Hot Keys

I realize this question is prolly somewhat rhetorical, but they want you to buy a more expensive watch

Yeah, I know where you're coming from and I sympathize, but I can't fault Garmin for doing what's working for them as far as market segmentation goes. There's no rule which says that the only differences between variants of a product have to be hardware-related. How would this work for a product that's purely software-based where they still want to sell different editions? Like different editions of Windows, or different editions of a AAA video game?

Bernard Strauss said:

i have more expensive watches that´s the problem, i can not configure them all with my custom keys, garmin should think on  this because it´s a marketing error, it´s not like if you need an barometic altimeter to include this feature, it´s just a software lines.

I'm a dev and I've heard this argument many times ("only hardware differences are significant"), even from my own coworkers, commenting on the price of a competitor's product. "The price difference between models X and Y isn't justified by the difference in hardware costs. What a rip off!". They should've known better, since they know as well as I do how various variants/models of the same product are designed: first marketing specifies the most expensive model that has all the hardware/software features, then they take away features to create the cheaper model. I feel like most people picture it the opposite way: starting with the cheapest product, then adding hardware features which cost $X and increasing the price accordingly. This is absolutely not the case.

It has less to do with the cost of hardware or cost of software development and more to do with what the market will bear and how they can maximize their profits.

After all, when you buy a product, you're not just paying for the parts on the bill of materials, you're also paying for marketing, advertising, R and D, software and hardware development costs, office expenses, etc. How do you "fairly" allocate all of those costs to various models? More to the point, who ever said it's supposed to be fair in the first place?

Bernard Strauss said:

barometic altimeter

Sure and in the past Garmin has included a baro on the cheaper lifestyle watch (Vivoactive series) but not the more expensive mid-range running watch (Garmin 245). I used to hate this disparity, but recently Garmin has brought the baro to midrange running watches too. (But the watches get more and more expensive...)

More recently, google removed the baro from all newer Fitbits except for the "smartwatch" models. Ppl get upset about hardware differences as well as software differences. I'm not happy about that because I wanted to get a new fitbit for a relative, but I wouldn't go so far as saying it's a marketing error.

Bernard Strauss said:

marketing error

Is it really a marketing error? If someone really wants hotkeys, they'll be incentivized to buy the more expensive Garmin. Garmin is gambling that this practice won't drive their customers to a competitor. I don't think it will because most Garmin users don't even know what hotkeys are, and those who do will either make sure to buy a model which has one, or accept the fact that they won't have that feature.

Even Apple (which has a totally different business model than Garmin) has included software-only features in the more expensive models of phone or tablet. Yeah, in one case there was a backlash and they did reverse course, so maybe not the best example haha.

I'm the biggest critic of Garmin when it comes to poor usability and bugs, but I can't fault them for doing old school market segmentation, since they're clearly an old school company and that's not changing any time soon. Garmin has 112 variants of watches that are supported by Connect IQ 3rd party apps (so basically any watch that came out since circa 2014), which doesn't even include certain variations like color or Fenix vs Quatix, for example. This would seem insane to anyone used to a simpler product line like iphones, ipads, or even samsung phones, but it seems to be working for Garmin - for now.

There's also cases where hardware is artificially crippled to be sold at a lower price, and/or chips that didn't pass the quality tests are sold in the next lower specced product. (e.g. the chip in a slower model of a CPU is often just a "defective" chip from the faster model.)

For example, NVIDIA has artificially locked certain hardware features for graphics cards at the driver (software) level. This is proven by the fact that you can obtain hacked firmware to unlock a lower-cost product so it has the features of a more expensive cousin.

Is that also unethical/unfair?

EDIT: I realize you didn't use the words "ethical" or "fair" anywhere but that's usually the gist of the arguments against this kind of stuff. If you truly mean it's just a mistake which hurts Garmin themselves, they would probably beg to differ.

Marketing. I bet it will never get it.

The same is with coordinates format - impossible to change to the most suitable. That means software limitation.

So you'll spend £200 extra. It's that simple.

a1234.garmin said:

The same is with coordinates format - impossible to change to the most suitable. That means software limitation.

Yeah it's a software limitation and it's on purpose