Tech bloggers just love to talk about Apple Watch, versus Wear OS, versus Samsung.  If you listen to them you’d never about Garmin with their various fitness trackers based on their in-house Garmin OS. Strangely, you hardly hear about them, but as I was preparing for the Mammoth March, it became clear that my beloved Pixel Watch would not cut it on a 8 hour 20 mile hike. That is why I looked at Garmin’s line for a replacement and found the excellent Fenix 7x Sapphire Solar.

One of the reasons I bought this smartwatch was its battery life. The advertised life of this watch is 28 days with typical use AND if you are on trail and have a ton of sun on the trail, the Solar Cell in it can extend the battery life from 28 to 35 days!  For all the watch can do, this is incredible.

Many of the reasons this has such an excellent battery life is it’s Sunlight-visible, transreflective, memory-in-pixel display. This is similar to an e-ink display where it only uses power when it is updating the screen.  Of course the solar cell helps with this as well, but no smartwatch that can do all of what the Fenix 7x can do has a battery life as close. Now that the new versions of the Fenix is out, you have the option for the mip display in the 8x and in the 8 you can have an AMOLED display as Garmin’s Epix line has been phased into the Fenix line of watches. Even with the Fenix 8, you will still get better battery life than ANY other smartwatch currently on the market, including the Apple Watch and any WearOS watch.  Garmin watches are that good at managing battery usage.

Another huge reason I wanted this is the GPS features are extremely accurate as it supports multiband GPS.  When you are walking in your neighborhood when you Zoom in you can tell if you crossed the street or looking at a trail you can see you move from one side of the trail to another.  It’s that accurate.  Since Garmin is a GPS company, this is to be expected but you also have maps on the watch display to and can use it to navigate when on a hike, run or bike ride.  I have frequently uploaded trails from All Trails into the watch and I was able to track and navigate my entire hike without needing to look at my phone.  This is phenomenal. I will say it would be nicer and easier if I was able to use the All Trails app to upload trails directly but it’s not difficult to do it from a browser before you hit the trail head so it’s a minor quibble.

Garmin has also added features like contactless payment with Garmin Pay. Garmin Pay has worked anywhere I have used Google Pay. You can add pretty much any card to it just like with the others.  This is one feature I loved with my Pixel Watch that I was afraid I may have to give up but I was pleasantly surprised when it’s worked flawlessly everywhere I used Google Pay.

Garmin can track exercises that are not cardio which is something I LOVE about it. I use it to track both my fitness bootcamp I do at my church and when I do strength training at the gym. It TRIES to count reps and sometimes gets them right but between sets it gives you the opportunity to adjust the rep count as well as add or adjust the weight.  It also will identify what muscle groups you worked and actually does a good job at this as I rarely will input the actual exercise I’ve done. At bootcamp it recognized when I did Jumping Jacks and counted them fairly accurately. Not perfect but good enough. If you want, you can spend time prior to hitting the gym and put what exercises you want into the app on your phone or you can select the workout from many Garmin provides but in the gym for strength training I select free strength training which does not require me to select what machine I am on and when at bootcamp since it’s primarily a HIIT exercise set (HIIT=High Intensity Interval Training)  I do that’s the mode I use.  Technically we do Tabata which is 20 seconds of high intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest and you repeat this for multiple sets with the assistance of a music track. However it IS HIIT so this mode works great for Tabata workouts. You can get very detailed with your workouts if you’d like but the free modes are what works for me and I am very happy with it.

There are many other things that the Fenix can do that I don’t use. If you are a golfer, then Garmin has you covered as well. I have not tested this as I am not a golfer but it can even load courses into it so you can get the layout of the hole on the watch itself as well keep score. Again, I am not  into golf but if you are this is pretty cool.

The Fenix 7X Solar Sapphire comes with a silicone band which if you are like me you may not like.  With many silicone bands I tend to get a rash underneath the band and the Garmin band is much less reactive than others. However, it’s really easy to swap bands and I was able to find a Garmin compatible band similar to the Milanese bands on the Apple Watch for less than 20 bucks. This band is $18.99 and while it’s a bit fiddly to get on with the battery life I only have  to take it off and on when I take a shower so I can wash where the watch sits. I wish  all smart watch companies would provide band choices or at least one silicone and one none silicone band in the box with the watch. This would be really nice because the standard silicone rubber just isn’t great for everyone. At the very least make SKUs with a leather or metal option.

The durability of this watch is just awesome.  I wore it on the Mammoth March, in the gym, on many training hikes and it’s a hiker favorite with many thru hikers using it on the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. Garmin watches have withstood abuse that the Pixel Watch can’t. The only watch as durable is the Apple Watch Ultra which you HAVE to use with a iPhone and does not come close to the battery life of the Fenix 7X. If you are a hiker this is the best watch to use in my opinion just because Garmin KNOWS how to make GPS devices and has been in the game for far longer than Apple or Google.  If you want a watch for hiking in the woods like I did…go with a Garmin.

Garmin DOES have apps and custom watch faces as well. While not as developed as Apple Watch or WearOS there’s enough for me to be satisfied with. There’s a Bible app, there’s Komoot for hiking and many others. I’ve been satisfied with this as the main features are so good I don’t need to add many other apps to it to make it as useful as my Pixel Watch. If you are dependent on certain apps for your Apple Watch or WearOS watch then this may be a sticking point. However, for me I am very happy with the app support it has. Your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

While the Garmin 7x Sapphire Solar is expensive, it’s worth every dollar depending on your use case. If you want something to track your daily workout it can work but at it’s cost you may be better served with a Wear OS watch or Apple Watch if you are an iOS user. If you are going to go on a trail for hours or on a ultra run or a long bike ride then this is the watch for you that will last your whole hike, walk, run or ride and the other features are just the cherry on the top. Gamin doesn’t get enough respect in the wearable market and I am hear to tell you it should.

 

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