Garmin 7

I've been sleep tracking with my Garmin Fenix 7 for about 18 months, and to me it seems bang on. The HRV stat is particularly good - a decline over about a week predicted the onset of flu symptoms a couple months ago, for example. Body battery is also a really useful feedback measurement. Sleep onset and wake times are right; REM seems right; and deep/shallow measurement at least correlates with how I feel.

From the paper: > There are limitations to consider in the interpretation of these results. First, devices were worn for one night. That is odd. What I noticed is that my Garmin watch may be wrong at times, but overall provides a fairly good and very useful assessment, especially comparatively day vs day and overall for trends . In addition it takes a bunch of time for the watch to work out enough data to tune the algorithms for a particular person: some UI bits explicitly call out that for accurate results the watch should be worn continuously for ~2 weeks. I've now been wearing this particular one (Fenix 7) for 6 months, a serious upgrade from a Forerunner 735xt continuously worn for 5 years. 95% of the time the watch is stupidly accurate in ways it has no business being as a simple wrist-worn set of sensors.

2nd hand Garmin or Apple Watch. These things are basically being thrown away and watches like a Gen 6 AW or a Fenix 5 can be found for so little money and they work very well even today if you only care about sports tracking. I personally cannot stand Apple for sports, which is why I have a AW Ultra 1 AND a Fenix 7 lol. Got both 2nd hand for ~30% of their MSRP. Personally something like a 2nd hand Garmin Forerunner 55 with a chest based HR monitor is for me the best budget setup. But when shopping second hand you, use what you can find. I often see great deals on things like the Garmin instinct series. 2 years ago I got a Fenix 5 for 180 and it was amazing for me. Just turn off all the "smart" features.

My Fenix 7 has ~12 days of life, while using it every day for fitness tracking, maps, the occasional LED flashlight, etc. It also is at least IME much more of a beast than an (admittedly older gen) Ultra. I charge before I leave, then spend a week or more living out of backpack and sleeping on the ground. I very much want to go back to Apple Watch but Garmin battery life and durability is just so much better for my use case.

I switched from Apple Watch to a Garmin Fenix 7, for much longer battery life (advertised as ~14 days, in practice 10-12), durability (they're very tough), better biometrics, and stuff like built-in maps/GPS (I camp/hike/hunt/etc a lot). I just didn't use any watchOS features, and I use an MVNO that doesn't support sim cloning so cellular's a wash. In short even with reduced features I am considering just going back to an old analog Timex Explorer and using a dedicated GPS device, because even the more limited feature set of the Garmin seems like I'm barely using what it's capable of.

> hold a charge for several days That would be an understatement, are you running/cycling a lot outside, or is it a smaller model (thus small battery because physics)? Mine (Fenix 7) holds charge for 15 days minimum and that's with tracking workouts 3-5x/week (no GPS though, winter so I treadmill for runs). On a couple of months where I didn't do sports it held up 25-30 days. I have SpO2 tracking disabled because it's quite battery intensive and the only use for it would be high altitude acclimation, although I must admit I looked at it during my "stop smoking" process.

I had the fenix 7 and I liked the sleep tracking. Because the garmin can function without requiring and acount/online nonsense, it does the sleep analysis and recommendations on the watch.

Buttons. Buttons. Buttons. Buttons. Buttons. And Battery Life. I just got a Garmin Fenix 7, and _finally_, a smart-watch with buttons that are reasonably well-thought out (and a battery that lasts longer than one week). But seriously: the interface design that goes into "up, down, ok, back, start" and the gestures of "press, hold, hold2" necessitate (and enable) a whole different UX than smearing react javascript components onto a 30mm touch screen with a (checks specs) 1 week battery life. There are _real_ advantages to designing a stateful / navigable interface, and years-long battery life makes it Not a Toy.

I tried for years, didn't work for me (Apple Watch 2). I mow have a Garmin Fenix 7 which lasts 18 days without recharge, buy has much more limited features (which is fine for me).

Garmin Fenix 7 (and potentially Garmin Fenix 8 Solar) are reasonably button-y and kindof work "right" from a pebble fan. The biggest miss for most smartwatches is "buttons", "battery life" and "sunlight-readable screen". Buttons work without sight, buttons work in the shower (next track, volume, scrolling a notification, declining a phone call, stopping a timer), buttons can be "memorized", you can navigate buttons while riding a bike, and "button-centric" means you're focused on _only the essential_ capabilities. Ok. Next/Prev. Cancel/Back. Long-Press for shortcuts or confirmations. The discipline of designing for small, focused, essential interactions is so much better (when done well) than attempting to stab react components shifting around on your wrist or swiping in random directions on a slow-to-respond screen. Charging "every other week" means I can go on a weeks vacation, charge the watch before going, and not need to worry about or bring another charger. Sunlight-readable (non-lighted, non-distracting) screen means I can glance down and see the current time [with no wrist movement], and I don't have a bright light turning on and off (most of the time). The biggest miss for the Fenix compared to Pebble is/was "The Timeline" from Pebble. On the home screen, you could basically scroll through your upcoming calendar events to kindof keep you on track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYZoWS0QxI8 The biggest opportunity for "Pebble2.0" is the hybrid button/scroll f…

Not OP but I’ve used Garmin’s for about 15 years and over 10k running miles. I don’t like or use non-fitness related smart watch features, so I can’t speak to those or recommend a good "smart watch that also does fitness". If you want top of the line with more data than you’ll know what to do with and a ton of fitness activity tracking beyond running, the Epix2, Fenix 7, or Forerunner 965 (I have the Epix2). A step down but still great is the Forerunner 265. The feature they all have and I think has been the most useful is the Training Readiness. It looks at a bunch of different metrics, both current (your HRV, last workout performance, sleep, stress) and chronic (your weekly and monthly total exercise amount, types of running, etc) and advises you on how hard you should train and suggests a running activity for the day. It is basically a digital running coach/personal trainer that makes sure you are getting a good mix between tempo runs, long runs, easy runs, etc. and makes sure you aren’t overtraining or if a bad day means to switch to a light workout. I normally use it loosely to inform my choices but I’ve tried using its daily training plans exclusively and it was very good at keeping me progressing. Hopefully this helps.