What does Fenix 8 / Tactix 8 Need To Have To Make You Upgrade?

This. Fenix = MIP, Epix = Amoled 

Hey there!

Thx so much for your kind replies - I get where you are coming from! Is just doubt that Garmin will go that path. There are so many people (including me) who explicitly want an MIP for a multitude of reasons. No matter how good amoled will become, for now it will never beat mip e.g. for usage as a bike computer. AOD is imao not comparable, battery with aod will not be comparable for a long time...While I totally support a parallel Amoled development (which is indeed inevitable, you are absolutely spot on with this), it should definitely not be the Fenix line. 

It’s been good debating it with you!

I think saying Fenix = mip is denying progress, a bit like saying the car = internal combustion engine. 

I certainly think the Fenix will be mip a while longer given Garmin has invested in the updated mip display on the Pro. Eventually though it will come down to economies of scale and consumer demand; there will come a point where enough see amoled (or whatever it is) as an improvement and switch - given the likes of dcrainmaker, desfit, and chasethesummit are all saying the Epix screen is better in 90-99% of scenarios I imagine a lot will have already made that switch. Now this could mean the end of the Fenix line but given this is the stronger brand compared to the Epix I imagine it would continue. 

Lots of debate/discussion on this on Reddit etc so I don’t want to take this thread off topic. Obviously this is all just predictions/guessing. 

Yeah, nobody knows. Once they even killed their own Epix line, 'cos it wasn't selling as much as Fenix. So they can kill Fenix, when it doesn't sell good enough.

I think what will happen eventually is that Fenix will switch to AMOLED and Enduro will become the MIP version of Fenix for those users who need or want the MIP version. 

The main reason for that is that the majority of users will prefer AMOLED, and Fenix is the most recognizable brand (unlike Epix), so I think Garmin will want to keep it going forward. 

We can already see that Forerunner brand has switched to AMOLED, and there is also AMOLED version of Tactix. So I think switching Fenix to AMOLED is inevitable. 

That's all just semantics, really. All we're talking about is moving product names around, but not actually changing any of the products themselves.

Almost nobody cares what their watch is called. I don't care if my watch is called a Fenix or an Enduro or an Epix. If they want to change the MIP model to "Enduro" and the Amoled model to "Fenix" and drop the Epix name, fine. I don't really care, and I don't know why anyone else would care.

For those who think Garmin is actually planning to completely drop the MIP model of the fenix/epix/enduro/whatever watch lineup, I think that's not happening any time soon. It doesn't cost Garmin hardly any money to keep the MIP model going alongside the AMOLED model. They share 99% of the same parts and the same software. Literally they just swap one display for a different display, etch a different name on the back, print a different box, and that's pretty much about it. So what would Garmin be gaining, exactly, by ditching the MIP model? And is that gain worth alienating their huge market of loyal MIP owners? I think probably not.

If this were any other small market Garmin watch like Vivoactive or Approach or something, I might say "sure, it's possibly Garmin might abandon one screen type in favor of using a different type to consolidate SKUs", but this is their flagship watch(es) we're talking about, and while I haven't seen the sales figures I would guess that the split between Fenix and Epix purchasers is probably close to 50/50, so Garmin would be nuts to just cut the cord on half those customers, for what amounts to pretty marginal production cost savings.

I mean, Garmin even makes two different screen options for the Quatix, and how big is that watch's market? I can't imagine it's big, but Garmin still thought it worthwhile to offer both Quatix versions anyways. So if they made that choice for Quatix, why would they take a different approach to their most popular watch series?

I always find it entertaining when ‘new users’ in reviews say things like the Amoled display is much better than the Mips one and Mips is soo old-fashioned. For me it says a lot about them and their use case really, which is perfectly fine, for them, of course.

However, there are many users who actually don’t want Amoled on any device to be used for a long-time in the real outdoors; for many reasons . I know of quite a few users who opted for Amoled and then changed back to Mips after using them for real in their regular environment. So, for me, it isn’t a simple Amoled vs Mips thing, they are different technologies for different scenarios, and that’s fine.

I’d like to hope that Garmin, who appear to be engineering lead, to me, feels this too. They make a lot of high-end kit for other users too, like aviation and marine.

C.sco said:

It doesn't cost Garmin hardly any money to keep the MIP model going alongside the AMOLED model.

As a software engineer I think that isn't true. There is an ongoing support cost increase due to increased complexity. They must have different code branches in the UI code to support different resolutions and color depths, different UI resources, different rendering of many glances, etc. While it is true, that it shouldn't affect the significant part of the code, nevertheless we have seen bugs introduced in Fenix by Epix specific changes. Fixing those costs time and money.

However I agree that a demand for MIP is still too high for Garmin to drop it entirely. But it will become a niche product while AMOLED options will become mainstream in the next version. By the way, I currently use MIP Fenix 7X SS, and I really value its long battery life as an ultrarunner, but I think I am ready to switch to AMOLED too.