Garmin Enduro 3 – First Thoughts
TL;DR – A nice spec bump but it fails to justify an upgrade. Limited appeal to new customers with only a 51mm Solar MIP option. Garmin’s Enduro watches offer the maximum battery life for sports & navigation, representing the best Garmin for the larger-wristed Ultra crowd.
More: Enduro 3
What’s Going on Here?
Garmin has made a great watch even better. It’s listened to its customers, giving them new, deeper and relevant features at a lower price point.
For a 51mm Garmin watch, the Enduro 3 is as light as it can be at 63g. The screen technology has been tweaked to be a better solar generator and clearer to read. The optical heart rate sensor is upgraded to Garmin’s latest Gen 5 model.
The headline battery claim is 320 hours of proper GPS recording time with solar. Looking closer; the various battery performance claims without solar are similar to Enduro 2 but when Solar is available, the new panel gives some notable battery life increases.
Improved usability and sports-focussed features are added. Enduro 3 owners will love the new maps and navigation enhancements and perhaps the new strength coach.
Garmin Enduro 3 Battery Life
If battery life is the key consideration, choose Enduro 3 over the latest Fenix 8 Solar (51mm). However, somewhat oddly, when solar is not used Enduro 2 sometimes outlasts Enduro 3. Looking at claimed solar performance stats, Enduro 3 is superior but the magnitude of the benefits in each mode seems oddly inconsistent.
One takeout for those of you considering an upgrade is that if you do not anticipate being in good conditions for solar charging then the choice of Enduro 3 over Enduro 2 is unclear.
Garmin Enduro 3 Pricing
You can only get the 51mm model which costs $899. That’s $100 cheaper than the current price of Enduro 2 and $300 less than the Fenix 8 51mm solar.
Enduro 3 is thus priced more competitively than similar watches in the Garmin stable. That’s probably a reaction to competitive pricing from Suunto and Coros.
Garmin Enduro 3 Hardware
There’s an old-style 1.4″ MIP colour touchscreen display with an unchanged 280x280px resolution. It’s a hardened sapphire lens in a titanium shell plus the latest Gen 5 optical HR/ECG sensor on the rear. You do not get the latest mic/speaker nor buttons that the Fenix 8 gets, nor do you get diver certification, though when you’re halfway up a mountain I’m guessing that isn’t going to trouble you too much.
It weighs a respectable 63g and has 32Gb of space for maps and music.
Enduro 3 is a fraction of a millimetre thicker than Enduro 2 and Fenix 8 51mm.
Garmin Enduro 3 New Software Features
Here are the highlights for you. #NiceEnough
- Significant battery life increases [SOLAR]
- Strength Training Coach
- Many menu tweaks some copied from the Forerunner 965 others are new and…not great to look at.
- New watch faces and watch face editor
- More advanced navigation features including
- Better discovery of existing waypoints and routes
- New round-trip re-routing types
- Improved map zoom and layer functionality
- Improved notifications, new event countdown, focus modes
Garmin Enduro 3: Lots of Existing Features
If you are new to Garmin or upgrading from an old Forerunner/Fenix, expect a huge leap in features and presentation. Here’s a taste of what you can expect.
Performance Features
- Trail Run VO2 Max: Estimate VO2max by adjusting for varying trail and terrain conditions that affect running performance.
- Ultrarun Activity: Use the ultrarun activity with a rest timer, logging time spent at aid stations.
- Adventure Racing Activity: View key stats during a race while GPS is recorded but unavailable for viewing, adhering to adventure race rules.
- PacePro: Plan race-day strategy with GPS-based pace guidance for a selected course or distance.
- ClimbPro Feature: View real-time information on current and upcoming climbs on downloaded courses.
- Grade-Adjusted Pace: Get your equivalent running pace for the same effort on flat ground or when ascending.
- Visual Race Predictor: Estimate your pace for a 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon.
- Altitude and Heat Acclimation: Monitor how you deal with the current elevation or heat based on your health metrics.
- Performance Metrics: Gauge performance with advanced training metrics such as VO2 max, training load, and more.
- Automatic Rest Timer: Track time spent at aid stations or checkpoints during an ultrarun without pausing.
- Race Widget: Prepare for your next race with training tips, personalised daily suggested workouts, and more.
- Recovery Time: Based on recent training, know how long to recover before your next high-effort workout.
Find Your Way
- Outdoor Maps+: Subscribe to premium mapping content like satellite imagery and enhanced topographic maps, downloaded directly to your watch.
- SATIQ Technology: Achieve superior positioning accuracy with multi-band GPS while optimising battery life.
- Multicontinent Topo Maps: Use preloaded TopoActive maps from around the world to keep your explorations on track.
- NextFork Map Guide: Navigate with a glance to see the distance to the next intersection and the trail name.
- Courses with Turn-By-Turn Directions: Create or sync courses in the Garmin Connect app or third-party platforms for turn-by-turn directions.
