One of the people i know with the Fenix 6x Saphhire had the vibration motor issue happen a few weeks ago and mine has now went out over the last 2 days. I use it as my daily wake up alarm so when it changed it was pretty apparent. Noticed it was pretty 'rattley' yesterday, today there's something obviously mechanically wrong with it in that the motor has to no longer be solidly attached to anything. Everyone who's heard it agrees, something's come loose inside. Because of that the vibration is going to be transferred to the power/signal cabling attached to the motor and that has a highly likelihood to cause it to fail at some point down the road.
Note the watch has never been dropped, I rarely take it off other than to charge it, never hit anything, haven't used it to drive nails into oak or anything like that, the case and glass are pristine.
The first one the other runner had was replaced by Amazon without questions. I'm sorry to say REI seemed reluctant at first to want to deal with it, potentially in their defense none of their people have heard of the issue before. "Can you have a jeweler open it up and take a look?" When I politely balked at that option for a watch that's less than 2 months old and provided them with links to 3 different threads on here about it as well as a youtube video where you can listen they did acknowledge that this falls under the returns policy but with a caveat their return department will examine the watch and decided to either replace, refund or send it back to me. She couldn't speak to which option would be chosen.
A little disappointing given how much I've spent with them over the years. Because I expect it'll take a minimum of 2 weeks back and forth to get a replacement mailing it to the home office I'm going to delay and try to exchange it at the new store that opens next week that's not too far off from me.
Because I have access to multiple samples in person it's pretty obvious the difference between them in sound, vibration and roughness. It's also a little concerning that of an admittedly small sample set of 3 watches, 2 of them failed within the first 2 months with the vibration motors coming loose. Either a 66% failure rate or RNGesus has it out for our little circle.
I was unable to find any tear downs of the Fenix 6 family to try and see just how the motor might be mounted (screwed or glued) and just how fixable this might be. If it wasn't for the inability to get a new gasket I'd likely try to open the case and see myself but right now for a $850 watch that's still in the 90 day return window much less a year out that's just not really an option I want to explore, as least not as the path blazer for this particular model.
If anyone's taken one of the 6's apart and happened to take any photos' I'd love to see them.
