Garmin Connect+ | enshittification personified 💲 Garmin: "Let me just raise the price of those $1,000 watches for you without adding many meaningful features." Garmin: "Oops, your $800 watch is two years old. No new features for you. Sorry!" (not sorry). Garmin: "Thank you for your loyalty and multiple super-expensive purchases over the years. Can we have more money from you for a monthly subscription, please? Pretty please?" Yes, folks, it's finally happened. Garmin has taken the first steps to piss off huge numbers of people by charging a subscription for new premium features. We all know this will only end one way, and that way is South. Garmin will progressively increase the number of new and modified features behind the new paywall. That said, the change doesn't sound too bad as of today. Everything you've currently got for free stays free. The new Garmin Connect+ adds new stuff or, at least, existing stuff that has been re-imagined and reconfigured. Let's dig into the details, starting with an overview. Warning: Rules banning swearing have been removed for comments below. Fill your boots. Vent your anger. Share your rage. Pretend you're going to switch to Coros. What's New - Overview The new features in Connect+ include Garmin Active Intelligence, which provides daily, post-workout, and end-of-day summaries. Next is the Live Activity View, which allows us to follow indoor workouts on the Garmin Connect app, but only if you have a Garmin watch/bike computer. Then, the new Customizable Performance Dashboards will expand on the tile-based changes to the dashboard we had in 2024, and we can create detailed charts and performance-based views but only on the desktop version of Garmin Connect. Finally, some feature-padding with additional Training Guidance: Premium users get extra articles and videos for training support. Here's an overview to focus the mind on what you miss out on. Features Free Garmin Connect Premium Garmin Connect+ Details of every tracked activity ✅ ✅ Health stats ✅ ✅ Performance metrics ✅ ✅ Garmin Coach training plans ✅ ✅ Exclusive coaching guidance for Garmin Coach training plans ❌ ✅ Challenges/badges ✅ ✅ Exclusive badge challenges ❌ ✅ Animated exercises and workout database ✅ ✅ Build and download courses for rides and runs ✅ ✅ LiveTrack ✅ ✅ LiveTrack2 enhancements ❌ ✅ Active Intelligence ❌ ✅ Performance dashboard ❌ ✅ Live activity ❌ ✅ That will be $6.99/mo or $69.99/year. #Bargain. Oh. $6.99 a month...I thought that was $6.99 a year #NotABargain. More: A Thoughtful discussion of Where Garmin will take Connect+ Features How to set up & sign up You can sign up at garmin.com (link) or in the settings on the Connect App after you update to the latest version, though the app update didn't work for me. One quirk I noticed is that you have no choice but to give Garmin your address and phone number, which they appear to intend to store, rather than simply using it for payment authentication. AI Insights - these arrive periodically throughout the day. Garmin must assume you will regularly check back. I think not. If you dismiss one, another does not appear. If you flag the Insight as uninteresting, it's still there 30 minutes later. My welcome to AI insights was the knowledge that I was halfway through my daily steps. Yep, the AI is so clever to realise that I did a high-end multi-sport PR performance 4 days ago. I own a top-end triathlon watch and a top-end cycling computer, and now I'm interested in steps. LOL. C'mon Garmin, get on the program; you're meant to train the AI model before releasing it to me to train it for you. Oh, wait a minute, does that sound like your expectation of customer testing of new Garmin software releases? I think so. [gallery size="medium" ids="98064,98066,98065"] Live activities - To be fair, this is a much-requested feature, although perhaps not according to the demographic of the people who read this blog. For anyone who predominantly exercises in conjunction with their phone, recording and viewing workouts on the Phone is a definite nice-to-have. Unfortunately, much of this demographic would prefer to buy a Garmin heart rate monitor and then have the Connect app do the recording. That's impossible; you still need a Garmin watch to initiate the feature. Why? A: Garmin sells watches; it's their job. Many gym goers should be pleased by the additions to Connect+. They can edit and follow sets much more easily via Connect+ using a new Live Edit feature, and exercise animations are available on the app in a much larger format than those on the watch. Turning to the Live Track Enhancements, these shouldn't be a paid-for feature. It's great to have a personalised Live Track Profile Page and to be able to invite people to follow you by SMS, but that should be part of the free service. That's just my 2c. Training Guidance has also been added, but this appears for now to be a content library of videos and articles rather than changes to the existing coaching and workout recommendations. This hardly seems worth paying for by anyone possessing a hand and the ability to use Google. Still, I guess it's handy (pun intended) to have access to a library of curated training resources in one place. Premium Badges and Challenges will annoy many people who love following Garmin challenges. There are communities built around Badge Accumulation, which gets quite competitive! The more affluent, more competitive amongst you can now buy access to badges that others cannot; it seems you also have access to badges outside of your default region, whereas others do not. Inclusive? I think not. It's just a fact that this will disproportionately exclude minorities from community-like events. That said, some older badges were only available based on ownership of Tacx and certain watches, and a few people are already bemoaning this restriction. Even worse, subscribers get a multiplier effect applied to their badge point meaning you get disproportionate rewards just because you paid. Performance Dashboard - this is online only, and you can access it here https://connect.garmin.com/modern/performance-dashboard. I liked where Garmin was going last year with the web dashboard but disliked its aesthetics on the Connect app. The online dashboard works by offering a choice of four templates, which can then be personalised. The reconfiguration process was convoluted, but I ended up with something like this. [caption id="attachment_98063" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Basically I moved the tiles around and changed the default timespan on each.[/caption] But this is a plain old dashboard, right? It's not a 'performance' dashboard by a long chalk. What's new here, and why must I pay for it? These are very, very, very (did I say VERY?) basic charts, most of which you can get on thousands of apps for free. It's all the same-old, same-old reporting and analysis. Where can I get genuine insights, exceptions and knowledge from my data with this tool? (Perhaps in the AI bit, but not here). Thoughts Garmin AI is a brilliant name, I must say. Apple went for AI=Apple Intelligence and Garmin for AI=Active Intelligence. It's a clever play on letters and words in both cases. Still, unfortunately, in both cases, the meaning of Garmin and Apple's "AI" brand will, for sure, be diluted by the universal acceptance of 8 billion people that AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. #Shrug #Marketing #CommonSense. This stuff seems worthless to me. Sorry, I'll rephrase that. Mostly worthless. Over on some of the Whoop forums, various band owners bemoan Whoop Coach's AI insights. But I can tell you it's way better than what Garmin has done here. Garmin pushes periodic, pre-canned exceptions and correlations at you when it wants to. Whoop, for example, integrates conversational AI that sits on top of your data and its extensive sports science knowledge - you ask for, and get, pertinent and intelligent responses tailored to you - Whoop released that 18 months ago. Yikes Garmin. You're WAY behind the curve. The paid-for badges and challenges are a pathetic and non-inclusive part of the feature. I would have no issue if new badges/challenges were available to all, not done this way. "Live track enhancements" should be renamed "Slightly Improved Live Track Features, Plugging Essential Missing Gaps." The new "Training Guidance" section should be renamed "YouTube and a bit of Googling." And that's about it. Final Thought Pants. Correction: Expensive pants. Plus, there are nice features for strength training and AI that might be good in a year or so. Q: Do you think the community (Reddit) will love this? I suspect not. Q: Do you think most of the sports media will love this? I suspect so. Thankfully, I have no links to Garmin and can say what I think. Rant Over: If you would like a more sober and intelligent assessment, try this post I wrote today, speculating on the likely motivations behind each new area that has found itself behind the paywall. For example, this could signal a move to provide Peloton-like video services or the company itself.
