Brand New Fenix 8 AMOLED Speaker Not working

Tried everything - no tones , no voice note, no calls, no Spotify - can’t hear a thing in the faintest 

Nope - no tones , nothing at all - I’ve tried various online suggestions.

seems I’m without any options apart from sending the watch back seemingly at my own cost.

Since you just purchased it, why not just return it for another one? It's most likely defective from the manufacture.

If you just start and stop a swim activity and save or discard it, the water ejection functionality should start automatically with sound and vibration. But I assume you have already checked this!? If there is no sound even by using the water ejection, I would assume the speaker is broken (if you have checked that the volume is not set to „mute all“ in the general settings) for some reasons and contact the Garmin support or the dealer where you bought it.

Perhaps a master reset could help (you lost all settings/data) to bring back the speaker back to life…

JDBosch I'm experiencing the same thing with my 51mm solar MIPs. 

Background: i purchased my original Fenix 8 but was seeing significant battery loss so had it replaced under warranty.   Set up the replacement (received June 12th) and the speaker doesn't work. I noticed it as I always water eject after a shower. Which it didn't male the usual tone. 

Went and checked to make sure mute all was off and turned on button and notifications beep (usually keep off), tried to play music through the speaker (it didn't).  Turned the watch on and it didn't help.   Currently waiting for the next firmware to install/ factory reset to see if it works. 

Bookmarked this to see if there are any solutions.