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Garmin is digging their own grave

2199455
13 days ago

This will be my last Garmin product. 

The Fenix 8 is the current flagship device for Garmin.  Since its release, it has been plagued with bugs. Getting close to a year in and the software is still hit or miss.  Then the brightness issue in low ambient light became a pressing concern for Fenix 8 users.  Instead of Garmin providing some kind...any kind of meaningful customer service, we were initially told it would be corrected in a software update. Months later, we were then told this issue is "by design" and basically closed the door of hope to ever get a fix for this.  Now Garmin releases a subscription service and is already threatening to tie additional features behind the paywall, ignoring the fact that their customers already spent a small fortune purchasing one of their products.

If Garmin makes any current included features blocked behind a paywall in the future, a class action suit will be filed. 

The direction this company has taken lately is baffling and I wonder if the suits even realize how much bad sentiment they are creating and the business they are losing.  

Garmin, I've spent over $2000 in the last 1.5 years on your products.  Hope you invest it well as you'll never see another dime from me.  There are plenty of alternatives after I sell this Fenix 8 to recoup some of the money I feel I wasted on what was supposed to be a flagship device. What good is a watch if I struggle to see the display half the time?

I can't wait to be completely done with Garmin. I'll never look back, that's for sure 

  • 0 7 days ago in reply to drkglb

    It's hard to guess on this, whether it's because they're just delaying it, or if it's because their dev/test team is all young, with great eyesight in low-light.

  • 0 2 days ago

    Garmin is diverse in terms of the markets they serve.Like the poster here, I own quite few Garmin products. Most are exceptional. But it seems the fitness and sports are their least rigorous applications as far as safety and testing requirements. It's cheaper in the short term to delay than to fix whatever this ambient light sensor (ALS) problem is. It might be hardware, which is why they don't/can't fix it in software.But whatever the case, there have been quite a few releases of firmware since the watch was released with this ALS problem, and none have resolved the problem. To be honest, Garmin doesn't seem motivated to resolve it. By Garmin delaying and not fixing it, I think Garmin may risk a class action. I don't know if they sold enough Fenix 8s at $1200 to attract a law firm to a case, but I bet someone is evaluating this option. If the screen isn't legible it's has no value as a watch, as if that needs to be said. Fix it now, or refund now. 

    Garmin owes its customers the watch they were sold, not a watch with an illegible face. Giving us the option of disabling the ALS component would solve it for me: turn it off and never look back. People who enjoy the challenge of attempting to decipher a dark amoled screen can enable the feature and continue to enjoy the challenge. This seems so simple, it makes me wonder why they haven't already done this. 

  • 0 1 day ago

    The managers responsible for the software disaster should be fired before they cause even more damage to Garmin.

  • 0 1 day ago

    I think the move to a unified OS accross devices should solve many of these issues, I cant believe it's only recently being resolved

  • 0 1 day ago

    Coming from a MIP screen, here I was thinking the AMOLED display was too bright even in low and wishing we could just get the option to set our brightness (give me ultra low all the time), and turn auto dimming off.  Gestures and buttons also seem to lag vs my F8 solar with MIP.  Still have a week to decide which one I want to keep. 

  • 0 1 day ago in reply to tttedp

    I would not risk the F8 right now; wait until they nail down all of the AMOLED brightness control issues. Myself and others have submitted videos of the failure mode. There's no doubt the ambient light sensor component is trash on many F8s, maybe all, maybe not. But Garmin's denial of the problem, even when evidence of the problem is presented, is concerning. I really want that $1200 back in my pocket.

  • 0 1 day ago in reply to 7000518

    Pls tell us more about this unified OS plan? Is it official? 

  • 0 1 day ago in reply to 6452749

    I meant UI rather than os, but the lack of backwards compatibility suggests it's effectively a reworking of the OS, esp given the performance issues, map loading amongst others, on the fenix 8 with the new UI (now a kind of meta for sports enthisiasts) which lead me to wonder if performance issues was because of this, though looking at the fenix 8 teardowns I dont see why those changes can't be backwards compatible with fenix 7 or similar, something doesn't add up and i sense the watches will get cheaper, with alot less models and a subscription model to compensate, aspects of which are already unfolding

  • 0 1 day ago in reply to 7000518
    7000518 said:
    I think the move to a unified OS accross devices should solve many of these issues, I cant believe it's only recently being resolved
    7000518 said:
    I meant UI rather than os, but the lack of backwards compatibility suggests it's effectively a reworking of the OS, esp given the performance issues,

    I mean, both the UI and the firmware were similar for the previous generation of devices (e.g. FR255/265/955/965, Fenix 7, etc). This could be seen by:

    - similar UI across devices

    - similar bugs across devices

    - code that was obviously meant for AMOLED being incorrectly applied to MIP

    - functionality that's optimized for touchscreens being inappropriately ported to FR255 (device without a touchscreen)

    All of that points to a shared codebase for different devices. Also, I think DCR may have explicitly mentioned that Garmin switched to a shared codebase at some point, iirc.

    So Garmin seemingly already took a step to unify their software across models a few years ago. It's just that they're doing it again for Fenix 8 and other watches of its generation (like FR570/970?).

    (And ages ago, FR935 and Fenix 5 had similar software as well, if I'm not mistaken. I think that was the first time that Forerunners and Fenixes had similar software / UI.)

    So it seems like Garmin has been going down this path for a long time.

    7000518 said:
    though looking at the fenix 8 teardowns I dont see why those changes can't be backwards compatible with fenix 7 or similar

    They could be (in theory), but Garmin wants you to buy a new watch if you want the new UI

  • 0 1 day ago

    OP here.   So I haven't installed the 15.71 update. Have the auto install off but the watch still downloaded it. It first said it would install when I wasn't using it and I was worried when I had to charge it but after leaving it on the charger for several hours it still didn't update. Think I'll just leave it as I'm already upset with this watch and adding significant lag will be an unpleasant experience.