39 thoughts on “Garmin | Kill the competition | A How-To Guide”

1. I have for several years been wondering why Apple didn’t just copy the some of the Garmin “apps” like Running, Bike, Hiking.. I mean it can’t be more than a few months coding. I even considered doing it myself as a proof of concept.

   The difficult part would be the Firstbeat stuff.

   If Apple did it..it would probably kill the cheap watches like Garmin 45 and 245

2. Why u didn’t mention polar ? 😀 they don’t count?

   1. Polar is really not in the game as they don’t do apps. Polar is easily being beaten by e.g. suunto (you either love or hate the polar user interface) or Garmin – when you take the price of the product into consideration.

      1. Their strategy is very weird…

         Vv2 rumored to have Music control(streaming from phone) and still crap navigation

   2. for smart watches, not really

3. “Next, Apple just ports the whole Watch-shebang over to Android…”
   Never gonna happen. Well, Never Say Never, …. let’s say very very very unlikely, because that’s not the way Apple does business: YOU need to come to Apple, Apple doesn’t come to you. Hint: how many platforms can you develop iOS apps from? (the answer is one).

   1. Money comes to those who go for it. It rarely comes willingly of its own accord

      I’m guessing that porting the entirety of WatchOS to Wear OS might be technically tricky.
      i think apple music is on WearOS but that’s about it

4. “Oracle looks set to acquire the US operations of TikTok.” I don’t think that’s what’s actually on the table. Oracle is just going to be TikTok’s “trusted tech partner” in the U.S. Not exactly sure what that means, but they definitely aren’t acquiring TikTok’s US operations.

   1. they were reported as acquiring TT but the nature of the deal changed yesterday when announced. i think some US gvt dept still has to approve it

5. Casio with a timer. All these metrics and spending $100s every X amount of years is crazy.

6. The obvious way Apple could create trouble for GARMIN is to bring out a watch with a MIP-display and several day battery life. I believe Apple could even make it look pretty with their design chops or even source an improved version of MIP. Garmin has failed to push any incremental improvement since the Fenix 3 came out.
   Maybe that is what the AW6-SE is going to be? We don’t know yet.

   1. Agreed, an Apple or WearOS watch with an always on transflective display will decimate low/mid range Garmin sales.

      Short term, better sleep tracking and more polished user interfaces (watch and Garmin Connect) will pull more casual users towards Garmin.

7. Garmins biggest problem is Garmin and not the competitors

   a) It is to difficult for the “low-end”-users to choose the correct model Just take a look at all the recent discussion on 45, 45s, and 245 more.
   b) To many problems with Fenix 5, 5+, 6 on important issues like GPS accurancy and battery issues.
   c) When a Watch is passes the first year – they seem to stop envolving the product and only tries to fix GPS and battery issues. Just take a look at e.g. Fenix 5+ (Not supporting latest CIQ version, Not updating FW with PacePro and more).

   Existing users moving from older forerunner versions, to Fenix 3 and then to 5 (5+) are probably reluntant to buy a newer version as Garmin does not seem to care about existing customers and only aiming for new customers with new hardware.

   Apple could actually win that part of the battle if they can create the right software and a battery that last for at least 20 hours of GPS/Bluetooth tracking.

   1. I hear ya!
      I’m hoping next year will see some seismic shifts on gps accuracy
      battery…yep, it just needs inventing. AW6 will only get incremental gains to enable them to properly do sleep tracking before a daily, morning recharge.

      1. I am a many year (10+) Garmin watch user. Currently a Fenix 5+ owner, and one of those users that have a feeling of being abandoned on a train-station because my 1.5 year old product is “too old” and that had a price of 5400 DKK or 670 GBP/725 EUR. Furthermore the Feinix 5+ had issuses more than the first year of ownership with GPS accuracy and quite fast battery comsumptions that was just resently fixed for the majority of user (actually last week).

         As a result to this, I would probably say that I am NOT going to do an upgrade to 745 or 955 because of the concerns of quality – and when the issues they have are fixed.. a few days later a 755 and 965 is released.

