Garmin really is setting a standard for modern engineering. Hard to think of another company that still has solid engineering for both consumer and industrial applications.
I have a Garmin "smart" watch (with every app notification etc disabled) and I love the fact that I can do almost two weeks of exercises (ride, walk, gym) without needing to charge it. The bike computers are also solid. But sadly the UX of the software on these leaves a bunch to be desired, and I've been bitten by many software and firmware bugs in the last years... Including months for which HRM would randomly and persistently drop it's value from say whatever the real value (say 145 for argument sake) to 80.
I know all of the wrist watches experience this issue, but this was extreme like drop from 145->80 for like 60+ min then rapidly shopt back up. Not like a small couple min blip.
This was a near the top end model at the time, and after complaining Garmin support owned up that this was a firmware bug impact all sensors of that generation and it would take 2+ months to fix (took like 5).
But they did send me a HRM for free and I've been using that. So I am grateful that and using it since. But for short rides (like 90 min or less) I don't always remember to think to bring the HRM.
Prior to that I had two lower end Garmin watches, and despite having theoretically lower end HR sensors they did not experience such bugs or drop outs (an unexpected blip every once in a while).
But I think the main point still stands, their software/firmware/UX has not moved in relation with the hardware. Next time I'm in the market I will be consider all the options. Feels like Coros and others have come a long way.
Prob the biggest thing keeping me in their ecosystem is multi sport (variations of bike riding types -- I do all), hiking, strength training, erg, winter sports. But even there the list of strength exercises has not been updated in like a decade.
Look at coros. Currently wearing Nomad - getting around a month of runtime on a charge WITH notifications enabled (not too many tho, only important ones). And UX is great too imho. (Not affiliated, just a happy customer)
Even the hardware is kind of stupid. They push you into basically buying a separate gps device for each and every hobby you do. It would be nice if there was one gps device that could be a bike computer, exercise watch, golf gps, etc etc. Yes, some devices have multisport mode but usually feature locked compared to the more sport specific device, and for no good reason really. I guess that would prevent them from selling you a $600 gps half a dozen times so that is why it isn’t done.
You can just strap the watch to the handlebars, no?
There’s also a mode where you can extend the display from your watch to a bike computer, for instances where you’re doing a multisport activity (or just want to record on a single device).
The one bright side is that when I switched from Apple Watch to Garmin I couldn’t stand the notifications UX. It finally got me to turn off watch notifications and I feel much freer.
