I was so excited to get my first Fenix watch after years of using other brands. In September, I finally pulled the pin and bought the Fenix 6X Saphire. In addition to all the typical outdoor activities, I was excited about the prospect of using this watch while hunting. I immediately bought the BirdsEye maps with the intent to load the 1000 acres of land I usually hunt on. This land has many small creeks, swamps and marshes that show up beautifully in the BirdsEye maps. Also there are old logging trails and paths that can easily be seen on the satellite imagery but are not present on any maps. It took me several hours to get the watch updated. Between the firmware update and the map updates, it took the greater part of 5 hours to get it all up to date before starting with the BirdsEye maps.
Once I got Base Camp setup and my BirdsEye subscription recognized, I started off with a simple test. I grabbed a small area in my hunting area n the low resolution and downloaded it. I then did sent to... Garmin. When I enabled the maps on the watch, they were unusable due to the pixelation. I figured as much since I used the lowest quality. I then tried the same thing with the next higher quality. Better, but still not great as I couldn't easily identify the terrain of interest. OK, so now I tried the highest quality images. The Basecamp only lets you pick an area that equals 77Mb or less, so that was a little disappointing since I would need 6 or 9 areas to capture the acreage I was interested in. Not a deal breaker I suppose, so I tagged the first area and downloaded it. For 77Mb it took an insane amount of time. I'm talking an hour on a fibre connection. Not cool! I'm thinking to myself, I have to do this at least 5 or more times.
This time, though after I sent the maps to the watch, the same typical stuff happened, the little icon went from yellow to green, so I ejected the watch.... What's happening, It's not booting up. Blue triangle... flashes once in a while... but stays on the blue triangle. Now I'm thinking what did I do wrong? I remember seeing the built-in watch maps being initialized (green line expanding n BaseCamp). Did I eject before these were complete? There were no warnings or messages, no indication that the BirdsEye didn't complete the transfer. The BirdsEye showed a yellow then green check mark when I did the Send to... Garmin.
Call support, try all the reset methods, nothing. tried the forced USB mode... nothing. Bricked! Spoke to Garmin support and hey advised since the watch was one day old that I should deal with the retailer. Ok. Called Mec, new watch on it's way.
Get the new watch within a week. Now I'm documenting everything I do in great detail. Spend the next 5 hours updating the watch again. Now onto Basecamp. Since this s a new watch my subscription isn't showing up. Called support, they transfer my subscription to the new SN. Ok. Let's try this again. This time I wait 2 hours for all the green lines to fully expand in Basecamp. (Built in maps initializing for use in Basecamp) I do a clean wipe of the old maps I downloaded. and choose an area that equals 76Mb (last time the limit was 77Mb this time, I can't get past 76Mb... weird.) Download the maps... wait an hour... maps are fully downloaded and visible in Basecamp. click on the maps and Send to... Garmin. Looks fine. watch sill shows 100% and USB symbol. Eject...... blue triangle... again. no boot, no reset, nothing works. This watch is bricked. Now I'm pretty annoyed and upset.
These maps are on the compatibility matrix for the Fenix, but I now bricked two watches. I call support and they tell me the maps aren't supported and I shouldn't use them on the watch and besides the screen is too small to have any value anyway. Wait...what? These are on the support matrix and who are you to tell me what value these maps could bring me in a hunting situation. Not impressed. Now for a replacement.... The support person was concerned they were on Backorder, but made a couple calls and secured one of the watches thay keep for emergency replacements. She assures me that one is reserved for me. Do the whole RMA thing, ship out the watch the same day. Takes a week to get to Garmin. Call the day after it arrived to confirm new watch is on the way. No go! I'm stuck waiting for the back order. What happened to the watch on reserve for me?
Apparently, it's no longer available. Very frustrating! Now, I'm almost two months in and have had the watch for 2 days, with the rest of the time waiting on support. Very disappointing!