         I am very sure that many users feel like i do. Being both tech-guy and a trainiac i am in no way a happy customer. And I would probably switch to another product if such product exist. Unfortunately to my knowledge this is not the case, and therefore I will stick with my Fenix 5+ for a year og two more, hoping and dreaming for better garmin-days…

         So again bottom line is that Garmins biggest enemy is garmin itself.

      2. i hear ya and sympathise
         i’m a trainiac too but do you NEED any of these devices? The tech, to me, is 80% fun and then 20% usefulness. I seem to remember being faster when i had a stopwatch (admittedly i was younger!)

      3. So true!

      4. So you recently stopped being resentful about the GPS accuracy? 😛 (ku’ ikk’ lade være).

         I hear you, my first FR210 could take up to 15 minutes to get a fix (admittedly in China, but still…) and it never ever got a firmware update. It taught me not to buy old Garmin models. The 735XT has served me well, but we barely have gotten any updates for the last 1½ years (not counting the two security fixes recently pushed out).
         The recent Garmapocalypse, lack of communication and general abandonment only supports your opinion (and I agree).

         Maybe I should just go for the Coros Pace 2. Makes me wonder about what devil I’ll get there…

         @FTK the only shift you’d see on GPS accuracy is if they start going dual-band (L1/L5). Many phones already offer that, but Sony doesn’t seem to support that yet from their very limited public information. Qualcomm is ominously quiet on whether the SnapDragon Wear 4100 platform supports L5 or not, too (ie: it doesn’t).

      5. Well, it was a win win for both garmin and me… I purchased a footpod – and that fixed the pace pr. minute even in “high building” areas in Copenhagen, and I also bought a Stryd to get the Running Power (Because my trainer wanted me to use it).

         To me it seems that both The5Krunner and DC are only somewhat impressed with the Coros Pace 2 and not a fully competitor to a Garmin high-end watch (exept on the price).

      6. regarding the last para. yes i would say that is fair take on about where i come from. dcr can speak for himself
         I’m really NOT a Garmin fanboy but it just becomes childish sometimes to pursue certain lines of argument against garmin. P2 really is good and is great value for money, garmin is a little bit more polished around the edges in terms of the whole offering and its openness. when someone makes a watch that can do what i need it to i will switch in a heartbeat…like I have with my Wahoo bike comp.

      7. @PalleA

         Do we NEED a high-end watch? I’ve been using a Stryd pod as well since December last year, and it seems to give me all the data I want/need for my running.

         Sure, there’s things like HR, sleep etc, but the Pace 2 it can do that as well. The only thing I’ve found that it cannot that would be nice, is breadcrump navigation – something I’ve used about a handful of times over the last four years. Music is a “maybe” for me.

      8. there is more than dual band/dual frequency that can change the picture. watch this space.

      9. It’s very frustrating when the only answer to problems with high end tech gear is to purchase a newer model. It hurts to have to replace a working peace of kit with something that is very similar but has that one extra feature you need today. It’s even worse when you know you could be in the same position again before you know it.
         This feels like a self own in Garmin’s current model.

8. Kai, if maps are part of a high-end watch then to me, yes. I often travel the world (at least used to) due to my work, and without a map and a little bit of routeplanning, then I would be totally lost. In earlier days I kinda was force to do my runnings on a treadmill.

   tfk, I am not a “garmin-fanboy” – I even got banned/messages delete on the Garmin Forums because I was complaining about “things” and suggesting other products. If I take a closer look inside my drawer you will be able to find Polar and Suunto watch units.

   But generally speaking a smart-watch has a way higher pricetag than other watches and they are supposed to be smart, but frankly these devices are becoming unsmarter faster and faster, just and only because the company behind that product chooses not to update it.

   1. sy, wasn’t having a dig at you. just clarifying that MY (occasional) defences of Garmin are mostly just ‘factual’ rather than me trying to big them up.

