Any of you fine Fenix users considering move to Apple watch?

Battery not a source of anxiety, armoured enough to wear 24/7 no matter what you are doing, I beat +50 could break their AW...try it with a Garmin (majority of models, excelt some Amoleds). It's a tank. It has a watch shape :-) Metrics for sports are light years far from Apple and others (one can get it if use them of course, otherwise ones would skip 50% of Garmin potentiality). And..it works with any kind of Smartphone. AW has got some plus of course, I would be tempted to go back to AW if the battery would last at least 5 days and some metrics, for running mainly, would be present or improved.

The ideal range for lithium batteries in devices that are been used (not sitting in a drawer) is 20-80%. So, in order to improve the health of the battery and be open to longer activities I let it reach around 80% after the charge.

I may charge once it reaches 20% or so, but it would be stupid. The watch would sit doing nothing while I shower and once every 4 or 5 days I’d need to keep it plugged in for more that an hour, losing data for HR, stress and body battery. With my strategy (which has been confirmed is now the same with the Apple Watch) I get good battery and full 24/7 data.

FlowState said:

wasn’t a runner, it would be a no-brainer to get an Apple Watch.

The no-brainer argument isn't as no brainer as you think as last time I looked 70% of the world uses Android phones so for a large majority of people the Apple Wstch is a non-starter without changing the phone too.

5135968 said:

The no-brainer argument isn't as no brainer as you think as last time I looked 70% of the world uses Android phones so for a large majority of people the Apple Wstch is a non-starter without changing the phone too.

Fair enough, but I meant for me, since I have an iPhone. I live in North America, where the iPhone market share is 55%.

I don’t even like Apple that much as a company (historically I’ve used Windows for school, work, gaming and personal use, although I use a Mac for work now, out of necessity), but I think Apple is great at user experience and marketing, although they’re extremely overpriced and customer-hostile in some ways.

I do think they have the best tablets (perhaps because they encourage iOS devs to make iPad-native apps instead of just allowing ppl to port blown-up phone apps to the ipad.) (Maybe it’s outdated, but at least a few years back, I think the perception was that iPad had a lot more apps that were actually optimized for tablets as opposed to Android tablets. Then again, people complain that apps aren’t really optimized for the iPad mini or the big iPad Pros, so there’s room for criticism everywhere.)

Also, I don’t really care about interoperability between my running watch and my phone, since I almost never run with my phone.

Ɛpsilon said:

I was under the impression that's pretty bad for the battery. The ideal is to charge when it hits 30% I believe. Why do you need it at 80% all the time?

My understanding it’s large numbers of full charge cycles that’s bad for the battery, as well as letting the charge go too low (below 20-30%) or too high (over 80%) (which is why some phones/laptops have software to prevent the battery from fully charging until you really need it.).

So as long as you keep the charge between 30% and 80%, it seems to me that it doesn’t matter how often you charge it, since the number of full charge cycles would be the same either way. (Unless I’m not counting “full” charge cycles properly here.)

I could be wrong tho, since it’s been a while since I looked into this in detail.

FlowState said:

The way I see it, Garmin is surviving by catering to a niche market (runners) by providing a product that isn’t really for everyone.

I start doubting if that is still the case. At least when applied to Fenix series, I think the majority of users aren't runners. Or at least, running isn't their primary sport.

And furthermore, even though I would never buy an Apple watch myself, the latest generation of Apple watch is surprisingly accurate, likely more accurate than most Garmin watches. In contrast, Fenix that we discuss in this thread is less accurate than just any other GPS enabled sport watch from a major brand. I think only Garmin Vivoactive series and Fitbits are less accurate than Fenix.

I agree with you about GPS accuracy on Fenix. Mine, a 6 perhaps due to Sapphire.. is pretty "dumb" to catch GPS signals. when I see the old tracks when run with Galaxy Watch or AW I see how my Fenix isn't accurate. the point is.. smartwatches mostly use smartphone'S GPS that's greatly accurate, so I can't get why Garmin doesn't give the possibility to use smartphone's GPS... it'd be great when running in the city, between buildings, trees, etc... 

Modern smartphones released in the last couple of years are too more accurate than most watches, especially when worn on the upper arm. Although I would never use that either. That is because they can use all GNSS constellations at once. Also good phones already have dual L1/L5 GPS support. 

I think the main problem with Fenix is that its GNSS antenna design is compromised. I am starting to think that perhaps Fenix 7 won't be significantly better despite dual band GPS support.

Yesterday I looked at about 50 results from a race in a local park. The entire race course is under large trees such as Hemlock, Red Cider, and Douglass Fir. The official race course is a 5.2 miles per loop, which I believe is wheel measured. A few Fenix results that I could see showed 4.55-4.7 miles. In comparison Strava running on iPhone showed 4.76-5.08 per loop. Apple watch - 4.7-4.8 per loop. Among Garmin watches the most accurate were FR 745 (5.00 per loop) and FR 945 LTE (4.9-4.92 per loop). Both Suunto 9 and Coros Apex were more accurate than Fenix too (4.76-4.94 per loop). Basically, as I mentioned above, just about any GPS device except Vivoactive 3 and Fenix 5 was more accurate.

While I would never move to Apple watch, perhaps my next watch will be FR 955. Hopefully it gets dual frequency GPS and a better battery life too.

But again good

Whr fenix6x

Whr apple watch 7

Mtb