Product Quality Vs Commercial Reality

Former Member
Former Member

I am a relatively new Garmin owner.

Bought THREE Fenix 6's (2 Pro & 1 Sapphire all X's) and returned.

I have two 6X Sapphires due today and hopefully will choose the best with no blue screen or button issues.

Whilst this is a major ballache, at the same time, playing devils advocate, I do understand why these issues arise.

Products are getting more and more complicated with more scope for screw ups. Range Rovers are relatively expensive, have a ton of bells and whistles, yet you look at the reviews and they also have a ton of issues. For a vehicle of that cost its ridiculous.

However if you are a manufacturer trying to constantly innovate. Trying to beat the competition. Trying to remain commercially viable.

What are you going to do?

In business you come first (thats what she said) or undercut.

To come first speed is of the essence and this will inevitably mean getting the product out asap, acknowledging (internally) that there will be a host of issues, then working through those issues post-launch.

If the product on the whole is better than the competition, consumers will stick around and work through the issues (Garmin and Apple spring to mind). If not they fall.

From my limited experience I have found that Fenix 6 is without doubt unparalleled in terms of capability (my main use is utilising navigation for running).and aesthetically looks better than anything else out there (from my perspective of course) which is why I am sticking around.

Would I like a product that works as it should?

Of course and who knows if I have any more issues I may throw in the towel. However I also appreciate the commercial realities of selling a product like this and remaining at the top of the tree in a very competitive industry. Unfortunately QC and product testing will not and cannot be conducted to the ideal degree.

Thoughts?

  • ? If you get me the FW 2.x with sensor hub 2.0 for the fenix 6x, I will test it;) 

  • Unfortunately, I had the pleasure of being stuck with the OHR this morning during strength training when my chest strap died. Please save the wrist flexing stuff, it should at least catch high resting rates. I bet you can spot where my strap died? So the F6 started using the OHR, well, that's pretty embarrassing. I got so fed up that I stopped the activity and restarted it at the one hour mark, and bam, it shot up to at least somewhat reasonable numbers. I was playing with it at the end, so ignore the final spikes. 

    The OHR is just awful at any activity where the HR is going up and down. Plain and simple. I have yet to see a good data set from any kind of interval training activity from the OHR. For the 'flagship' activity tracker, it extremely underperforms.... 

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 5 years ago

    I did a full body workout with rubber bands, TRX and a variety of abs exercises. I wore my Polar Gritx on the left and my Fenix 6 Pro on the right. I started on the Polar with the weightlifting exercise and on the F6P first with the strength activity and then I switched to the cardio activity. The Cardio activity on the Fenix was 20-30 bpm higher than the strength activity on the Fenix while the GritX was more similar to the Fenix under the strength activity. 

  • Yep.

    And now, having gone for a run with the 6x .vs. the 5x on the same course I can look at the two tracks and the 6x has the better (materially so) GPS track as well.

    The error difference appears to be quite material.  For example the 5x placed me in my BACK YARD for the start of the activity.  That's a solid 100'+ from the street.  I clicked "Start" today in my driveway (same place), and it shows me in my garage -- maybe 30' off.  I'm still cutting in people's grass today but at least I'm not running through their living rooms and pools!

    Is it perfect?  No.  And that annoys me, because NONE of the "watch" style models I've had -- Fenix 3, 5x and now 6x has ever beaten the old 310XT and 910 (yes, I go back further than that in fact) that Garmin used to sell when it comes to GPS performance; those would RELIABLY show you which side of the road or sidewalk you were running on!

    Part of this is that Garmin doesn't use WAAS (I don't know if they ever did) and part of it is that the older "watches" had the GPS patch antenna on the SIDE of the wrist that faced upward (the "bottom") when running, so they had a clean signal basically all the time.  Of course that doesn't fit with the "form factor" of something that looks like a WATCH.

    But there's little argument to be had that the performance of the 6x is arguably better and definitely not worse than the 5x on the GPS side.  Both set to GPS only, no Galileo or Glonass.  The other thing, however, is that I've run plenty of races (dozens) where the distances were wheeled via some mechanism and thus known good from start to finish, and I've NEVER seen one where my Garmin has been off by more than a tenth in terms of actual distance covered EXCEPT where I had heavy shading of the signal (e.g. Xterra trail runs under HEAVY canopy or down streets flanked by high-rises where multipath hoses any GPS.)  How Garmin manages to do that when the tracks are dodgy is beyond me, but it is what it is to the point that if I run a race and my Garmin says the distance was 2 tenths short -- it was.  I've gone back before with an odometer on my bicycle calibrated against a measured mile and found that indeed the watch was right.

    As for the rest, OHR and such, I don't see a material difference.

    The one big difference I do see beyond the obvious screen size (smaller bezel, larger screen) is battery consumption; the 6x appears to have roughly double the endurance in that regard.  I've typically gotten about 5 days on my 5x between charges with my usual workout and GPS load.  If the estimate is to be believed the 6x says it'll be nearly double that.  Does that matter much to me?  Not really.

    Is the 6x worth the extra money?  What extra money?  What did the 5x Sapphire cost when it was new?  About $700, right?  It wasn't cheap.... but it has held up well over time, and I suspect this one will too.

    If I didn't HAVE $700 though would I buy a new 5x today at $400 or a used sapphire-crystal one for $250-300?  You betcha.

  • Garmin doesn't use WAAS (I don't know if they ever did)

    Yes, they did. And my good old 60CSx still does. Also my 62st