Battery drain on 18.14

Now I'm curious: what made you leave Suunto? I'm considering leaving Garmin, because of things like this  or this forums.garmin.com/.../fenix-7-unusable-for-tracking-workout-heart-rate-get-your-stuff-fixed-garmin or anything Stryd related...

Had a 9 Baro while waiting for *six moths* for a warranty case with Garmin. I had no issues during the use.

Good luck with Chinese watch starting on Letter A. Had one of those. With latest and final FW you can't save more than 5 activities, you have to factory reset watch after that. No support at all. At lesat Garmin fixes things, they always do, be patient. 

6518176 said:

P.S. Interesting about your mention of Suunto. Was it really that bad?

bw said:

Now I'm curious: what made you leave Suunto?

As a hardware, I haven't had any issues with Suunto (Ambit3 Peak + HRM chest strap), however, there was one good day when Suunto decided to get rid of their so called MovesCount portal (similar to Garmin Connect) which was something, maybe ahead of its time back then. It was so well organized, so well structured that it was a pure sin to simply remove it in favor of some non-sense app called with the greatest name of them all - SuuntoApp. So, I migrated to the app, but since I am one of those people who love web interfaces and looking his data on his PC, I couldn't live with the fact that MovesCount is no longer available and this made me seek for various solutions. I put the cards on the table, and for the better or worse, I choose Garmin.

Now, regarding the hardware of Ambit3, its still working and sitting in my drawer as trusty old backup in case something wrong happens with both Garmins I currently have and I couldn't rely on them, but strangely how, up to this day, this is the only watch I can fully trust it will work no matter what I am doing or how am I doing it. But, compared to all new tech, it does not have proper step count, it does not have sleep tracking, it does not support structured workouts, it does not have any mapping capabilities, its simply old and trusty. Maybe this is why I trust him so much, because for its nearly four years of service never let me down (except during COVID pandemic, one evening I sneak out to run and didn't catch a satellite signal) so I ran purely on timer, but if we neglect that fact, I never ever seen any issues with it. No battery drain, no incorrect data, no improper calculations or bad firmware releases.It simply worked as intended to.

You didn't read with understanding. I never claimed that this is direct competition for Garmin or that I would choose it instead. I only compared the general level of development of Garmin's software. You describe the errors of this watch, and yet here we have an error that completely eliminates the battery advantage of Garmin. "Give it some time", haha, funny. Maybe give it some time to "A" watch too? :)

My two cents.

Let's not forget the software complexity increased quite a lot since then. I also enjoyed having my Suunto Ambit in the past, back then it was an unbeatable combination together with their very good portal.
However when they neglected their portal did I make the switch to Garmin. I still like the Garmin watches, their app and portal. Also do I liek the fact that they have a rather long support duration for their watches.

Of course is nobody happy when bugs occur in new firmware but these things happen. As long as Garmin listens to their customers and solves these bugs adequately, this is acceptable because new firmware also brings additional features/fixes. 

It is difficult to judge for us as customers, why a bug occurred and/or if this was already the same bug (or better root cause of the bug) during previous beta releases. Garmin can excel by reacting and solving because in this way you can maintain and win customer satisfaction.

So publishing on the forum that we have a problem is key.

For Garmin it is then to show that they understand and work on a solution.

Battery drain is not fixed for me on 18.15, see forums.garmin.com/.../battery-drain-v18-15

Sorry, I am in software development and managed to deliver much larger, much more complex systems than this watch is...

Everything I have seen so far is suggesting they do not adhere to basic quality practices within their consumer branch. They show that they can do it in aviation, but not here.

fredcl01 said:

Let's not forget the software complexity increased quite a lot since then.

We're talking here about a 33B company with 20k employees. I will be harsh here: if they can't handle "complexity" they should go out of business, simple as that. No excuses. People should demand higher standards from corporations with massive profit margins and not have to explain them at every turn by being their free PR managers.

Sad, I've been there before he switch to SuuntoApp...

Need to have to look into that