I returned Venu 2 - here is why...

lleJ'ai 2 montres Huawei, 3 Amazfit, 3 Samsung, 1 montre Xiaomi. Pour mon utilisation elle son mauvaise (sauf le dernier Samsung) par rapport à ma Venu SQ et Venu 2 (par rapport à une ceinture Polar) sans parler de leur application qui n'atteint pas les chevilles du Garmin !
S'il vous plaît soyez doux, j'utilise un traducteur.

MarioBozz said:

lleJ'ai 2 montres Huawei, 3 Amazfit, 3 Samsung, 1 montre Xiaomi. Pour mon utilisation elle son mauvaise (sauf le dernier Samsung) par rapport à ma Venu SQ et Venu 2 (par rapport à une ceinture Polar) sans parler de leur application qui n'atteint pas les chevilles du Garmin ! S'il vous plaît soyez doux, j'utilise un traducteur.

wow, that's a lot of watches, do you constantly switch them? And do you analyze your health and fitness data in Google Health or somewhere else?

Zange said:

Unfortunately there won't be a V2s sized Fenix 7 for sure. 18mm Fenix 7s instead of a 20mm Fenix 7s would be incredible. 

Why not? Technology is constantly advancing, look at first smartwatches Garmin have made they were huge comparing even to biggest ones from current lineup e.g. FR60 https://youtu.be/7m3XLGE9MyQ?t=141 :) So I'm quite positive that once battery chemistry advances they could come up with something like that.

Zange said:

This is the other reason I wanted a "normal" Garmin sport watch again. Buttons. Touchscreen is nice during the day when scrolling through the widgets. But besides that it, to me, is a pain in the ass. Maybe also because of touchscreen lag some times etc. Esp during a workout it is annoying. I accidentally swiped away an activity and deleted it. Or I ended and saved it but instead of resuming it. I like the V2s as an everyday watch but found myself as a longtime Garmin user to favor the Garmin's with buttons. Touchscreen during working out is just not for me and way too inconvenient. 

Thank you for the feedback! Since you've used other watches with buttons, I guess you've got really comfortable with them and expect the same level of comfort from any watch. Myself, I came to Garmin ecosystem with Vivosmart HR, and it was a band with a touchscreen and a single button. Hopefully if I decide one day to switch to Fenix or Forerunner I wouldn't be missing touchscreen either.

As even today during my run I caught myself that I've scrolled through my screens, and it was super fast and easy, and I wondered if I would be able to achieve the same efficiency with the buttons, especially if I hold a water bottle in my hand.

"Garmin is shooting in their own foot, Chinese gadgets are stealing their market share... if they don't adapt or change they will become the Blackberry of the smartwatches..."

I love your comment, because it is exactly my feeling. Garmin are missing the train, and not even noticing it. Once the Chinese get GPX import / export, Strava and offline maps worked out, there is little reason to stay with Garmin.

Garmin reminds me, yes, of Blackberry also, but even more of the old Nokia. They had acquired this incredible arrogance, while their software quality was totally subpar. Nokia's battery life and hardware both were great - just like Garmin's.

Nokia went under due to the iPhone and some CEO they brought in from Microsoft - that's the official fanboy version, and partly true. They also had big acquisitions like Navteq for billions (Garmin: inReach and GEOS), and great free maps and routing software bought from a German company (it actually lives on in HERE, now owned by a German car consortium) - but really, no one cared, because Nokia's phones were crashing the whole time or out of memory.

Complacency and bean counters in suits - just like with Garmin, in my opinion.

And Nokia's forums were similar. Total disinterest in critical consumer voices and their ideas. I have never, ever, even once, seen someone from Garmin picking up all those good, free ideas and comments to improve their product. It. just. doesn't. happen.

4241327 said:

I love your comment, because it is exactly my feeling. Garmin are missing the train, and not even noticing it. Once the Chinese get GPX import / export, Strava and offline maps worked out, there is little reason to stay with Garmin.

in fact GPX is already possible with Amazfit watches, same with Strava, offline maps as far as I know aren't supported yet. So I think it's matter of time once their ecosystem would become more diverse. One major thing which Chinese watches are lack so far is integration with sensors, possibly they just postpone it to gradually add features to new products(everyone does it in one way or another).

