Garmin is the perfect solution if you want a smart watch with a gps that takes 5mins to possibly sync 50% of the time and a touchscreen-only interface that doesn’t work if it gets wet or say sweaty. Ie during most of the activities it’s supposedly designed for.
When I got a garmin smartwatch I was astounded by how poor the basic ux is in almost every single way. If I’m swimming, how do I stop my work out? The touchscreen doesn’t work because it’s wet. I have to do some sort of double click of the button. No that’s pause. Maybe triple click - no that didn’t do anything. Maybe hold the button? Now it wants to delete my whole workout.
And the GPS sync thing amazes me. I put up with this problem when I was using garmin GPSs for accurate time sync for servers back in the 1990s, but 25+ years later for them not to have figured it out when literally every other GPS device does it just fine completely blows my mind. Apple watch? I want to go for a walk/run/whatever I hit go. If I move during the 3-2-1 countdown nbd it figures it out. Garmin I want to do it I hit go, it tries to sync the sattelites. If I move during this process it starts from scratch. Sometimes the sync takes 30 seconds or so. Annoying but not impossible to live with. Most of the time however the sync takes 30seconds or so and just fails. Also annoying but whatever. Some of the time however the sync takes a few minutes and then fails. And if I move at all during this, it gives me a message saying it’s going to have to start again and starts from scratch.
And to add insult to injury the thing has a custom charging plug with the socket on the back of the watch. It has a ridge and two spikes that physically press into my wrist making it actually painful to wear. So bad.
Opposite experience here. Went from Apple Watch to Garmin, couldn't be happier. Never had an issue with the charging point chafing, it is recessed and no problem. Buttons to start/stop/pause/resume activity work as expected, so much better than trying to swipe and tap the Apple Watch screen especially in wet conditions. GPS sync never been an issue for me, you can start an activity before it syncs and it figures it out.
> GPS sync never been an issue for me, you can start an activity before it syncs and it figures it out.
I’ve had a lot of issues with this, like going running 15 km and it registers only the last 10 km. My workflow now is to put the watch on the balcony while it finds the satellites, and then go out when it’s done.
Never had this happen to me. Admittedly I am in a very rural area, and while I do sometimes get some gps points that are "off" it's generally very fast and accurate. Basically all the errors I've personally run into fall into what I'd consider acceptable margin of error.
Even in heavy tree cover on a remote island for a hike last year. It (Garmin Instinct 2X) was incredibly accurate.
If the watch was recently synced with the app to get current GPS ephemrides, it gets the lock within seconds. Otherwise, it may take much longer just like any other GPS device with outdated ephemerides.
Neither of your two statements coincides with my experience at all.
My garmin watch needed to be synced every time and it was always slow, and my garmin GPS on my motorcycle was the same. For example I once remember it trying and failing and eventually succeeding to sync during my walk from the tube through the parks to work one morning and then trying and failing and staying failed during my walk from work to the tube that evening. I was wearing the watch the entire day, so there was no possibility of it losing lock or whatever other than the obvious, which is it is just a really terrible device. Before I ditched it entirely I totally gave up on any gps functionality - it just was too high friction for too little payoff.
Secondly literally no other GPS device that I own has a noticeable “sync” or “lock” at all. They all use reasonable heuristics to get started and then improve their resolution as they go. If they ever lose GPS lock I don’t know about it except maybe a “map glitch” where I seem temporarily to be in the middle of a building instead of the street outside or whatever. The garmin takes ages, frequently fails to sync and sometimes also loses GPS lock while I’m doing an activity, and when it does that it ditches progress and pukes in the most inconvenient way possible.
I’m not in the middle of nowhere and there are no tall buildings near me. I am in London in zone 2 so there is exceptional coverage as you would expect.
Which Garmin to you have? This isn't my experience. And you have option to buy Garmin watches with actual buttons, I agree the touch-screen only are useless.
Garmin vivoactive 5 I think. It’s in the bottom of a drawer of shame somewhere. Possibly the worst consumer gadget purchase I have ever made which is quite some achievement.