- ABC Sensors: Navigate trails with an altimeter, barometer, and 3-axis electronic compass.
- Up Ahead Feature: Gain at-a-glance awareness of selected POI checkpoints ahead, such as aid stations, during a race.
- SkiView Maps: View run names and difficulty ratings for over 2,000 preloaded ski resorts worldwide.
Activity and Function
- Built-In Sports Apps: Use preloaded activity profiles for trail running, swimming, running, biking, hiking, rowing, skiing, golfing, surfing, indoor climbing, and more.
- Garmin Coach: Prepare for races, milestones, or fitness improvement with Garmin Coach adaptive or prebuilt training plans.
- Daily Suggested Workouts: View a week of daily suggested workouts, adapting after every run or ride.
- Animated Workouts: Follow animated workouts for cardio, strength, yoga, and Pilates directly on the watch screen.
- Backcountry Ski and Snowboard: Track ascent and descent data with cadence, stride length, and grade metrics.
- XC Ski Power: Measure exercise load when paired with an HRM-Pro Plus chest strap (sold separately).
- Surf Activity: Record waves surfed, maximum speed reached, distance travelled, and capture videos with Surfline Sessions™ technology.
- MTB Dynamics: Track detailed ride metrics with specialised Grit and Flow measurements.
Health Features
- Morning Report: Receive a customisable overview of sleep, training outlook, HRV status, weather, and more as soon as you wake up.
- HRV Status: Gain insights into overall health, recovery, and training performance during sleep.
- Wrist-Based Heart Rate: The watch constantly samples your heart rate to gauge effort during activities.
- Garmin ECG App: Record electrical signals controlling your heartbeats to detect atrial fibrillation (AFib).
- Pulse Ox Sensor: Monitor blood oxygen saturation while awake or asleep to understand altitude adaptation.
- Sleep Coach: Receive a sleep score and personalised coaching to determine needed sleep and improve sleep quality.
- Jet Lag Adviser: Minimise jet lag effects with guidance on light exposure, sleep schedule, and exercise.
- Body Battery Energy Monitoring: Track your energy levels to determine the best times for activity and rest.
- Stress Tracking: Monitor if you’re having a calm, balanced, or stressful day.
- Health Snapshot Feature: Log a 2-minute session to record key health stats and generate a report for your healthcare provider.
- Hydration Tracking: Log daily fluid intake to stay hydrated.
Connected Features
- Smart Notifications: Receive emails, texts, and alerts on your smartwatch when paired with an iPhone® or Android™ smartphone.
- Music: Download songs and playlists from Spotify, Deezer, or Amazon Music for phone-free listening.
- Garmin Pay Contactless Payments: Breeze through checkout lines or transit systems with participating providers.
- Safety and Tracking Features: Send a message with your live location if you feel unsafe or the watch detects an incident.
- Stocks Tracker: Track up to 50 of your favourite stocks directly from your wrist.
- Connect IQ Store: Add watch faces, data fields, and apps from your paired smartphone.
- Power Manager: Monitor how various settings and sensors impact battery life.
- Garmin Connect App: Access health and fitness information, connect with friends, and more.
- Garmin Messenger App: Communicate via two-way text messaging on your wrist.
Garmin Enduro 3 Alternatives
Oddly the Apple Watch Ultra is not an alternative. Despite the name, it’s not a serious ultra Watch.
Suunto RACE, RACE S, Suunto Vertical, Garmin Fenix 7 Pro Solar, Garmin Fenix 8 Solar, and Polar Grit X2 Pro might all be worth a look as might the Coros Pace 3 or Vertix 2/2S. Those watches all do maps and good battery life to varying degrees of awesomeness although, ironically, UTMB 2023 was won by someone with a Wahoo RIVAL (usually on sale at $100) – you couldn’t make it up! 2024’s winner looks to have worn a Garmin, TBC.
Comparsion: Garmin’s Official Enduro 2 vs enduro 3 vs Fenix 8 solar comparison
Buy Garmin Enduro 3: Price and Availability
You should be able to get your hands on Enduro 3 immediately, the Solar Fenix 8 models have low initial availability. These links should click through to a choice of retailers in your region and at the latest local prices:
- Garmin Enduro 3 – $899, £769
- Garmin Fenix E AMOLED $799
- Garmin Epix Gen 2 Pro – other sizes available – typically starts around $875 ($900 on Garmin.com)
- Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED – starts at $1000
Take Out: Garmin Enduro 3
This is a great endurance watch. In many ways, it’s Garmin’s best overall running watch even though it’s been specifically designed as a durable ultra watch. Its maps and battery life are second to none, its sports features exceed in number those of every other watch vendor, and its trail-specific features are impressive.
