Will 970 be as laggy as 965? Why is this series laggy?

One thing I wonder - my 965 had significant delay between user actions via buttons, after an exercise finishes (I have to wait while it processes data or something), etc. Generally just way less responsive than my old Epix 2 was.

Will the 970 be similarly laggy and unresponsive? And is this due to internal hardware, or does Garmin purposefully throttle UI performance to encourage people to buy more expensive devices?

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0 Heikoo 4 days ago

Your story sounds more like a software issue since these watches more or less share the same hardware platform (especially same CPU). That’s probably the reason why e.g. map operations on Fenix 8 are quite sluggish (more pixels to move vs. MIP).
It remains to be seen if Garmin finally added more horsepower to the F970

0 tinkertoy 4 days ago in reply to Heikoo

Good to know it's the same CPU - how do you know this, by the way? I had the impression that hardware differences between models were super-secret (I've rarely seen someone know the differences). Silly that one watch would have snappy response, and another in the same-ish league would have a laggy response. :-/

0 FlowState 3 days ago in reply to tinkertoy

Search "garmin teardown" - you'll find that a handful of dedicated individuals have opened up their Garmins to look at the internals.

The pattern I'm noticing is that successive generations of models often have the same internals (like FR955 / FR965 and Fenix 7X / Fenix 8).

Another way you could indirectly try to guess whether two watches have similar horsepower is to run a Connect IQ benchmark app:

https://apps.garmin.com/apps/d3b74474-7663-42f5-9bcb-d20cd5ce96f3?tid=0

If 2 devices get similar scores, it might indicate they have similar hardware.

tinkertoy said:
And is this due to internal hardware, or does Garmin purposefully throttle UI performance to encourage people to buy more expensive devices?

If anything, Garmin uses underpowered hardware to achieve better battery life (and maybe to save money on parts too, idk). That doesn't explains differences in UI performance between devices in the same generation, but it could explain general sluggishness (compared to say, Apple Watch, Samsung watches, or any smartphone).

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-8-series/382002/cpu-fenix-8-and-enduro/1821055#1821055

0 tinkertoy 3 days ago in reply to FlowState

Thanks for all the info!

0 Heikoo 1 day ago in reply to FlowState

great summary, thanks!

In the meantime i asked the developer of the benchmark app - he said an update is gonna be released soon which includes support for FR970.

Also, i noticed there is at least one important hardware difference: The FR970 GNSS module seems to be more power-efficient. Max (GPS-only) runtime is unfortunately low-ish (26h), but dual-channel is at 21h (only -20%). That's an improvement vs. older watches.