4241327 said:

Garmin reminds me, yes, of Blackberry also, but even more of the old Nokia.

Analogy with Nokia is probably have more correlations and I loved Nokia as well, and it was sad looking how they make mistake after mistake which lead them to where they now... Sadly current Nokia brand has very little with the one from the past

Wow, I had no idea the Asian watches were so advanced already when it came to integration.

It really breaks my heart. I have an Instinct Solar, and I see so many things both on the watch and in the ecosystem that work half heartedly, or are really quite buggy on a software level. I post to the forum. I get some snide fanboy remark, or a moderator simply doesn't understand what I mean (best case!) or thinks I'm an arrogant fool (arrogant maybe, but no fool), but basically says I'm holding it wrong (Apple Jobs analogy) or I should send the perfectly intact watch to tech service. Any idea or constructive bug report is totally ignored.

I had several Nokias back in the day, they were basically great devices. I loved my E72 (superb keyboard and camera). And now, these days, it feels exactly the same with Garmin. Nokia were arrogant and smug. And, yes, they made mistake after mistake, didn't listen, because they felt so self assured in Tampere, Finland. And now Olathe, Kansas (well, Switzerland, really, for tax reasons, but you get my point). Same thing. Even this post. No one will listen. If anything, a moderator will delete it.

4241327 said:

Wow, I had no idea the Asian watches were so advanced already when it came to integration.

yup and they are developing quite rapidly from what I see, as  for maps some watches have online maps, so probably they can integrate offline ones at some point.

4241327 said:

It really breaks my heart. I have an Instinct Solar, and I see so many things both on the watch and in the ecosystem that work half heartedly, or are really quite buggy on a software level. I post to the forum. I get some snide fanboy remark, or a moderator simply doesn't understand what I mean (best case!) or thinks I'm an arrogant fool (arrogant maybe, but no fool), but basically says I'm holding it wrong (Apple Jobs analogy) or I should send the perfectly intact watch to tech service. Any idea or constructive bug report is totally ignored.

My experience with Garmin support was quite positive so far, indeed, it took them years to fix grave bug when unsynced activity was replaced with the newer one(that what actually forced me to leave Garmin as I was keep losing recorded activities especially during hikes). But back then there were no chat and email support was rather slow and unresponsive. These days I had bug reports and they were addressed, I was contacted by dev team, and they really worked on them as bugs are gone. So at least in here in my opinion they are doing good job, but they have too much devices to take care of and that's the real problem.

I'm not sure why you had issues with their support, maybe it depends from the device and a team which is working on a particular device.

Regarding support, with my Instinct Solar, there are so many small and medium issues I see, but in the forum I am quickly told that 'there is no problem, please move on', or threads just fizzle out. I've seen this many times with other people too, at some point, they just give up. The opinion Garmin has of itself does often not line up with reports on Amazon, on Reddit, on Google Play and in the forums here - and with my personal experience.

Calling tech support in my country just led to 'send it in, very perhaps we'll exchange it' or 'you're holding it wrong' or totally misunderstanding the issue.

My favourite quote from another thread is: "I cannot help feeling totally oversold, and completely underwhelmed."

My personal quote would be: "Garmin: overpromising, underdelivering."

sensovision said:

As even today during my run I caught myself that I've scrolled through my screens, and it was super fast and easy, and I wondered if I would be able to achieve the same efficiency with the buttons, especially if I hold a water bottle in my hand.

Even easier on the Fenix and Forerunner watches. They have auto scroll and you can set them to your speed prefence.  No swiping or button presses. 

Thanks tess! I have autoscroll too, but usually I want to see one screen with the metrics most important to me(cadence/HR/pace) and I only occasionally check something like time of the day, distance, or temperature from Tempe. It may or may not even happen during a run, that's why I never tried autoscroll.