It’s been a couple of years since Enduro 2, thus the latest features and hardware added to Enduro 3 make it a decent and thought-through upgrade. Contrast with the simultaneous Fenix 8 and Fenix E launches where there is more than a whiff of corporate avarice than customer focus.
Enduro 3 is hard to criticise. It’s easy to say Garmin watches are too expensive when set against Coros, Apple, Suunto, Polar and others, but Garmin has lowered the price and arguably still justifies its premium. Perhaps the only other remaining criticism would be the lack of smaller sizes.
Details/buy: Enduro 3
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From this generation, the only one I’d be interested in would indeed be the Enduro 3. But until they have LTE, I’ll probably keep my F7X (original, not Pro). Or, at least, wait another generation so that the new UI is not “first-gen” anymore (re. bugs).
me too
what battery hit would you take to get lte
I’d be happy to pay even the same as music, for example, while LTE is activated. As long as deactivated cost is less than 1-2% increase in battery consumption.
Activated: Happy to lose 30% of the battery per day if left on permanently (realistically what it’ll be). I’ll only ever have it turned on whilst running, so the loss during that time is tolerable.
Deactivated: 0%. No reason why the radio should draw power with the circuit turned off.
The radio would eat into the mass and volume budget of the battery, so even at 0% it would still diminish runtime.
But the bigger issue is still that Garmin would have trouble building an attractive user experience around a built-in phone. The 945 LTE sure
did not convince everybody. It makes sense for them to start building that experience through a Bluetooth uplink first and only start throwing runtime under the bus once they are confident they have something that won’t disappoint.
I read today that the fenix 7 / Epix / enduro 2 and the fenix 8 / enduro 3 are all using the same NXP I.MX RT500 processor. And that this same processor is used by Coros and Suunto as well. Those devices also all use the same GNSS chip.
I suspect some of the battery claim differences between the Enduro 2 and Enduro 3 are due to the testing performed on the firmware version at the time of the testing. The claims are based on the original release firmware or more likely a beta prior to release. Garmin never goes back and revised for each revision but empirically there are some changes for good and ill with each revision.
The only real difference is the optical sensor. It’s possible the new elevate sensor uses a bit more power or maybe not?
In other words, I suspect that if you tested a tranche of brand new enduro 2s with the latest firmware against a new enduro 3s then I bet the average battery consumption at any given setting (especially with the oHR off) is likely identical within manufacturing tolerances.
Those 10% differences in both directions between GPS and multiband seem like phantom differences due to testing a different firmware generation. The max battery difference is super weird because it is GPS only with all external sensors, Bluetooth, music, oHR, map, and backlight all disabled plus display timeout on the MIP display. That shouldn’t be different unless the firmware is just 20% less efficient now or there was some repeatability problem with that test. Given all the powered-on hardware is the same at that point I think it illustrates the variance in range performance you can see with different firmware generations.
interesting, ty
certainly a plausible explanation
Why do they always had some ugly color to the watch. Just make it black. I hate the yellow. They do the same thing to the fenix line. You are stuck with the ugly silver unless you upgrade to higher level watch. I feel like they miss their audience sometimes. I imagine a high end garmin watch is for an athlete who also works a business environment job. When I am in a suit at a meeting, I don’t want a neon yellow watch. Don’t add any color to the base model, just make it black!
Fenix 8 would have been great but the ridiculous price kills it. I probably would have bit on an enduro, but just don’t like that yellow. I guess I wait for the 975, hopefully that is a lighter fenix 8 in all black.
yup.
dont forget the 965 has a partrly-titanium case too…it just LOOKS like plastic ;-). 975 should be same
“ Enduro 3 is hard to criticise. It’s easy to say Garmin watches are too expensive when set against Coros, Apple, Suunto, Polar and others, but Garmin has lowered the price and arguably still justifies its premium. Perhaps the only other remaining criticism would be the lack of smaller sizes.”
And the third is the compulsary sapphire. A new period started after Fenix 6 Pro series and either you are tortures with sapphire, with a solar layer covering the whole display or with both. As with modern eyeglasses you get the best vision minimizing the number of fancy layers.
Sometimes I am laughing and murmuring to myself, how heavily people had been worrying about that Garmin would not launch any MIP based outdoors watches, but they should have been praying to Lord about the fear they would not get any MIP with Gorilla glass but without solar layer on it. 🙂
I wonder when the 975 will be released and if it will come with the Gen 5 optical HR/ECG sensor? I have a heart condition so I’d like my next upgrade to have that. Also, elevation accuracy on my 945 has been shocking. Would be great to know if enduro is better.
mid year 2025 i would have thought for 975.
yes its likely to have elevate 5
however that only has short duration ecg. check out fourth frontier x2 for in-exercise heart strain monitoring https://the5krunner.com/FourthFrontierX2
that MIGHT be the sort of thing that ELEVATE 6 (six) could do at some point in the future…maybe…perhaps. but ohr would be unlikely to have the same accuracy for as long a timeframe