective LCDs are a type of e-paper.
      • ac29 1y ago
        To clarify, e-ink is e-paper, but e-paper is not necessarily e-ink (there are other technologies).
  • FrinkleFrankle 1y ago
    I'm still daily driving a Pebble Time. No other company has made a simple, functional smartwatch anywhere in the same league as Pebble.
• KetoManx64 1y ago
  4x the price to start off with, 51x51x15mm size, Only 11 days battery life if you use the always on display according to their site, completely locked down OS and ecosystem that puts you at 100% their mercy when it comes to EOL and updates, no idea what their privacy policy is, but you probably have to accept it if you want to use it and just put up with the fact that all your data, location, heart rate, and everything else is sent and stored and most likely used for training different AI models, and probably getting sold to different companies.
  • mzakharo1 1y ago
    Garmin allows side loading apps and sdk is easy to use. I would not call this locked down
    • pjmlp 1y ago
      Also Monkey C is definitly a better language than plain old C.
• blacksmith_tb 1y ago
  Hmm, looks like your Garmin has somewhere between 30h (with everything turned on) to 11d of battery life, which is not bad for needing to power a bright screen. I wear a Skagen Jorn hybrid, which has physical hands over a round e-ink display, which lasts ~3w on a charge for me. I also like e-ink better in daylight, AMOLED has gotten pretty good, but it's still harder to read in bright conditions (though obviously easier in dark ones!)
• jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
  Garmins are incredibly expensive and not everyone wants a fitness tracker. Garmin's UX is also very disjointed between devices for how expensive they are. Plus, battery life tends to be garbage for smartwatches. I just sold my Apple Watch for a Coros because I was tired of trading battery life for features I didn't want/use and Garmins also require yet another subscription for some features. As someone who just spent the last month deciding on a new fitness wearable, much of the market is full of bloated devices that don't do everything right, but instead do a handful of things right with a laundry list of caveats. There's still a strong market for dumb watches too, so a long-lasting "smart" device that does some things but not as much as an Apple Watch, Garmin, Coros, etc while still serving as a general information displaying wearable sounded enticing. Unfortunately Apple's lockdown of the iPhone for the previous Pebbles (which I think might still be a thing) and my need for fitness tracking are what prevented me from buying a Pebble.
  • gffrd 1y ago
    Are we talking about the same Garmin? I have an Instinct 2 that cost me under $200 new, goes 2+ weeks between charges, and handles all activities I throw at it quite well. I agree: their launching of a subscription service is disappointing, because (1) it was wonderful having a no-recurring-cost ecosystem before, and (2) presumably that's where they'll be investing their product dollars. But, it's not required, and to date, it's not particularly high value.
    • Borealid 1y ago
      For the moment, Gadgetbridge also exists if you want a FOSS app that can deliver much of the same functionality Garmin's own app does.
      • gffrd 1y ago
        No way! Thanks for making me aware of this - first I've heard of it.
    • jsbisviewtiful 1y ago
• Demiurge 1y ago
  Just for context, your watch seems to cost $1,099.99 USD
• justapassenger 1y ago
  I use Garmin myself and I'm sure I won't switch to anything else for many years, as for what I need is amazing. It's a complete fitness product, with a healthy dose of smart watch features added to it. Pebble is very different product. It's a watch for tinkerers with some fitness features added to it.
• roflmaostc 1y ago
  my Garmin Fenix 6 used to survive with 21 days of display always one but lowest brightness, if I didn't use any GPS. Now, after 3 years it is somehow down to 10 days. No chance of debugging where it comes from as I haven't changed anything on my side.
  • deanc 1y ago
    I turned that off immediately. I don’t see the value when the gesture to wake it up works almost flawlessly.
    • roflmaostc 1y ago
      I want to be able to watch on my watch without moving my arm. Unless it detects my eyes, it stays on :p
  • datadrivenangel 1y ago
    That sounds like battery degradation. If they aggressively use less than ideal batteries, ~50% degradation after 3 years is bad but not uncommon.
    • roflmaostc 1y ago
      But I didn't have this issue with my other garmins before. Also, you have to consider that I charge my watch ~10 times less than my phone (roughly every 10 days). So the total amount of charging cycles was maybe ~100 times.
