Garmin Fenix E underwhelms -confusing product, little interest at too high a price.
Is Garmin Fenix E a dead man walking, and might Garmin’s new strategy of introducing these ‘essential’ models already show signs of failure?
Garmin’s Fenix and Instinct series have been massively successful over the years; some might even argue that Fenix 3 boosted the growth trajectory for the company, and it has never looked back until today.
why Fenix E, Instinct E?
The E models are notably cheaper than their siblings and represent a way for new or upgrading customers to hop onboard the respective brand bandwagon, grabbing some of the latest elements of Garmin’s impressive range of core features but missing out on others that might be considered niche or peripheral.
In the case of Fenix E, it cleverly becomes a financial stepping stone for Instinct owners who want a map and other things that come with Garmin’s premier brand. Perhaps that same owner can then justify a proper Fenix in 3 or 4 years?
There are other logical, compelling or engaging arguments you could imagine to justify Garmin’s decision further. You might even cite the iPhone 16e, ‘proving’ that even the mightily Apple follows a similar Essentials strategy.
Why it’s failing
Several pieces of evidence suggest things are not going well for the Fenix E, and, by extension, many of the same factors might also apply to Instinct E.
Big discounts Starting
7Marius7 shared a $350 discount on Reddit earlier this week. That’s a big discount on the $799 list price.
u/7marius7/
This promotion has strange timing, coinciding with the Instinct 3 launches. The discounted price effectively makes Fenix E the same price as the Instinct 3 AMOLED. Is it bad that Garmin cannibalises their sales, or is it a stroke of genius that they keep a customer in the Garmin stable, whichever they buy? Maybe it’s a way for Garmin to address recent lousy PR due to the lack of maps in Instinct?
Zero Sales, Zero Interest and Few Bugs
If you look at the Garmin forums, you can check the interest levels in each product line. The Fenix E forum has a mere 17 conversation topics. Has no one bought the product or is it easy to use with almost no bugs? Hmmm. Similarly, Instinct E has five conversation topics. These are incredibly low levels of interaction, suggesting no one is buying the product.
My Stats From this site
If I look at my stats, I find a different story.
At launch, there was very little interest in the Fenix E, that’s true. However, that is not the case now. My Fenix E content ranks reasonably well and has about 20-30% of the reads as similar content for Fenix 8.
If I look at what buy-links people have clicked on my site, there is a 3:2:1 ratio of Fenix 8:AMOLED: Fenix E: Fenix 8 solar. (I don’t know why Solar is so low)
An Anecdote
In a statistically insignificant sample of N=1, when I went out for a family birthday meal in January, we sat next to a similar family whose dad had just received the Fenix E for his birthday. Luckily, in real life, I am more tactful than I am on this site. He was into his tech and was quite excited that I could take him through what his watch could do. We had a really engaging and mutually interesting conversation for about 10 minutes… unfortunately, no one else present shared our tech happiness :-).
I don’t recall seeing any other Fenix e or Fenix 8 in the real world. I have probably seen them, but they look the same as the older ones from a distance. So the only other one I know existed was Fenix E!
Take Out
I guess Fenix E probably is not selling quite as well as Garmin hoped. However, I would bet that sales are trending upward. My rationale for saying that is that the initial buyers, like regular readers of this site, are tech-savvy and technophiles keen to get the latest and greatest gadget (like me!). The normies only start buying the products in the following months, many of whom will be driven to purchase by their knowledge of the Overall Fenix brand rather than the detailed knowledge of the features on, or missing from, Fenix E.
It’s too early to see if a similar argument might apply to Instinct E. That watch sits in a much more competitive price zone, perhaps with a higher percentage of lesser-informed buyers and buyers who like the unique Casio-like aesthetic – get the price right and Garmin could more easily tempt those people to buy a known brand like Instinct.
4 thoughts on “Garmin Fenix E – dead man walking?”
Garmin is running two strategies:
1. Premium and then increasingly discounted stock for 2 full generations.
2. Brand old hardware as new and sell it at a modest discount over the premium.
A fenix E is literally a rebrand of the Epix gen 2 hardware. Garmin has to stop selling the Epix range for the fenix E to make sense.
yep, the fenix range will make more sense in a year ago once the epix stock is cleared out. I doubt very much that garmin has done an epix production run for some time and never will again.
discounting has always been a thing at various times. the discounting on Fenix E seems quite soon after launch.
A possible explanation might be that the E lines are aimed at less wealthy world regions, regions where there has never been much stock of the now discounted premium models.
I’m not convinced of this explanation, but I would not completely rule it out. Main reason I think it’s implausible is that most less wealthy regions aren’t uniformly less wealthy, but polarized: potential buyers would tend to either not even be in the market for a discounted first gen Instinct or go straight to Marq.
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Garmin is running two strategies:
1. Premium and then increasingly discounted stock for 2 full generations.
2. Brand old hardware as new and sell it at a modest discount over the premium.
A fenix E is literally a rebrand of the Epix gen 2 hardware. Garmin has to stop selling the Epix range for the fenix E to make sense.
yep, the fenix range will make more sense in a year ago once the epix stock is cleared out. I doubt very much that garmin has done an epix production run for some time and never will again.
discounting has always been a thing at various times. the discounting on Fenix E seems quite soon after launch.
Make the fenix e and the epix gen basically the same watch the cheapest wins.
Big mistake from Garmin to release this with just an interface update, they basically should have waited until the fenix 9 and made an e version
A possible explanation might be that the E lines are aimed at less wealthy world regions, regions where there has never been much stock of the now discounted premium models.
I’m not convinced of this explanation, but I would not completely rule it out. Main reason I think it’s implausible is that most less wealthy regions aren’t uniformly less wealthy, but polarized: potential buyers would tend to either not even be in the market for a discounted first gen Instinct or go straight to Marq.