4 ms·

The software has gotten a lot better since they made that change. That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's

The software has gotten a lot better since they made that change. That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Especially without MIP displays. The Enduro series is now the traditional Fenix series. Also this Fenix 8 Pro is not getting reviewed well by the usual people (des, ray, etc) it's not a good watch for the price. The sacrifices made for both LTE and the new display are too great.

dchftcs 1y ago
How much better is it now? I hate Garmin with a passion because their watches are effectively region-locked by language support, an insanely consumer-hostile move in this day. I was unable to use any features related to text or whatsapp messages because the watch shockingly could not decode messages in my native language. Their software was also so flaky that I was woken up by a faulty vibration alert in the middle of the night multiple times during the few months I wore the Garmin Instinct Solar, and at least twice I was unable to fall back to sleep. That is, the watch was supposed to be in silent or DND mode, but the watch probably crashed or reset in the middle of the night, losing the silent or DND state, allowing an alert to go through. The sleep tracking was also very inaccurate, and sleep tracking is the single most valuable metric for me. To this day I fantasize posting a video where I smash my Garmin watch to pieces alerting other people how bad it is. Still, the hardware was near perfect and it's hard to hate the watch itself. But because of the software issues, it was no better than a dumb watch to me. I hate Garmin the company.
- nradov 1y ago
  Garmin devices have historically had two regions for languages: Asia and everywhere else. I suspect this is due to some legacy limitations in their proprietary OS around Unicode support. Years ago, it was very difficult to implement full support for all languages on a single device with very limited hardware and battery power.
  - dchftcs 1y ago
    Historically, in order to get support for one of the Asian languages, you typically had to buy the watch in the exact right country, not anywhere else.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    So how bad is it if you're "just" eastern european? I.e. latin alphabet but extra squigglies and ofc not an en_US locale.
- ashirviskas 1y ago
  Same sentiment here. I constantly get 90+ scores when I wake up feeling like shit. A 20€ chinese smart band combined with Sleep as Android provided much more accurate sleep tracking than a 800€ Garmin. The only 2 garmin specific features I use are (compared to what I had before): 1. LED flashlight, love always having a pretty good light on my wrist (I'm talking about the actual flashlight some Garmins have, not the "use display as a flashlight" feature) 2. GPS that does not drain phone battery 3. Looks Everything else for me is worse than a cheap chinese smart band.
  - xarope 1y ago
    are you talking about the titan pg or equivalent? I've seen reviews so far saying GPS and HRM are not that accurate?
    - ashirviskas 1y ago
      > are you talking about the titan pg or equivalent? No, first time I'm hearing about it, I was talking about garmin vs Xiaomi Mi bands
mikestew 1y ago
That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Depending on your definition of “cohort”, that’s simply not true. I see plenty of late-model Fenix in the wild. And, yeah, there’s a vocal minority of folks that prefer MIPS (often based on outdated or flat wrong assumptions, like “AMOLED isn’t visible in sunlight”, which is how you know the speaker has never used an AMOLED screen). As to the latest model, “not a good watch for the price” is a gimme when the thing costs two grand (U. S.). I’m at a loss as to what a watch might do to make it worth two grand to me.
- oktoberpaard 1y ago
  For me it’s not so much about the readability in sunlight, but about being able to glance at your watch without moving your wrist and about the watch not emitting light in dark environments. I find that distracting and I like the stealthiness of MIPS. That being said, if the minimum brightness is low enough and battery life with always-on high enough I think I could live with it, but with wrist gestures completely disabled except during activity.
- 827a 1y ago
  The battery life difference is huge between OLED and MIPS. The Fenix 8 Solar gets 30-45 days of battery life. Fenix 8 OLED can get 28 days, if you turn off the always-on display; otherwise, 12 days.
  - intothemild 1y ago
    A good reminder here for people who don't do lots of activities on their watch and think that we just don't want to charge for a month. GPS uses battery. So having a watch that can last a month, for us means it will last a couple weeks of constant running/cycling/etc. This is in stark comparison to a smart watch.
    - 827a 1y ago
      Yup. Many people will never experience this, but an Apple Watch Series 10 effectively cannot track a marathon for most runners. I've heard some people say that if you put it into its low-power mode, it can barely do it, but otherwise you need an AW Ultra, which can record up-to ~8 hours of continuous activity. If you regularly do longer, lower-impact outdoor activities like cross-country cycling or hiking, none of the Apple Watches can really handle it (especially if Apple's future intention is that you'll also be able to rely on it for emergency satellite connectivity; with what battery life??) When Garmin says that they have a watch that can last 28 days, what that really means is "it could do like 50-80 hours of continuous activity tracking" or "you can easily record a 10 hour hike, and also not be worried that the watch will be dead if you need it for emergency satellite services". That's years beyond anything Apple, Google, or Samsung can do; none of the big tech companies are remotely close to this.
827a 1y ago
One of the frustrations I've had with a few of Garmin's recent releases is how their high-end MIPS watches, Enduro 3 & Fenix 8 Solar, seem to inherit the same thick, glare-y, ultra-durable glass I assume the Fenix 8 OLED uses, which does a number on the readability of their MIPS displays outdoors. I've never owned the F8 OLED, but I do have an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and the AWU2 is actually more readable than the E3/F8S in all light conditions except high-noon ultra-direct sunlight (which I'm very rarely outdoors in, because, you know, skin cancer). I ended up returning those, and got an Instinct 3 MIPS earlier this year, which is more readable outdoors across a variety of light conditions.
- iamacyborg 1y ago
  The solar glass has definitely been a downgrade on the MIPS display.
mvdtnz 1y ago
The MIP display is disappearing from the Instinct range too, I hope they keep at least one very rugged MIP unit.
- alfiedotwtf 1y ago
  Aren’t the Instinct 3 Solar their MIP version?

