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Non-watch tracker alternative

7584636
over 1 year ago

Hi,
I think I speak for myself and many more people who enjoy watches and want continuous data and to use the garmin ecosystem.

At the moment to get the data, for example, I cannot use my loved mechanical watches. Moreover, the are situation in which a person would simply want to be more dressy. In the end, a watch  or chest strap is really during an activity, and less so during rest time. My point is that there are some situation where I (and I believe many more users) would enjoy to get fitness data from a device that is not a watch, and still feed the data into garmin connect.

For example, if I am going to a wedding I would like to use the dressy mechanical watch but still get basic fitness data for the day during garmin connect. Then I could use my Instinct in selected days and during activities or sleep, but we would have the alternative to be more dressy or simply use different watches without sacrificing fitness and health tracking.

A solution that would be perfect would be either a band like whoop, wearable either as a bracelet or on the arm, which would be not so capital expensive to produce for gamrin given they already do chest bands. Or a smart ring. The goal would be to able to track data and feed it into garmin connect (mainly HR, to track fitness and recovery) when one does not want to use a smartwatch.

I hope with this post to engage the community  and show garmin market for this solution, which can be very simple if done through a band similar to whoop's one.

  • 0 4 months ago

    Where do I give this a thumbs up!? 

  • 0 3 months ago

    Fully agree, must be a healthy demand for this. Despite liking Garmin products and being “invested” in the ecosystem I do want something slim and non-intrusive for long time monitoring. Ability to use my watch collection is one reason and not wearing one to bed another. Currently staying with Garmin despite this gap due to the effort required to move to a (for me) proper vendor agnostic setup.

    PS: since Polar is now at least leaning into this area with their upcoming 360 (see e.g DC Rainmakers write up) it seems even more logical for Garmin to enter the field too. Else a migration to a Finnish ecosystem might be on the horizon DS

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 2479018

    ehi! thanks for the feedback. fully agreed, I would also love a vendor agnostic ecosystem. if only there was a open-source algo web-platform, then we could just sync any data inside of it and that would be it. I can only thik about intervals.icu but that has a different focus and does not process sleep and daily data constantly as part of recovery or stress level nor sleep score.

    I do not know about this polar 360 line-up, I will check that and what do you mean about finnish ecosystem? thank you

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 7584636

    The "Finnish ecosystem" probably has to do with Polar and Suunto being based in Finland.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to Data

    Indeed, that was the reference Sunglasses.

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to 2479018

    Well, FirstBeat (the company that designs the algorithms Garmin uses and that Garmin bought a couple of years ago) was a Finnish company as well (and Firstbeat Technologies company is still based in Finland). So it's all "Finnish ecosystems". Wink

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to Dr Phil

    Interesting opinion.  I also wear mechanical watches and have to use a whoop because they have a bicep strap.  

  • 0 3 months ago

    I have a variation on this issue. I am very keen to track my stress data during the day, I recently listened to a podcast with the author of “The pulse cure” discussing the garmin HRV and stress functions and how important these are for health. As a surgeon on of the most stressful activities I do at work is surgery but obviously cannot wear a watch to do this. Can garmin explain to me if any of their chest straps can help in this situation. My understanding is that chest straps only work during an activity and stress isn’t recordered during an activity. 

  • 0 3 months ago in reply to Alren

    I'm not Garmin (as this is a user forum), but at least the Yoga activity on my Forerunner 965 records stress. So I would assume that if you wear a HRV capable strap while doing surgery, start the Yoga activity, and keep the watch in your pocket, it would probably work.