No smart phone, is there a point in purchasing?

If interested in the metrics, you can connect your watch to a PC/laptop using a cable and Garmin Express (free software), which will populate your Garmin Connect account, which you can also link to your Strava if you are that way inclined.

But a Smartphone is not necessary just makes it easier to peruse your data/info.

TL;DR you can pretty much make full use of your Garmin watch without a phone, as long as you have a computer. But certain 3rd party apps such as Spotify which use the internet may be harder (or impossible) to use.

There's a ton of data that you can look at on the watch itself, like a limited set of activity history (and limited details for each activity). In contrast, last time I checked, you can't access your activity history on Apple Watch at all (you have to look on your phone.)

So unlike the most popular smartwatches (Apple Watch comes to mind), technically you could use a Garmin running watch without ever syncing with a computer or phone. But if you want to do deep dives into your activity stats, look at historical data, plan routes, or share activities, you want to sync with Garmin Connect (the platform for accessing your Garmin activity and health data), which can be done via phone, cable connection with computer, or wi-fi. Personally I feel wi-fi is a lot more convenient than connecting the watch to a computer via cable. (The only Garmin watches which have wi-fi are the ones which support music, including FR955).

Garmin Connect comes in 2 forms: app for your phone, and website (optimized for desktop). The website actually has more features than the app, so you're good there. The few things that the Connect app can do that the website can't are available on the watch itself (like changing watch settings).

As far as sharing activities goes, you can do this via Connect (including the website), or Strava (which also has a website).

One limitation that you may run into without a phone is that certain 3rd party Connect IQ apps may not work, including Spotify. The apps I'm thinking of need to make a connection to the internet, and this typically only works reliably via the Connect app (over bluetooth), as opposed to wi-fi. All of the apps will def ask you to open Connect on your phone when they have trouble connecting. There may be some limited cases where a wi-fi connection will work (e.g. if you've just synced over wi-fi), but it's not really the preferred way to do things.

As long as you have access to a PC, you might occasionally need to use Garmin Express for certain tasks. Recently, I purchased a Garmin 955, which was not receiving any updates (17.x.x firmware). To resolve this, I connected the device to my MacBook and used Garmin Express to update the watch.

If you prefer, a shop could likely assist you with this update as well. My father (80+) has the same watch, and after I initially set it up for him, he has been using it for years without even having an internet connection at all, let alone a smartphone.

You can set it up without a phone, you can enter relevant user data on the device. There will be no ephemeris data present on the device, so a first GPS fix will take a long time. The watch will download ephemeris data from satellites, but just small amount of data with limited validity (I think about 1 day). This is no problem when you do an activity with GPS every day. You will have to sync the time with GPS quite frequently, but again that happens anyway when you do an outdoor activity. I used a Fenix 3 for years without any syncing or connecting to a PC (except for backup) and it worked perfectly fine. Garmin is quite unique in this. Caveat I know it works for the 955 and Fenix 2-7, newer or different models may have different setup methods. And you cannot register the watch to an email account, which may be bothersome when you need support from Garmin (so make sure to keep the invoice!)

In addition to the previous replies, your emergency assistant/fall detection will be useless, and your LiveTrack feature also. Both need phone/data connection.

Connecting to Wi-Fi in the first place would probably be difficult.

Jochem said:

The watch has WIFI so even connecting it to a pc directly won't be necessary.

But I don't think you can associate the watch with a Garmin Connect account without connecting to a phone or PC at least once.

And there's little point in using the watch without a Garmin Connect account imo. What are you going to use wi-fi for in the first place if you don't sync with a Connect account? I think you can get firmware updates, maps and GPS ephemeris (EPO data), but not much else. You could use wi-fi to sync spotify, but setting up spotify in the first place might be difficult or impossible without a phone. (You might be able to get Spotify to use wi-fi for certain things that normally require a phone, but the initial login step might require a phone.)

I mean you can use the watch without syncing:

Data said:

I used a Fenix 3 for years without any syncing or connecting to a PC (except for backup) and it worked perfectly fine. Garmin is quite unique in this

But then you lose the ability to look at historical data, share activities, plan routes, etc.

Iirc, older watches would just store as many activities as possible until the watch storage was full. At that point, you'd either start to get errors, or the watch would auto-delete activites.

Now afaict, watches only store an (artificially) limited amount of activities. On my FR955, I can see activity history for less than 2 months. I think if I connect the watch to a PC with a USB cable, I can see about 7-8 months of history in the form of FIT files, but I'm talking about the scenario where you don't connect the watch to a PC. Even so, I've had my watch for a lot longer than 7-8 months, so if I had never synced or made a backup of the activity files using cable, all of those older activities would be gone forever. In any case, my watch storage is far from full, which is why I think there's an artificial limit on the number of activities the watch will store.

Then again, some ppl just use their watch "in the moment" and never look back at past activities, so maybe it's perfectly valid to never sync your watch. Even those ppl typically share their runs on Strava tho (which would still require a Connect account).

Personally I like looking at history, trends, etc., but that's just me.

itmbiker said:

Connecting to Wi-Fi in the first place would probably be difficult.

You can connect to a wi-fi network on the watch itself. Yeah, it might not be super fun to use the watch's keyboard to enter your wi-fi password, but it's possible.

But then again, since you would have to connect to a PC once in order to set up your Connect account, may as well set up wi-fi via PC while you're at it.