dchftcs 1y ago

How much better is it now? I hate Garmin with a passion because their watches are effectively region-locked by language support, an insanely consumer-hostile move in this day. I was unable to use any features related to text or whatsapp messages because the watch shockingly could not decode messages in my native language. Their software was also so flaky that I was woken up by a faulty vibration alert in the middle of the night multiple times during the few months I wore the Garmin Instinct Solar, and at least twice I was unable to fall back to sleep. That is, the watch was supposed to be in silent or DND mode, but the watch probably crashed or reset in the middle of the night, losing the silent or DND state, allowing an alert to go through. The sleep tracking was also very inaccurate, and sleep tracking is the single most valuable metric for me. To this day I fantasize posting a video where I smash my Garmin watch to pieces alerting other people how bad it is. Still, the hardware was near perfect and it's hard to hate the watch itself. But because of the software issues, it was no better than a dumb watch to me. I hate Garmin the company.

nradov 1y ago
Garmin devices have historically had two regions for languages: Asia and everywhere else. I suspect this is due to some legacy limitations in their proprietary OS around Unicode support. Years ago, it was very difficult to implement full support for all languages on a single device with very limited hardware and battery power.
- dchftcs 1y ago
  Historically, in order to get support for one of the Asian languages, you typically had to buy the watch in the exact right country, not anywhere else.
- nottorp 1y ago
  So how bad is it if you're "just" eastern european? I.e. latin alphabet but extra squigglies and ofc not an en_US locale.
ashirviskas 1y ago
Same sentiment here. I constantly get 90+ scores when I wake up feeling like shit. A 20€ chinese smart band combined with Sleep as Android provided much more accurate sleep tracking than a 800€ Garmin. The only 2 garmin specific features I use are (compared to what I had before): 1. LED flashlight, love always having a pretty good light on my wrist (I'm talking about the actual flashlight some Garmins have, not the "use display as a flashlight" feature) 2. GPS that does not drain phone battery 3. Looks Everything else for me is worse than a cheap chinese smart band.
- xarope 1y ago
  are you talking about the titan pg or equivalent? I've seen reviews so far saying GPS and HRM are not that accurate?
  - ashirviskas 1y ago
    > are you talking about the titan pg or equivalent? No, first time I'm hearing about it, I was talking about garmin vs Xiaomi Mi bands

mikestew 1y ago

That said, I'm a distance runner and within our cohort almost none of us want to buy Fenix's anymore. Depending on your definition of “cohort”, that’s simply not true. I see plenty of late-model Fenix in the wild. And, yeah, there’s a vocal minority of folks that prefer MIPS (often based on outdated or flat wrong assumptions, like “AMOLED isn’t visible in sunlight”, which is how you know the speaker has never used an AMOLED screen). As to the latest model, “not a good watch for the price” is a gimme when the thing costs two grand (U. S.). I’m at a loss as to what a watch might do to make it worth two grand to me.

oktoberpaard 1y ago
For me it’s not so much about the readability in sunlight, but about being able to glance at your watch without moving your wrist and about the watch not emitting light in dark environments. I find that distracting and I like the stealthiness of MIPS. That being said, if the minimum brightness is low enough and battery life with always-on high enough I think I could live with it, but with wrist gestures completely disabled except during activity.
827a 1y ago
The battery life difference is huge between OLED and MIPS. The Fenix 8 Solar gets 30-45 days of battery life. Fenix 8 OLED can get 28 days, if you turn off the always-on display; otherwise, 12 days.
- intothemild 1y ago
  A good reminder here for people who don't do lots of activities on their watch and think that we just don't want to charge for a month. GPS uses battery. So having a watch that can last a month, for us means it will last a couple weeks of constant running/cycling/etc. This is in stark comparison to a smart watch.
  - 827a 1y ago
    Yup. Many people will never experience this, but an Apple Watch Series 10 effectively cannot track a marathon for most runners. I've heard some people say that if you put it into its low-power mode, it can barely do it, but otherwise you need an AW Ultra, which can record up-to ~8 hours of continuous activity. If you regularly do longer, lower-impact outdoor activities like cross-country cycling or hiking, none of the Apple Watches can really handle it (especially if Apple's future intention is that you'll also be able to rely on it for emergency satellite connectivity; with what battery life??) When Garmin says that they have a watch that can last 28 days, what that really means is "it could do like 50-80 hours of continuous activity tracking" or "you can easily record a 10 hour hike, and also not be worried that the watch will be dead if you need it for emergency satellite services". That's years beyond anything Apple, Google, or Samsung can do; none of the big tech companies are remotely close to this.

827a 1y ago

One of the frustrations I've had with a few of Garmin's recent releases is how their high-end MIPS watches, Enduro 3 & Fenix 8 Solar, seem to inherit the same thick, glare-y, ultra-durable glass I assume the Fenix 8 OLED uses, which does a number on the readability of their MIPS displays outdoors. I've never owned the F8 OLED, but I do have an Apple Watch Ultra 2, and the AWU2 is actually more readable than the E3/F8S in all light conditions except high-noon ultra-direct sunlight (which I'm very rarely outdoors in, because, you know, skin cancer). I ended up returning those, and got an Instinct 3 MIPS earlier this year, which is more readable outdoors across a variety of light conditions.

iamacyborg 1y ago
The solar glass has definitely been a downgrade on the MIPS display.

mvdtnz 1y ago

The MIP display is disappearing from the Instinct range too, I hope they keep at least one very rugged MIP unit.

alfiedotwtf 1y ago
Aren’t the Instinct 3 Solar their MIP version?