• neogodless 1y ago
  Agree with sibling comments, but I think it's a bad choice of comparison. I'm a Garmin Venu fan, but... apparently it was a $350 watch[0], and now there's a $450 version[1] and an $800 version[2]. There's still an older one[3] available for $250 (or ~$185 on Amazon). Though I got my original Venu "refurbished" for under $100 (and it still had all the plastic wrap, etc. so was truly "like new.") 10-11 day battery when new (mine gets 6-7 days after several years of use, but I have never used always-on-display.) If I can get a Venu 2/2S/2S Plus/3/3S as a refurbished watch for ~$200-250, then I would go that route over an inexpensive Pebble 2 Time. Love that OLED screen. But I totally get the hacker ethos favoring the Pebble OS over Garmin. (Garmin does have a pretty good watch OS, and most things work without a subscription, which was a major factor in my purchase.) For $450 (or more...) it is not comparable to Pebble's offering. [0] https://www.techradar.com/reviews/garmin-venu https://www.techradar.com/reviews/garmin-venu [1] https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/873008/ https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/873008/ [2] https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1510465/ https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1510465/ [3] https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/801643/pn/010-02701-00/ https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/801643/pn/010-02701-00/
• Karawebnetwork 1y ago
  Personally, I try not to use screens for a few hours before going to bed. Before bedtime, I limit myself to my e-ink book reader. The idea of having a screen on my wrist doesn't particularly appeal to me. My partner has one and when they turn over in bed, I am sometimes blinded by the screen which still glows brightly even at the lowest setting in complete darkness. That's why I'm considering a e-ink watch. The reason I didn't commit yet is that I fear that notifications and such before bedtime could be just as harmful to my nightline peacefulness.
  • 51Cards 1y ago
    You may also find interesting that in this release update he mentiones that the backlight LED is now RGB and they are toying with ideas like making the backlight blue light aware at nights, etc.
    • Karawebnetwork 1y ago
      This would be interesting. I was gifted a Kindle with backlighting recently after my old first generation one broke. The backlight is useless to me because it shines blue, so I just use a candle.
      • teekert 1y ago
        FWIW, my PocketBook (Touch HD3) can shine in red. It has a most horrible book store though and microusb charging. Not sure what newer models offer.
      • wan23 1y ago
        Recent Kindles have a warm light feature to avoid this problem
  • RandomBacon 1y ago
    > notifications and such before bedtime could be just as harmful to my nightline peacefulness. If you have an Android, you can set Do Not Disturb mode on a schedule.
• saltcured 1y ago
  This is off topic, as the Pebble doesn't really aim at a use case I care about. Navigation and tracking of hikes and other daytime outdoor activity is my use case. Automatic illumination has never worked well for me on any watch. It seems I just don't roll my wrist to view the screen the way other people do, so this heuristic fails badly for me. I often read my watches via ambient light and the light hasn't triggered or comes later after I've already seen what I want. And on the other hand, I get annoyed by false-positives where it just lights up randomly in my peripheral vision. So I often disable the automatic light feature. So, I enjoy the always-on but passive aspect of a transflective LCD display. It is practical like a conventional watch with physical hands. It works well in bright sunlight, well enough in other decently lit environments, and at least copes with dark via the backlight. I wish it was even more reflective for low light, but the recent LCDs are not bad. I vastly prefer my Garmin FR255 which seems like the last of its breed. Garmin may have lost me as a repeat buyer with the changing products. I think I'd like their Enduro line, but not at those prices. I don't like many of the compromises of the Instinct line either, but it seems the only option left.
  • usrusr 1y ago
    Same. Amoled watches feel like TEXT IN ALL CAPS to me, screaming for attention when all they should do is make information available, vs force-feeding data. For attention, there's the vibration buzzer (which I absolutely love, so much more personal than a phone jumping around on the table)
  • cyberax 1y ago
    > This is off topic, as the Pebble doesn't really aim at a use case I care about. Navigation and tracking of hikes and other daytime outdoor activity is my use case. I was thinking about that, I like my iWatch logging my hikes. But then I realized that I always have my phone with me anyway. And I already use a self-hosted track recorder ( https://github.com/Freika/dawarich/ https://github.com/Freika/dawarich/ ). So Pebble has one more order from me. iWatch and the recent Android phones have some nifty features like fall detection and heart rate alarms, but their privacy and the ease of use are deteriorating.
    • 1y ago
• leokennis 1y ago
  Wait an AMOLED with 30 days of battery life? Why/how can my Apple Watch barely make it through 24 hours? What’s the fundamental difference between these two smartwatches that accounts for a 30× decrease in battery life?
  • MOARDONGZPLZ 1y ago
    My Garmin doesn’t get 30 days but does routinely get 2 weeks, which is fine with me. The battery life is probably the only reason I have never tried the Apple Watch, and I check every generation to see if there has been an improvement. Even the large sport / epic one only gets pathetic 36 hours. It’s mind boggling how Garmin can be so good at this and Apple cannot.
  • ezst 1y ago
    Just guessing, maybe Apple doesn't want that, so to not compete in a niche of demanding users with excessively utilitarian needs?
