Hello,
Let me introduce myself as siome of a software engineer and I do work with pretty expensive, critical equipments and one of the very first things that the company offers to the customers is a warranty window with replacement of the device with a new item if the device fails in its first operation. This is automatically enforced by having a diagnostic sequence that is applied to the equipment at least the first time it is turned on (if it takes forever, otherewise on every boot).
This is apparently not the case for Garmin and they are willing to try to sweep the defect under the carpet and happily replace my new defective watch with a used one;
the result of the above thread was that the vendor absorbed the cost and gave me a new fenix 6x pro while Garmin warranty responded to my outspoken displeasure and the concerns raised by the forum's admin by offering me an "unspecified condition" fenix 7x solar sapphire, which again voids the warranty with my vendor, and based on my first bout with the warranty of 6X Solar Pro, it sounds like a trap and a perfect way to end up with a used 7x solar sapphire, maybe even a defective one. This is being handled separately/privately and I will not be quiet about it, but that's not the main course of this thread.
In any case, the new 6x pro solar I received was unboxed in front of me by a sales rep of the vendor and I am quite happy about it. I just went for a bike ride and swim and I IMMEDIATELY notice the difference between the defective one.
1. The defective one took its sweet time before getting a GPS lock... on a clear day. The new one takes seconds, whereas the defective one would usually get a lock after minutes into the exercise.
2. The defective one took literally hours to do firmware update to 26, the new one updated and rebooted in under 5 minutes.
3. It seems to be a LOT more responsive. I mean the defective one took a good second or two to change screen.
Well, because I was very optimistic and making the comparison to the defective one to the 5X Plus, the only indication that the watch is definitively defective was when the HR froze for hours even after reboot/reset and a Garmin service agent looked into my Garmin Connect.
Just based on my first 4 hours with the new 6X Pro Solar vs the defective one I had, this should have been picked up right away. Although I don't think I will ever buy another Garmin, but is it possible to request some kind of self-diagnostic to warn the user at least the first time?