Fenix 7 Base vs 955, are you kidding me?

easier said than done

Never again will I buy a Garmin watch shortly after release! The worst thing of all is that, apparently, hardware-wise the base Fenix 7 has the same multiband-able GNSS chipset that the Saphire version has (and the half-priced F255 & cheaper F955). It is only software that makes it unavailable on my base Fenix 7. Why did I buy a high-priced top-of-the-shelf outdoor watch? To use it outdoors! And hell it makes a difference if one uses standard GNSS or multiband in deep forests, steep valleys and canyons. The only reason I did not buy a Sapphire was the rediculous price jump just for multiband. But hey, now barley 6 months later I can get all fenix 7 features plus multiband plus double the gb plus more metrics (for now at least) for 200€ less. Well done Garmin! Base Fenix 7 is killed by 955. 

tess said:

Everyone here complaining was perfectly fine with buying a F7 without multi-band and 16 GB's when they purchased their watch.

I wasn't. I really wanted multi-band and at the same time I really didn't want the sapphire glass. I hesitated and waited for a couple of months but at the end, very reluctantly, I bought the sapphire edition.

 Having the reflective sapphire glass screen is sub-optomal for my aging eyes. And that all for whatever arbitrary reason of Garmin wanting to push a few more people into buying the more expensive sapphire version  that they have now reconsidered.

you guys need to get a life.

The F7 came out with lots of new features so you bought it. Well done, its wonderful.

Time passes.

What was on the F7 now starts to work its way down to the cheaper watches. This is the way of the world, so get over yourselves, get over your moaning. Technology gets cheaper, so if you didnt like the price then wait until the features appear at the price point you like.

In another 18 months the F7 will be old hat, and the F8 will be there with god knows what. 32GB will give way to 64GB, the screen resolution will go up, the weight will come down, the battery life will go up.

If you wait long enough then all the features you want will be available for free in a pill.

When you buy into these things you accept that in 6 or 12 or 24 months the tech will be obselete.

If you dont like this fact, dont buy the devices and sit on the fence, but quit moaning, nobody forced you to buy anything.

I think the point is that part of the experience and reason for buying a flagship product is the implied expectation that until the next refresh cycle your product will be exactly that: flagship. That's why you don't see Samsung release s22 and then 4 months later release a budget phone with the same camera. You'd be absolutely right if the 255 and 955 were released after F8 where technology has moved on, but it hasn't in this case. From a business perspective it's a very short sighted move by Garmin to piss off the highest value customers. Full disclosure: I don't even own a base F7.

2572376 said:

If you wait long enough then all the features you want will be available for free in a pill.

LOL, not the first time you made me laugh, I need my old man joint pills

Not surprisingly there are a wide variety of view on this. Some rather emotional and some attacking the idea of even expressing the desire for the multi-band feature. While I am one of those that think that these forums can sometimes get too emotional, I think there is a perfectly rational, reasonable and non-emotional reason for us to think this should be done and to ask Garmin to consider this seriously.

My take: I think when Garmin made the decision to exclude multi-band GPS from some of he Fenix 7/Epix line, I am sure they had not decided to have all of the soon to be announced Forerunner watches running multi-band GPS. I suspect that decision was made later on competitive grounds. They even reduced the price. From that perspective, I feel confident that Garmin will add multi-band to all of the Fenix 7/Epix line. They don't have to but it makes perfect competitive sense. The Fenix 7  is  brand new watch in the heart of it's feature upgrade cycle, we have to expect some of the newly announced Forerunner features to be ported and universal multi-band GPS has to be one. After all, these  remain their top of the line watches and the feature set has to convey this. The current flagship cannot have a feature excluded, that is available on budget watches, when the current flagship is perfectly capable of supporting the feature. That makes no marketing sense. This has nothing to do with our expectations at purchase. We were not aware of any of the features that will be added shortly, we expected that we purchased a flagship model and that is not in dispute.

• In my case it isn't a problem with features that I didn't get. In fact I don't use most of the watch features and don't care that much about the new 255/955 features. The money wasn't an issue either. I simply couldn't possibly get the exact combination of features that I was very particular about - the combination of the best possible GPS accuracy (multi-band GPS) and the best possible screen readability (X sized watch with Gorilla glass, preferably without the solar charging). I could get either one or another, but not both at the same time. That is because Garmin had made the decision about the multi-band GPS being a premium feature reserved to the top price tier. That pushed me to get the sub-optomal display readability. And as we see now that decision about the multi-band GPS was completely arbitrary. That is the problem. 

For now, I will be content with my basic fenix 7, but my next watch will definitely not be a fenix, I will focus on the forerunner 965, which will be released in 2 years.