  • jerlam 1y ago
    The Apple Watch feels like it's designed as a very small iPhone. It has a lot of unnecessary functionality on-device, like email, a separate iMessage client, and its own Focus settings, which can sync to the iPhone, possibly as a requirement to make the watch operate independently. All these things take up battery power. Also, Apple sees no benefit having their watches last longer, so they're adding features instead of optimizing them, as long as it hits 18 hours or so.
    • swat535 1y ago
      Yea I see the Apple Watch an extension of iPhone. It's an accessory that integrates with the ecosystem and offers conveniences. I see it as a different product with different use cases that other competing watches. For most people, the batter is enough for the day of an average use and they charge it at night with their phones. I don't know about the Apple Watch Ultra 2 however and how it compares.
  • GloriousKoji 1y ago
• micromacrofoot 1y ago
  > has profiles for pretty much every sport ever invented, incredibly accurate GPS tracking I don't need any of this
• legitster 1y ago
  The Pebble battery life is with the display always on. It's squarely aimed at people who want the watch functionality to be first and foremost - no dorky wrist flicks or the distraction of the screen coming on and off all the time.
  • dspillett 1y ago
    > The Pebble battery life is with the display always on. … no dorky wrist flicks My watch display (Garming Fenix 7) is always on and the battery life is great. Any dorky wrist flick or button presses are for the backlight when it is needed. [Though as others point out, the balance of needs targetted by the two devices differ noticably]
• coffeecoders 1y ago
  I have owned a Fenix for years and have been wanting to upgrade, but I can’t make sense of the hundreds of models.
  • canucker2016 1y ago
    Yeah, Garmin's segmentation strategy makes Intel's marketing look sane. Lately my Garmin comparison strategy has been: - look at the last Garmin watch you were interested in - see if there's been an upgrade to that model (and hope that the model numbering hasn't totally changed) - look at prices of recent Garmin watches in the same ballpark
• paxys 1y ago
  "What's the use case for a $150 watch when you can just buy a $1000 watch instead?"
• delecti 1y ago
  I recently switched to an AMOLED Garmin from a watch with an always-on screen (and before that, a pebble), so maybe I can weigh in. The use-case for a transflective watch are the same as they were in 2013. I don't really care if my watch has a beautiful vibrant display, I want it to show the time, every single time I look at it. The Garmin's wrist turn gesture detection is decent, but far from perfect. I need to either poke the screen, push a button, or very deliberately raise my wrist to trigger the gesture detection. Also, it emits light every time the screen wakes, whether I'm looking or not, and whether the light from the watch will be disruptive or not. None of that sounds convincing? Then this product probably just isn't aimed at you. And I don't mean that to be snarky, preferences around smartwatches are just really particular to the individual.
• marricks 1y ago
  > https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/subscription-plans/ https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/subscription-plans/ Garmin introduced a subscription and you can guarantee that'll pave the way for the base experience to get shittier over time as they funnel people to it. If it works other fitness watches will follow. As soon as someone makes a good enough fitness app for that it becomes a way better option, it could actually get better over time without breaking.
• GuB-42 1y ago
  The Garmin is a sports watch, the use case is for people who want a smartwatch that is not a sports watch. Why pay 4x or even 2x the price for features you don't need? In fact, I am tempted by the Pebble Core 2 (which is the lower-end version) because it ticks all the boxes: affordable ($150), supports notifications, vibration, good battery life (30 days), and of course it tells the time. It is also one of the most open smart watch platforms. I am not a competitive athlete, I don't need a detailed report of my physical activity, and my idea of health is not chasing numbers unless it comes from a prescription. Not saying it is wrong, it is just not my thing. As for GPS tracking, it is a nice feature, but AFAIK, Pebble watches can use the GPS in your phone to do some limited navigation. Pebble watches still have some basic health tracking features, like step counting, sleep tracking, heart rate. All probably inaccurate like for most watches, but considering how cheap these things are, why not put them in.
• NBJack 1y ago
  Citation needed; that Garmin watch cited claims about 30 hours of life unless the screen is mostly off and you severely hamper the features (i.e. "smartwatch mode"). I wont doubt you can get it to last weeks like that. These devices are able to always show the display, don't need to turn off features, can still show notifications, etc.
• footy 1y ago
  I used to love Garmin and I'll probably always use their watches for actual sports, but I don't trust the company anymore. I heavily debated getting one of these and I bit the bullet a few days ago. The use case is I want a watch that I can tinker with and not giving Garmin my data.
• Steltek 1y ago
  Speak for yourself. I can't wait for my Pebble to arrive so I can junk drawer my awful Garmin watch. The UI is dreadful to the point that I can't believe no one else notices. Like, doesn't anyone else notice how hard it is to get it to wake up the backlight so you can read the screen? I can shake my hand like I'm a paint mixer and it does nothing. And that's not even talking about the software bugs that destroy a full battery in moments.