What was the reason for not including maps on Enduro?

I am exactly the kind of user who Garmin is targeting with Enduro. Initially I was very intrigued by Enduro, yet I think Garmin has made a mistake by not including maps. Training for ultrarunning involves very long runs in remote areas on trails where navigation is an essential part of experience.

Without maps, by relying only on turn-by-turn directions, navigation is much less reliable. Turn-by-turn directions simply don't work on trails because there are often trail junctions at odd angles that aren't detected as turns. At the same time the watch produces a lot of useless turn notifications at every sharp bend of trail where there are no actual turns. Maps are pretty much required to see the course relative to other terrain features - other trails, creeks, lakes, summits, etc.

So I wonder what was the rationale for excluding maps?

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lucky1976 over 3 years ago

I am a sucker for new tech/toys but I can’t see any reason to upgrade or if it really is an upgrade over the Fenix 6x. You gain possibly 10-15 hrs of battery life during an activity but lose maps. With my Fenix 6x I can get up to 35-40 hrs during an ultra races which will be enough in 99.9% of activities many will endure. I kinda like the new strap but it makes the watch look cheaper and can only imagine how smelly it will get wearing it all day on the trails in the sun.

What in the Enduro do you see showing up in the future Fenix 7? Is the battery that much greater or is it because they removed maps.

nmyeti over 3 years ago in reply to silentvoyager

that is actually one of the beauties of this particular product. You don't have to buy it.

lucky1976 over 3 years ago in reply to nmyeti

That is true. I hope to see many reviews and hope people enjoy the watch. I am looking forward to see what Garmin comes out with in the Fenix 7.

silentvoyager over 3 years ago in reply to nmyeti

I won't even though I could and was very interested initially. Another disappointment is that the GNSS chip is reportedly the same as in Fenix 6. I find Fenix 6 pace to be borderline unusable when running on trails, and Enduro will likely retain that. But if Garmin used a new Sony dual-band GNSS chip I'd very tempted even despite the lack of maps.

Volker over 3 years ago

Simple: Garmin decided that, because they want a watch with a really long battery life, with is not strongly influenced by music and maps, because they are the biggest battery consumers. Who wants a device with music and maps, has to choose a different device. Nobody is forced to buy it.

nmyeti over 3 years ago in reply to silentvoyager

silentvoyager said:
I won't even though I could and was very interested initially.

Again, that's the beauty of choice. Garmin isn't saying "This is the next Fenix to be the end all of the Fenix line." They are saying, here is something for a specific subset of people who needed something different than we already offer. For me, the most interesting part of this product is probably the velcro strap. I've been waiting for a decent 1st party strap like this for winter activities for quite some time. I suspect i'll pick up one for my 6x Pro Solar. I'd love to see it in other lug sizes. Wearing the regular strap over a jacket sleeve doesn't always work well depending on how cold it is and how much i'm layering up.

miki over 3 years ago in reply to lucky1976

lucky1976 said:
With my Fenix 6x I can get up to 35-40 hrs during an ultra races

Is that so? That's pretty far from the claimed 60hr. Then the Enduro's 70hr, provided you can actually get that much use out it, is much more impressive than it looks on paper.

sis651 over 3 years ago

I think Garmin made some hardware changes and testing it with Enduro model. Later they can use the platform in Fenix 7 or 8 or whatever... And they'll sell more expensive products.

C.sco over 3 years ago in reply to miki

miki said:
Is that so? That's pretty far from the claimed 60hr. Then the Enduro's 70hr, provided you can actually get that much use out it, is much more impressive than it looks on paper.

One can definitely get 60 hours on a 6X - but obviously with certain settings and usage, that can be reduced. Lucky1976's 35-40 hours likely involves some combination of music, maps, course routing, CIQ datafields, etc etc.

To achieve 60 hours of GPS time, you'd have to be using just a barebones activity with no map, no music, no course loaded into it, no CIQ stuff. There are probably some other settings I'm forgetting.

miki over 3 years ago

Anyone knows why some review articles use photos of the enduro with a map screen? They credit it to Garmin so I doubt it would be photoshopped...

Here's an example: