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Garmin Watches – 3 Things I’d Add Tomorrow

On a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 is ‘every possible feature’, Garmin’s top-end watches are somewhere around 93. They’re pretty much running out of stuff to add, or at least easy stuff to add.

Here are 3 (edit, 4!) features I would like to see them add in 2022

Pin Page

The Wahoo Rival triathlon watch already has Pin Page and I would use it tomorrow if Garmin added it to my shiny new Forerunner 955 Solar.

How it works:

You Mark one of your workout screens/pages as the Pin Page in your sports profile.

When you flick through other pages during your workout you don’t need to flick back to your main screen. After 5 seconds, or so, you are automatically returned to the pin page.

In some ways, it’s similar to the lap screen.

Metrics with no Units (and larger fonts)

I could have sworn that the Wahoo Rival had the option to hide the units of measure in data fields and I was going to show you a picture of that. I can’t seem to find it! If Garmin let me selectively hide the units of measure I would use that tomorrow.

Probably less than one-quarter of the available space for a data metric on each cell of my Forerunner 955’s display is used to display the number, the rest of the space ‘s either ‘blank space’ or the units of measure.

Wouldn’t it be cool to display your favourite metric with no units of measure, just to make it more readable – everyone over 40 is now shouting “Yes!” and everyone else has a puzzled look on their face and wonder why everyone doesn’t have 12 metrics per screen like they do.

How it works: In Garmin Connect then would be a toggle control next to each unit of measure as you curate the screens in your sport profile. That toggle would turn the units of measure off/on and if the units of measure is disabled for any data field then the font is enlarged to take up more of the available space.

Auto Sprint Laps

The Suunto 9 Peak and other Suunto watches already have the Auto Sprint feature which can be added as a Suunto Plus ‘app’. This is another feature I would use tomorrow if Garmin added it.

How it works: This is a feature that works behind the scenes to record an extra series of laps. These laps are triggered and ended when you enter hard effort zones…so it might be power/pace level 4 or above. You can then see your true effort periods in Garmin Connect rather than the ones that may or may not coincide with your manual lap presses or autolaps. There would need to be some logic added to determine when to trigger and end recording plus what to do when you progress to a harder level of effort.

This kind of feature is also available in some analytic apps that use your Garmin workout but Garmin could finesse the implementation to also pop up sprint laps as they happen or in the workout summary on your watch.

Rapid Zone Lock

The Polar Vantage V2 and other Polar watches have Zone Lock which works on any kind of zone be it power, HR, speed or pace. Again I would use this tomorrow on Garmin if it was added in such an accessible way.

How it works:

You have a priority page where the first data metric indicates if the watch should use the zones from power, speed, pace or HR. So if the first data field is current pace then pace zones can be locked from that page.

When the priority page is active, a key press combination enables or disables zone lock and whichever zone you are currently working at is the one that is locked. If you subsequently speed up or slow down to a different zone you are appropriately alerted.

(Garmin has Zone alerts which require multiple key presses to access and change)

Opinion

I see a lot of new features as I review sports watches for this site. In truth, I don’t use most of the features once the review is written. I would genuinely use these 3 features if Garmin introduced them and I’m surprised that Garmin hasn’t yet added them.

Another interesting feature that many people might like but which I wouldn’t personally use is Suunto’s Live Snap-to-Route. When you follow a course the distances from the course are used to determine your progress rather than the distance from GPS – this would help you get an exact distance in urban marathons where GPS reception is tricky…or you could use a footpod like Stryd. Garmin’s PacePro is similar to this.

What feature do you want on your Garmin?

snap t o route