Fenix 6X Pro Up To Speed?

Just look at the comments in the latest beta firmware discussions and you will have your answer. There remain bugs and recently Garmin has taken to adding features rather than paying attention to getting the fundamental data nailed down. For example, pickleball (?) has just been added as an activity, but altitude data is messed up. And for some people training metrics are messed up on the latest production release, supposedly fixed in the betas. Basically the fat lady is yet to sing.

Look at the total change log since release, listed on the beta firmware download page, and you will see what a complete shitshow development of this watch has been.

https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=15168

Far too much has needed to be fixed. Far too much has needed to be improved. And the work is not yet finished.

eezytiger, that was the informative reply, ever! Thank you

The latest developments in firmware have been a complete disaster. Luckily I managed to get back on 16.70 so my watch works great. Every firmware after that has been a complete shitshow for me...

This strategy of adding new, poorly-designed features is exactly what Coros does and why I jumped ship from that disaster of a brand.  Nothing really worked right and they were just in a race to add new features that likewise never worked, despite users begging them to fix the watches.  I really hope Garmin doesn't go there just to compete with Coros, considering people are finding out all the problems on their own.  The company can't even work the bugs out in the battery monitoring and then the batteries fail.

I'd guess that there are multiple software developers for the watch.  Some probably work on calculating the data from the sensors.  Some probably work on making new profiles/activities that use that sensor data.  So I can understand how some problems still need work, while new things are coming out because they are being worked on by different developers.  So even though some developers need to be focused on the bugs, I wouldn't want the other developers to stop work, waiting for the bugs to be fixed.

If the sensors are producing faulty data then pretty much every function the watch is intended to support is compromised.

I've had my 6X Pro Solar for almost two years. I did not ask for, expect or want a pickleball activity to be added. I didn't pay for it. What I paid for was a top of the line, premium priced sports/activity/adventure watch and I expected the data to be accurate and the derived information to be equally accurate and trustworthy.

When heart rate, HRV, altitude/gradient, pace etc are inaccurate then calculated values such as VO2max, stress, body battery, training load, recovery times and so on are not reliable. These things are the core of the watch's purpose. Adding more activity types on top of a shaky data foundation seems to me to be completely the wrong way to tackle development of the watch.

The fact that more than two years since release these features are not stable is a poor reflection of the brand. I truly don't give a stuff about pickleball, but if I'm trying to use data from the watch for training, health and fitness management then I'd like the data to be something better than made up numbers. Get the basics right and then, when the watch is working as it should, add as much value as you like with more features. Just don't break the stuff that was (or should have been) working correctly to begin with.

What tr3climber is saying, though, is that the team who makes activity profiles is almost certainly different than the team who works on the fundamental sensor software. So when Garmin adds "pickleball" to the watch, it doesn't mean they were distracted and not working on the other aspects of the watch.

It's like getting mad at Ford for updating the stereo software "instead of" fixing something you don't like about the way the engine works. It's unlikely that the stereo software team would be helping out the engine troubleshooting team if they weren't working on stereo software updates, and it's equally unlikely that the engine issues would be resolved any faster if Ford sent their stereo software team in to work on it.

I would submit that your comparison is invalid. Different vehicle systems is very different than one device with a single system and array of hardward and a single purpose.

Well the end user shouldn't have to care how Garmin chooses to structure its development teams. But paying customers should care when Garmin breaks Bluetooth headset connectivity with a Bluetooth update and fails to fix it subsequently. They should care when Garmin randomly calculate TSS and IF for cycling against a fixed FTP value of 200W instead of the individual's actual FTP. They should care when Garmin breaks HRV data handling for multiple HRMs and cripples training metrics as a consequence. They should care when Garmin stops alarms from working. They should care when Garmin randomly changes the interface and options for calibrating altitude and basically breaks altitude calibration entirely. These are all recent "developments".

And this is two years after release. Why are they even meddling with these things? They should have been correct upon release and that should be that. But they keep messing with stuff that was working OK. One of the most recent meddling with altitude in beta 19.74 resulted in a completely preposterous confirmation message. Did anyone in Garmin even run the code before releasing the beta? I'm retired now, but I worked in IT for 20 years, starting out as a programmer in the eighties. Never have I witnessed such an abysmal grasp of code management and QA. Garmin development appears to me to be a complete disaster.