I've been using Fenix 5 and then Fenix 7 for many years now and I don't recognize any of the points you're making. I might agree on the awful charging port, but that's fixed by getting one of the cheap charging "pads" from Amazon.
What garmin is this? My Epix (just a Fenix 7 with a fancy screen) seems to hit GPS near instantly, and you can disable the touchscreen. AFAIK it’s only the very basic ones / fashion smartwatches that are touch only (or touch and one or two buttons)
I've had such issues with my Forerunner 735xt (from the very start), but ever since I upgraded - or seen friends using - newer hardware, these issues have entirely disappeared.
e.g I've traced sync issues to some problem in the BT stack: forcing a disconnect/reconnect made it sync without fail. GPS was slow to lock because of low storage thus no AGPS data.
The situation with "new" hardware is completely different.
GPS lock is ~instant, by the time I get out of my RF bunker of a home I have a lock by the time I have moved the arm to press the start activity button.
Sync is subsecond usually, and takes mere seconds when it "catches up" due to phone being away from watch for a while.
Touchscreen is handy sometimes but a mere occasional bonus convenience in specific occasions: the main input mechanism is squarely buttons. I mean touch for watches is kinda braindead as an input mechanism since a finger covers so much of an area, obscuring a quarter of the screen.
UI and menu organisation felt very odd at the beginning, but after a while I started understanding how and why it's laid out this way.
It is a very alien interface at first but it absolutely makes sense, and the amount of things one can do straight from the watch is insane. I mean you can never ever sync the watch to Garmin Connect and still have a massive amount of features. It's essentially completely autonomous, something I used to great effect when their system was brought down because of IIRC a malware attack.
Garmin instinct fixes this. Rugged, physical buttons with a battery life that last weeks. It's true about the special charger, but there are also usb-c adapters.
I recently picked up the entry-level Forerunner 55 as my first ever "smart watch" and its lack of touch-screen controls and the 5 tactile buttons are my favorite things about it.
I had a Fenix 3 for over 5 years and I've had an Epix 2 for close to 3 years now and I don't have any of those problems. GPS normally takes about 30 seconds, and certainly under a minute. It has 5 buttons and for the first year I kept the touchscreen off completely until my bank started supporting Garmin Pay.
Yeah, it does use a custom charging cable, but the one for the Fenix 3 was solid and since I only charged it once a week (more than I really needed to) it wasn't a problem. The Epix 2 gets charged twice a week since it has the AMOLED screen and I keep it always on and I record workouts at least 6 times a week unless I'm on vacation. But still, the charge points are inset so they're not noticeable.
You must have gotten a weird Garmin that doesn't suit your needs then. Why did you get a Garmin with a touch screen, when you really wanted buttons and Garmin offers watches with buttons?
And I believe the GPS sync is necessary when you don't have an internet connection on the watch.
When I got a garmin smartwatch I was astounded by how poor the basic ux is in almost every single way. If I’m swimming, how do I stop my work out? The touchscreen doesn’t work because it’s wet. I have to do some sort of double click of the button. No that’s pause. Maybe triple click - no that didn’t do anything. Maybe hold the button? Now it wants to delete my whole workout.
And the GPS sync thing amazes me. I put up with this problem when I was using garmin GPSs for accurate time sync for servers back in the 1990s, but 25+ years later for them not to have figured it out when literally every other GPS device does it just fine completely blows my mind. Apple watch? I want to go for a walk/run/whatever I hit go. If I move during the 3-2-1 countdown nbd it figures it out. Garmin I want to do it I hit go, it tries to sync the sattelites. If I move during this process it starts from scratch. Sometimes the sync takes 30 seconds or so. Annoying but not impossible to live with. Most of the time however the sync takes 30seconds or so and just fails. Also annoying but whatever. Some of the time however the sync takes a few minutes and then fails. And if I move at all during this, it gives me a message saying it’s going to have to start again and starts from scratch.
And to add insult to injury the thing has a custom charging plug with the socket on the back of the watch. It has a ridge and two spikes that physically press into my wrist making it actually painful to wear. So bad.