   2. Palle,

      Great point about the travelling and needing navigation – I know exactly what you mean (got lost in Den Haag once while running).

      Agree on the SmartWatch becoming a DumbWatch thing – I had the same experience not just with the 735XT but with my Samsung SmartTV, that turned into a DumbTV in 2-3 years because the built-in browser didn’t/couldn’t follow the evolving browser standards, so I could no longer use it to watch MotoGP directly (besides the browser was dog-slow, from day one).

      “Planned obsolesce” dates seems to be moving closer and closer to launch day with every year 🙁

9. As much as Wear OS is tempting, switching over to it would be bad, you see, I’ve disassembled my Garmin Watch, and you know how they achieve really good battery life? By using a Cortex M4 microprocessor, along with optimizing to the last bit to reduce power consumption:
   They use a Cypress SoC with a single Cortex M4 processor clocked in at 100MHz, 128 Kb of ram (on my model). Very power efficient.
   They use a 1MB flash integrated into the SoC for the kernel, along with a separate 16mb rom for the OS and the applications, furthermore, if you have a music variant of the watch, it will have a separate 4gb dram chip that is not powered when not in use to further reduce power consumption.

   As Wear OS is basically Android, these optimizations wouldn’t be possible because a) Wear OS requires a relatively beefy processor and way more ram, along with the apps being bigger and consuming more CPU resources. Besides, Wear OS lacks the in-depth health tracking options as the proprietary OS found within these watches.

10. If sleep tracking and sleep analysis is important everyone should stay FAR away from Garmin. Shockingly bad 😡 Reading a book, watching a movie or even brushing my teeth late at night = me being in REM sleep. Waking up every morning having to edit and shave off several hours of non existent sleep on the markets most expensive watches. Ridiculous..
    My point is there are elements Garmin really isn’t that good at.

    1. If you want good sleep tracking you can’t go past a Fitbit. Only problem is they trail the field on just about everything thing else. Unless you want one watch on each wrist or a sleep watch and an active watch you need to decide which features are your priorities and go with the device that has best support for them.
       And yes Garmin’s sleep analysis is so bad it’s farcical.

       1. Well.. During a period of 6 months I tested all the flagships of Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Samsung, Huawei and Fitbit. You’re right that Fitbit probably has the best and most accurate sleep analysis, but Polar, Huawei and Samsung aren’t far behind. At least all but Garmin manage to report the correct start/end sleep time. Despite the lack of music I ended up selling the Garmin watches and kept the Polar Vantage V. The sleep tracking and recovery features on the V is far superior to anything Garmin has put out. It’s training and fitness tracking is pretty good to.

11. The only thing keeping Garmin afloat is:

    They play well with nearly every external sensor
    They record sports data better than nearly everyone else (debatable)
    They play nice with all hardware (debatable)
    They have the battery life (debatable)

    If someone else, like Apple, does all of that on the apple watch and better: Game over. Anyone that offers all of what Garmin offers on top of being a smartwatch, it’s game over for Garmin. Not just the half-measures of smartwatch options Garmin offers, I mean a full-on smartwatch with all nice screen, all the smartwatch features, AND can last 30 hours in GPS Ultramarathon mode? Garmin is done. It’s a race to who gets their first, and after Garmin for as long as I have, I have zero faith they’ll be the ones to get their, period. They can’t even get optimized battery systems to work correctly in their closed ecosystem!

    If you’re asking me who that’s going to be in 2020, it’s probably Apple. They’re a 2 Trillion dollar company with a gargantuan install base and a watch everyone wants. Hell, I’m using Android for neigh on a decade now, and even I am thinking of getting an iPhone and Apple Watch for that ecosystem! If they put out a real Apple watch, that’ll do what my Apex Pro does and more (and subsequent Garmin watch equivalent); Shut up and take my money!

    Samsung could get there as well if they, stop, using, Tizen! Also, take their active serious, because they don’t.

