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

Agree solar is not worth having bigger bezel / lower clarity screen for minuscule gains.

While I agree I don't want/need a social media enabled LTE smartwatch, I completely DISAGREE in that LTE safety feature for me are a MUST HAVE. Right now I cannot (safely) go for a solo long run without my phone (actually, I bought an Apple Watch just for this sole purpose). So to me Garmin either needs to add LTE safety features, or just remove Garmin Pay and Music (because if Garmin forces me to carry a phone anyway, no point having those redundant things inside my watch).

Completely agree with you. I purchased an Apple Watch just for the runs when I need to be available for a phone or text. I wish the Garmin had this basic capability so I could get rid of the Apple Watch. I never bring my phone on runs. Also, it looks like the Epix 2 Pro now has the brighter screen, no solar, ECG function, better optical HR sensor, and long enough battery, so it's getting close to the perfect sports watch. I'm sure they'll invent some new interesting algorithms like Hill Score and Endurance Score (which I like), so there's more to do on the software side. LTE is the big missing hardware feature.

Microphone and speaker for making short phone calls. Features that much cheaper Huawei watches have available. 

Markus said:

Microphone and speaker for making short phone calls. Features that much cheaper Huawei watches have available. 

Do Huawei watches also have the same waterproof rating and the same battery life? Ability to pass voice through would require  a more powerful CPU which would likely reduce the battery life. Compare the battery life of Venu 3 to something like Epix 2 Pro to see the difference. This is an outdoor watch. Why don't you buy something like Venu if you need smartwatch features? 

Well, I don't want to wear two watches at the same time.

And I don't want Garmin to compromise outdoor features and battery life in order to make a watch that I can talk to. That's not what Fenix is supposed to be. I pay $1000 for this watch so that I can rely on it during a 40 hour ultramarathon in mountains. 

Agree. This is a dealbreaker for me. I really want a tactix 7 amoled and was going to buy one until I saw that you can't reverse the clockface. It's next to useless for me without this feature. It's a really good idea with the flashlight in the watch but lighting up my elbow feels meaningless... 

What about voice notes on percieved effort, gear, weather, terrain, route, landmarks, competitors or whatever during an activity ?

Later, when the activity is examined in Connect, the recorded notes can be found at the correct position on the route/timeline and be played back to support your memory.

Storage space is a huge must. I have like 300gb of music. NAND is SO cheap, I don't understand how they started at 16gb for the epix.

Same, I've been begging for 64+GB storage space ever since way back when I was on Fenix 6. 

It's really easy to fill up 32GB when you have 2 continents/regions of maps + satellite imagery, it would be nice to not have to keep deleting and re-adding regions every time I travel. There's no reason that in the year 2023, when 2TB microSD cards are a thing, these watches can't have more than 32GB of storage.

At least 128GB would be ideal, so you could have complete worldwide maps installed with room to spare for satellite imagery and music, but I'd even settle for just 64GB.