Display Dissapointment

A Fenix 5 w Sapphire is $699. Its as expensive as a smart phone. But the Fenix 5 screen is no where near a smart phone, not to mention FCC antenna, etc. Yet the price is the same. Why does it cost so much?

A smartphone is as expensive as a desktop computer but it's nowhere near as powerful as a desktop computer. You're comparing apples with oranges. The display is great, do you actually own one of these watches? It's clear to read in bright sunlight (much easier than any smartphone I've used) and it's easy enough to see at night with the backlight. Not to mention how good the battery life is.

A smartphone is as expensive as a desktop computer but it's nowhere near as powerful as a desktop computer. You're comparing apples with oranges. The display is great, do you actually own one of these watches? It's clear to read in bright sunlight (much easier than any smartphone I've used) and it's easy enough to see at night with the backlight. Not to mention how good the battery life is.

Right. Something this small with lower resolution(much lower pixel) should be price lower than a smartphone which cost more in materials.

A smartphone is as expensive as a desktop computer but it's nowhere near as powerful as a desktop computer. You're comparing apples with oranges. The display is great, do you actually own one of these watches? It's clear to read in bright sunlight (much easier than any smartphone I've used) and it's easy enough to see at night with the backlight. Not to mention how good the battery life is.

There is more to consider when comparing prices. Smartphones sell in much larger quantities than the Garmin Fenix series, and that reduces the contribution of development cost to each phone owned. And cell service providers often subsidize the price of a phone because they can recover that cost over 2 years of selling service. I would argue that if cell phones were sold in quantities similar to the Fenix, they would cost even more than they do now, which is about $900 for the newest top-of-the-line models with no subsidy. There is also a lot of competition in cell phones, causing manufacturers to sell at a lower price to stay competitive. Garmin has competitors, but it's not like the cell market. Pretty much everyone has a cell phone. Not so with GPS-fitness watches.

And if Garmin sold Fenix watches in quantities similar to cell phones, they could sell them for a lower cost. But as others have said, perceived value has a big impact on selling price. If you can run a profitable company developing and selling $700 watches, then it's a viable business model.

Right. Something this small with lower resolution(much lower pixel) should be price lower than a smartphone which cost more in materials.

There's way more to the cost of an item than just material costs. R&D is quite high, especially with items that don't sell as much. Smartphones typically use multiple third parties to create different components and this helps reduce cost especially as said third parties typically sell to many different phone manufacturers.

If you want to discuss this logically, you have to first pick a comparable smartphone i.e. a latest model with high R&D costs to recover that is expected to sell in the same quantities and it has to have the same RRP. Moreover, you'd have to supply me with the materials used plus where the materials are obtained and how much said materials cost. There's more costs to consider (I haven't even started with software costs), and I could probably find out all this data myself (if such a thing exists) but as you're the one making the argument, the burden of proof lies on you.

In other words, I'm not going to address what you've said directly as it seems absurd. To me, it's a great shame this thread criticises one of the best features about Garmin watches.

Right. Something this small with lower resolution(much lower pixel) should be price lower than a smartphone which cost more in materials.

So using your logic, a Kindle Fire HD8 ($119) should cost more than an iPhone 7 ($649) because it has more pixels?

Also, I can buy a 1080p monitor (even MORE pixels) for less than either of those two.

The screen technology in the Fenix is not the same as a smartphone (or pretty much any smartwatch now Pebble has gone). The pixel count is only one of the factors to consider along with visibility indoors and outdoors, battery life, etc. On top of which, a round screen is usually more expensive than a comparable square one as they are harder to make.

wow, ok guys, take a step back and then take a breather. I think you all took my smartphone comparison way to literally and directly. I was not comparing smartphones to smartwatches / sports watches like the Fenix. I was merely pointing out that for the price, the screen could of been bigger; "edge to edge" of the watch face (not even talking of the entire watch here).

Also, if you want to go as far as to compare these things, then get your facts straight:
iPhone 7 (Entry level) Retail = 649$
iPhone 7 Cost: 220.80$ (excl taxes / shipping / marketing etc, just hardware).
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cost-apple-220-heres-the-component-breakdown/

Entry level iPhones are where Apple makes the least amount of profit.
iPhones are essentially supercomputers by past standards and fully fledged powerful computers by todays standards. My Fenix is not. In fact, one of the things that disappoints me on my Fenix 3HR is how the switch between menu options is slow and jaggedy. You get entry level laptops with less processing power than iPhones, but anyway, I digress.
The point is, if apple has 400+ USD to play with in terms of 'profit', even if we halve that because of "smaller quantities sold", etc etc. Garmin still has plenty of wriggle room to make some minor adjustments. As someone above mentioned though, I think the biggest problem here is that Garmin is lacking stiff competition - so theres no reason for them to chew into their profit margins to produce a superior product because what they offer is already the best in the market. Instead of thinking, "lets make the best [or close to] we can with todays technology"; theyre thinking "lets make something thats better than our competition".

Yes, its "enough" from a business perspective - but is it though??
Going back to the Apple example, when they introduced the iPhone, that lets face it, revolutionised the smartphone industry, they didnt simply do "enough" to beat the competition - they did the best they could.

Anyway, thats just my 2c. Didnt want to start a flame war, just thought Garmin could reach for the stars instead of just the penthouse suite.

The display choice is probably driven by power consumption rather than cost IMO

CW

just thought Garmin could reach for the stars instead of just the penthouse suite.

