Dear Garmin,
Long time reader, first time poster here.
In May 2023. I received a Tactix 7 Standard Edition as a birthday gift. I was so excited to own such a marvelous piece of technology on my wrist. Sadly however, while the hardware was rock solid, the software left much to be desired. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the watch has never been 100% bug free in the nearly 2 years I've owned it. Each new firmware update fixes one issue, but introduces another. It has been one step forward, two steps backwards the entire time.
The watch's reliability took a steep turn for the worse within the last 6 months. At one point, around September 2024 after upgrading to the latest firmware, the watch entered an infinite reboot cycle during an important activity (I record GPS tracks for my work). I was shocked that such an expensive piece of 'military grade' equipment could turn out to be such a fickle, unpredictable toy. Even after discussions with Garmin Japan who, to their credit, did their best to help rectify the problem, I became disillusioned and purchased a Foretrex 801. All I needed was a reliable device to record GPS tracks, not a fitness/lifestyle watch masquerading as a professional tool.
So far, the 801 has been reliable. It is not perfect - there are a few things I wish Garmin would implement. For example, there is no way to hard disable the bluetooth / ANT+ connectivity. You can only disable it by entering the 'Stealth Mode' which does not record GPS data. Garmin should create an option in the system menu for enabling/disabling wireless connectivity. Also, when losing GPS connection, there is a system message that popups ("GPS signal lost") that repeats over and over, getting in the way from using the device. If Garmin can solve these two issues, it would be the only device I need.
These days, the Tactix 7 has been relegated to only showing the time, date and sunset. Because that's the only thing it can do without crashing.