    1. apps and platform openness
       and the stockpile of cash..

       it all helps

    2. They play well with nearly every external sensor
       They play nice with all hardware (debatable)

       …

       These things are only true for part of their product range. Garmin would do themselves a favour by killing off the products that don’t support open standards and allow easy integration with external sensors and hardware.

12. Nice read. To my mind the things Garmin need to do to cement their position are:
    * Reduce their product range – fewer offerings at each price point
    * Support open standards for software and hardware integration
    * Provide better ongoing development and support for existing models.

    Beyond that I don’t see anyone beating Garmin on their home turf. If my forerunner died tomorrow the only question in my mind is can I justify the upgrade to a fenix or do I settle for another forerunner.

    On the other hand, I don’t see Garmin ever being an attractive option for someone who’s primary use case for a smartwatch is an extension to their smartphone.

13. What do I need in the watch (beside wrist HR) and why Garmin?

    Accurate pace (especially when doing speed work)
    Customizable fields
    Virtual Partner
    Recovery Time info
    Run/Walk or Preset Interval training
    Great iOS App
    Always On Watch face
    Serious Swimming app
    HR while swimming (very important)
    Kayaking is nice (but not a deal breaker)

    So you can see why I like Garmin.
    But I returned all the watches and getting Apple Watch 6

    Why? Screen too small on the 945, Sapphire has too much glare, 6x too heavy, 6 pro also a little too heavy. 6 and 6x too thick.

    The Garmin watch app is amazing and so is the iOS phone app (and web interface). But the Garmin Watch itself? Even with all the options, it’s still clunky.

    So I’m waiting another year in hopes they can make it thinner. 😞

14. Good article and it is always interesting to hear differing perspectives. I suspect the Garmin watch product line managers aren’t especially concerned about anything except eroding a bit of the AW expansion. At this point I would argue that both they and Apple need to deeply inspect their own thinking as they need to consider competitors. They are likely at a similar risk to blundering down an arbitrarily self-limiting path as they are to having a competitor suddenly seize market share. That being said, with the entire world experiencing hardship and stability concerns, staying the course is one way to limit uncertainty.

    Many of the suggestions contributors have made regarding AW enhancements are technically great, but I suspect Apple simply wouldn’t consider them because they are un-Apple-like. When the key decision makers in a highly successful organizations ask themselves what the next generation products should look like, the answers tend to increasingly resemble the past rather than anything radically different. It is a natural tendency as a product line that has made money is something you don’t want to sabotage by veering away from your base. Clearly there are decision makers in Apple’s watch org that simply don’t value the battery life feedback they are receiving.

    It will be interesting to see what kind of reaction Coros provokes. Many superior products languish purely because of brand loyalty to products with higher price tags. They would need to be consistently well performing, lower cost, and ship a substantial number of units to be a consistent threat.

    1. Well put.

       I suspect that Apple is more consumer-driven whereas I suspect Garmin is more tech-driven. Both look at multiple product evolutions/generation down the line and underpin whatever vision they have with significant R&D. I agree that worrying about ‘organisational change’ creates inertia

       battery life might be a red herring. it can’t really be improved that much, it’s really saving juice ‘somewhere else’…that’s the stark difference between apple and garmin.
       i criticise apple and garmin a fair amount…yet both have sold WAY more watches than I ever will !

15. I’m all in with Apple and my experience has been top notch. I have 2 Apple Watch 6 SS. One I wear as my all around watch, the other stays in the charger until I go on my workouts. I’m never without a watch, and the apple watch sensors and data are second to no-one. I ditched my Garmin Fenix 6x Pro after dealing with some of the most terrible data and software bugs. The HR sensor is trash and basically a random number generator most of the day.
    I’ve had good luck with Coros, but without cellular and music storage, can’t do it.

    I hate to admit it, because I HATE being stuck in an ecosystem, but our Apple products, for the most part, JUST WORK. From iPads, Phones, ATV, A Watches. For all of my family.

    1. thank you!
       I largely agree with the JUST WORK line. Garmin features also largely just work as well and from a sporty perspective they are more complex, with the caveat of accuracy that I will answer against your other comment.

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