They are - this is the best display available when you take into account battery life and visibility in sunlight (given that it's an outdoor/exercise watch those attributes are pretty important).

If you can find something that fits the bill better, pass the component details on to Garmin, I'll bet they are chomping at the bit for a higher resolution display that sips power and doesn't need to be backlit outside.

wow, ok guys, take a step back and then take a breather. I think you all took my smartphone comparison way to literally and directly. I was not comparing smartphones to smartwatches / sports watches like the Fenix. I was merely pointing out that for the price, the screen could of been bigger; "edge to edge" of the watch face (not even talking of the entire watch here).

Also, if you want to go as far as to compare these things, then get your facts straight:
iPhone 7 (Entry level) Retail = 649$
iPhone 7 Cost: 220.80$ (excl taxes / shipping / marketing etc, just hardware).
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cost-apple-220-heres-the-component-breakdown/

Entry level iPhones are where Apple makes the least amount of profit.
iPhones are essentially supercomputers by past standards and fully fledged powerful computers by todays standards. My Fenix is not. In fact, one of the things that disappoints me on my Fenix 3HR is how the switch between menu options is slow and jaggedy. You get entry level laptops with less processing power than iPhones, but anyway, I digress.
The point is, if apple has 400+ USD to play with in terms of 'profit', even if we halve that because of "smaller quantities sold", etc etc. Garmin still has plenty of wriggle room to make some minor adjustments. As someone above mentioned though, I think the biggest problem here is that Garmin is lacking stiff competition - so theres no reason for them to chew into their profit margins to produce a superior product because what they offer is already the best in the market. Instead of thinking, "lets make the best [or close to] we can with todays technology"; theyre thinking "lets make something thats better than our competition".

Yes, its "enough" from a business perspective - but is it though??
Going back to the Apple example, when they introduced the iPhone, that lets face it, revolutionised the smartphone industry, they didnt simply do "enough" to beat the competition - they did the best they could.

Anyway, thats just my 2c. Didnt want to start a flame war, just thought Garmin could reach for the stars instead of just the penthouse suite.

I asked for the facts; they're not my "facts"; the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim. As for the rest, it's all conjecture. Either you want to argue objectively, literally and use factual information or you want to put up weak fallacious arguments based on conjecture and respond with drivel such as "take a breather", because you can't prove the claims you are making. I'm not interested in the latter and I won't refute that kind of argument directly as it doesn't deserve a direct response. The smartphone argument is absurd; you tell us not to take it literally but then you continue to use said absurdity as a basis for your argument... Assuming it is your argument; I'm a bit confused. Are you chong67? He was the person I replied to but you've said "my smartphone comparison."

"You get entry level laptops with less processing power than iPhones"

Not only is this a strawman fallacy, I suspect that if I asked you to provide proof you would no doubt tell me to stop taking you literally or to take a breather. Nonetheless, I am curious to see a current generation laptop's CPU get beaten by a current generation iPhone, where the laptop and the iPhone are the same price.

"Didnt want to start a flame war"

You haven't started a flame war. Asking for proof of claims, data and information to back up an argument should not be considered a "flame war", in my opinion. I'm genuinely not sure if you're trolling at this point.

I think the argument here is very valid. This 5/5S/5X is an evolution of the Fenix 3 series.

The sapphire glass and WiFi version of the Fenix5 pushes it to around £600, depending on your choice of supplier. £400 to £500 and they would sell ship-loads.

The hardware on Garmins isn't actually particularly impressive - in fact, it reminds me of Nokia in their heyday. Do you remember? Everybody had a Nokia 3310 or 3330. Then they decided to saturate the market with similar phones.

You know the galling thing about it? All 3's had the same known limitations, known as hardware bugs; your use case - such as temperature, climate, etc, meant that *you* personally may not have minded. But as international travellers were amongst the first to complain, it was obvious there had been a major flaw of the Fenix5 in the design in numerous ways.

And now they expect people (who aren't blinded by the brand) to just jump in at a £600 price point? Fair enough, first come first served. But Garmin want people as beta testers - and you'll be a beta tester for about a year.

It reminds me of the 'older' brands who thought that using customers as beta testers, instead of refining the product to an acceptable condition, was a good idea.

One thing you may not realise: the GPS on Garmin watches is *still* not all that good. They do have accuracy and a known error-rate on a target to a similar location per point, but the fact is it's generally off and not *around* the bullseye, meaning software can't really resolve this.

Don't believe me? There are perfect examples on the FELLRNR blog with a fantastic explanation that will save me doing a diagram.

Think for a second: what are you comparing your watch to? What is the point of a device that is both super-expensive AND also not accurate for optical heart rate and, most of all, GPS? The whole point of recording is to gain accuracy and improve training performance, for the majority here I imagine.

This whole point complains about a small evolution in hardware and software and yet a massive price-tag. If it had been £100 to £150 less? No issue with it; great attempt at a new product line.

Why haven't you bought a 735XT? Hardly any posts in the relevant forum; most people went for the Fenix3 and will go for the Fenix5S instead of the 735. So - being Garmin - you essentially have to go with the popular model to ensure you get updates because - believe me - it will be buggy as hell for a year or more.

Sounds great being a beta tester AND paying too much for a product too similar to the previous generation. Where do I sign up?

Just my opinion. Do check out FELLRNR though; there are no adverts and he does it for the love of science. His GPS experiences match mine almost exactly with the Fenix3, Fenix3HR and other brands.