Buying a fenix as a watch not sportwatch

I'm thinking about buying a fenix and using it as a watch and maybe some navigation i don't care about fitness features much beside sleep tracking i hate other smartwatches because of battery life and OLED screens (raise to wake and burning issues).

I know Fenix is too expensive to use it just for this type of use but I would like to know if anyone has an advise or any opinions?

Top Replies

aryanabdulla over 3 years ago in reply to Federonic +3

I pray they are not going OLED it's not practical for smartwatch especially sportwatches they consume more power and not great for outdoor use.
C.sco over 3 years ago in reply to aryanabdulla +2

Ya, I don't know what Federonic has been reading, but realistically it's very unlikely they will stick an OLED screen in a Fenix, except maybe as an "upgrade" option to the standard MIP display. Only a…
NemoSandman over 3 years ago in reply to Dr Phil +2 suggested

Dr Phil said:
But that's a fugly watch to wear all day as a timepiece.

Allow me to disagree.
The Instinct is not more fugly than a good old Casio G-Shock and so much practical.
Excuse my French but it…

All Replies

0 C.sco over 3 years ago in reply to brian.reiter

FYI, you can customize that setting per the activity you're using. You were likely using the "hiking" or "walking/running" routing profile, thus it was sending you onto foot-only trails. If you change it to "Automobile" or "ATV/Offroad" then it should only route you on trails you can drive on.

Main Menu > Activities & Apps > (activity) > (activity) Settings > Routing > Activity > Automobile

I made 2 different "driving" activities, which are basically the same as each other except one is called "Offroad driving" and uses the ATV/Offroad routing option, and the other is just called "Driving" and uses the Automobile routing option.

Using the ATV/Offroad routing profile, I've never had it route me onto foot-only trails (but, conversely, it has routed me around some trails that I actually could have driven, but that's kinda understandable since it doesn't really know exactly what my car can or can't do)

More info here: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/fenix66s6xpro/EN-US/GUID-4D9C1A64-B6FE-466C-87D7-5A31C3CFDED5.html

0 aryanabdulla over 3 years ago in reply to C.sco

It has automobile profile but it's not working correctly maybe the processor couldn't keep up and lag behind the route calculation or maybe it's just not designed to do that

0 JRMiler over 3 years ago in reply to Federonic

I wouldn't trust Wareable at all. They're just gadget geeks, not athletes, so they don't understand the target market for half of the devices that they write about. A standard "rumor" in tech journalism is that "the next edition of X will feature Y," where X is a popular device and Y is a feature that exists somewhere, on some other device. Most of the time it's just made up. If outdoor athletes were publishing their own website, they'd probably be saying that the next Apple Watch will have 5 physical buttons and ANT+.

Obviously DCR knows what he's talking about, but the key word there is "eventually." And there he's obviously right. I mean, 20 years from now, I think most of us would be shocked if the Fenix 18 or whatever doesn't have some kind of OLED (or equivalent) screen. But Garmin isn't going to obliterate its flagship's battery life. And at present the tech isn't there and Garmin is using the battery life it manages to save towards other things (LTE lately).

When subsequent versions of the Venu start getting better battery life, that'll be a hint that something might be on the horizon for the Fenix. It's also possible that there might be a Chronos/Marq type halo product in the future with OLED that's super expensive with low production numbers.