Is Fenix 8 really that bad?

I’ve had mine for just over a week (51mm AMOLED sapphire) and aside of the battery drain which was fixed I’ve had no issues. 

Thanks!

But that may depend on the kind of use

Perfectly usable for my use case. I have a F7SS and Apple watch 9 in the drawer - if the 8 was that bad I would have used one of those.

I came from an Epix pro. Have had it almost a week. I can reproduce some of the crashes mentioned here. It has some bugs. But the UI is better in so many little ways it feels like a pretty big upgrade. Plus the mic/speaker is a game changer for me. So, I can recommend it. Oh and the screen is more vibrant than the Epix pro 2

Thanks all guys for encouraging comments!

if you plan to use navigation : REFRAIN yourself:

- NO ETA (randomly function),

- no turn by turn alerts (not implented),

- routing is broken (no routes, etc, same maps where fine with older watches),

- nothing really new except battery life,

- no custom navigation screen, the "3 lanes system" is way not polished

- various crashes during long hikes.

- can't select a map to show/hide

and this is just a small complain navigation oriented...

it will be good at the end, but it's not there yet.

There is no reason to jump right now until all of this is fixed, which is already taking 27 days without a message from garmin to apologize or show they are aware, coud be fixed in 1 day, or 3 months...

Okay, thanks. That's a bit concerning, as that's quite expensive watch..

To add to the laundry list of complaints above:

• Nap tracking is off: quiet time like watching TV or reading is often picked up as naps, real naps... I haven't seen a single one captured; overall, not as good as F7
• The new interface is slower, especially if "notification center" (aka top drawer) is enabled. There's a noticeable lag now when you pull up your glances
• When using contactless payments, no indication is given the watch was read -- no haptic feedback, no nothing
• All alerts in activities are broken and don't fire: if you want a pace alert or a drink/carbs alerts on long runs -- forget about it
• Even though you set your audio output to Connected Devices in sports settings, the sound would often start playing on the watch speakers. Sometimes you have to restart the watch to have it properly recognize the headphones
• You can pin the main three sports, but the rest will be sorted whatever, can't control that
• Many settings aren't accessible via phone; surprisingly, I can't seem to find Controls in the watch, these appear to be only editable via the phone
• Phone based backups/restore have been removed as you have probably read elsewhere, so get ready to set up your new watch completely from scratch
• There's a new weight edit screen in Strength that makes editing not as fast and frictionless as it used to be; I'd imagine the screen jumping to workout's exercise list is still present

I can go on... Honestly, this is the least tested and stable Garmin release in years. But fear not! It's not just software. My first F8 died after two weeks of mild use and is currently on its way back to Garmin. 

That said, the watch hasn't left my wrist since I got it, and its many annoyances do not take away from the fact that it all mostly just works and is a great package. Like everyone else, I hope for a firmware update soon to at least address most glaring concerns like navigation, alerts, and slowness.

Stay with your epix pro bro, is an ok device.