Does Anything Work Correctly?

Having recently bought a Fenix 5 plus I've run into several problems already.

1. Sleep tracking is poor at best

2. My HRM works fine(ish) for certain parts of my walking activity then it seems to completely stop working.

3. The maps seem to be a bit gimmicky and not really that useful in most of my scenarios.

Having just started accessing these forums I notice problem after problem for many people. These problems are seemingly not just minor bugs, but major issues that realistically render the device pretty much pointless. It seemingly does as far as i can tell nothing particularly well, and certainly not nearly well enough to justify the ridiculously high premium price.

As somebody stated in a post i read it seems that the watch is just a step tracker with a £500 price tag.

I'm also confused by the unending numbers of people that try to justify the shortcomings of a product that nowhere near justifies it's premium price tag. Why are people so happy to accept all these shortcomings as ok? It really isn't ok at this price point.

And before anyone mentions it i did my research before buying (that seems to be a stock phrase in this forum for some reason)

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Dr Phil over 5 years ago +1

OneGoodKnock said:
And before anyone mentions it i did my research before buying (that seems to be a stock phrase in this forum for some reason)

And yet despite the 'warnings' from posters you still bought…
OneGoodKnock over 5 years ago in reply to Bernhard_Winter +1

It's really ridiculous to me that this is even a thing. Anyways I've contacted the seller a few days ago in order to return or replace, I'm not willing to faff about with this pishh anymore.…

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0 Elbo over 5 years ago

There are a couple of reasons I bought a garmin (forerunner 935 in my case. Also not a cheap watch)

The one thing every one is telling: garmin is the best, because it has the most features. Well, that's true to some extend. But I did notice most of these features are either just a gimmick, or don't work that well. Things like thermometer, barometer, staircounter, sleeptracker. All just rubbish. The software is full of annoying bugs and customer support, at least here in the Netherlands is very bad.

The other reason to switch from Suunto to Garmin is the enormous size of the Suunto 9. It's way to big for me. Also, Suunto has a software problem. Not the software on their watches, but their backend software. And their choice to move to WearOS is definitely not my choice.

What I learned from 3 years of Garmin? I know what I find important:

1. Battery iife. That means you're stuck with the more expensive models. Expensive Suunto or Polar or Garmin. It's about the same.

2. Navigation. Not maps (the screen is to small, and clumsy to operate with buttons) but follow the line type of navigation. Suunto is the best, Garmin second, Polar lacked that feature (although their laters model finally has it)

3. Of course fast gps fix and decent accuracy and stopwatchfunctions for my running/cycling workouts. Basically all current brands offer this.

4. I use the alarmclock and get notifications. That's nice, but all watches do that.

OHR doesn't work very good for me. That's not specific Garmin, my Tomtom I owned briefly didn't do any better. It's fine for rest heartrate, but for workouts it rubbish (for me!). I don't expect buying an other brand watch will give me better results.

Do I think my forerunner 935 is an amazing watch, better than anything else? Not really. Do I think any successor is an even more amazing watch? No way! That's a good thing. My forerunner 935 is an expensive watch, but by buying an other expensive watch I will not get anything better, so I don't have to buy a new one.

Garmins marketing is dependent on a longer featurelist than the compatitors, and they do everything to keep it that way by added features that just produce data. It works for Garmin. They sell way more sportwatches than Suunto or Polar, so enough people just want more data (without questioning whether is has meaning or is accurate).

This is all how I see sportwatches.

0 ricardjs over 5 years ago in reply to Elbo

Couldn't agree with you more! You used exactly the right words to describe what Garmin actually does: to increase the most possible number of features/data possible. Are the numbers correct? Not really important... the important is that it throws some numbers to the end user and he wants to believe it. Buy another watch and you will see the numbers don't match even close. (Not to say the other device is right either...!)

At the end... its all marketing to make you buy....