I love this watch so much! But wait, how did we get here?
I am gonna take you through a rollercoaster of emotions today and how I went from thinking
the Apple Watch Ultra was the best thing since sliced bread to… Looking elsewhere.
And whilst I don’t think this one video will be enough, I have come to a decision
for myself… and I tried to structure this video in a way that… I think will
help you if you are on the fence between these brands or considering an upgrade.
Roll the intro! There is no intro, we don’t like to waste people’s time here.
In some parts of this video my hay fever is really bad right now so apologies how I sound right now.
And this video is not sponsored, I made this video because of you,
so many of you have suggested that I should try the Garmin and a lot of you
have been following my journey so far as well and you know, it’s been a lot of fun!
I am Alex and I do down-to-earth tech videos
And to start off with, I was extremely happy with the Apple Watch Ultra,
I definitely fell for Apple’s reverse psychology of.. you have to be an ultra
marathon runner or some sort of elite athlete to get this watch.
So I fell for that and bought it. As you can guess, I am not running marathons or
climbing Everest. And I never even put on a sub diving mask. OK maybe I did once…
I am as… standard dad-like as they come. But it looks like I wasn’t alone,
that video I where I shared my experience about the Watch Ultra, look like a lot of you were on
the same boat and ended up buying this watch. That video was extremely popular here on the channel!
But after a while, I’d say… after a month… I started to have battery
issues. This wasn’t impacting everyone but it was bad enough for me to notice.
I shared my battery woes in a video thinking I was alone in this,
but it turned out a lot of people were experiencing the same issue.
What I learned during that time is that a fresh install and removing some of the
apps that get automatically installed kind of seemed to help the battery life.
But after a while, it would be be back to being bad again.
But then watchOS 9.2 came out and wow… that update so far was the best one for me. It really made the
battery issues go away, my notifications were consistent and everything was working fine,
which you know, gave me a lot of confidence in the Watch again.
They added crash detection in this update too, but thankfully I never needed that!
Right now, we’re on 9.5.1 but I am getting no more than two full days
battery. If I am fairly active and using the watch to sleep tracking… 2 days max.
Maybe 3 days, if I am not as active or sleep tracking. But that’s not
enough for me. For how much we pay for this watch,
two days is not enough. Right? This is meant to be an extreme watch, you’re meant to be
in a mountain in isolation or whatever and two days, is not going to get you very far.
I am not a fitness mad person,
I am trying to stay active and exercise regularly but I do care about my trends,
and looking at the data right, to figure out what I need to improve when I do work out.
That’s the workout out of the way
But the more I used the Apple Watch Ultra for tracking exercise, the more
I realised that I was missing some data. Sure it’s all there, if you look for it,
and with watchOS10 coming up, there’s a lot of cool
features like topology maps with fantastic shading details, but:
One… It doesn’t look like they’ve made enough changes to the Workout app
And two… At the time of recording, it’s not a released software yet. WE’re gonna
have to wait a few months to get that. Not to mention I now have mostly Android
phones which makes it interesting when using the Apple Watch… Basically I had
to get a burner iPhone 13 mini just to sync the watch. But anyway, that’s not Apple’s fault,
it’s just my preference right now, and I am quite happy with the setup I got going here.
With watchOS 10… it does look like Apple is making the Watch Ultra an
even better SMARTWATCH… But not necessarily a better SPORTSWATCH.
So I kept trying other apps like Athlytic which has been fantastic, if you are sticking with the
Apple Watch, honestly, I definitely recommend you look at that app. Or Work Outdoors as well.
Amazing apps that will give you a bit more than the usual Workout app on the Watch Ultra.
Now, this is the turning point in this whole story!
After my 6 months later review of the Apple Watch Ultra… and my sort of lacklustre
feeling towards the Watch Ultra, many of you asked me why don’t you try a Garmin?
And you know, it’s a lot of money to throw at a watch…so I was quite reluctant to go out and
spend another few hundred on a watch. But I felt like I gave the Watch Ultra
enough of a chance and I was really, really wanting to try something else.
And so many of you suggested the Garmin and one of you,
was kind enough to send me this one out, you know, just to try out.
I mean, I love this community that we are building here, and Lee,
you are an absolutely legend for doing this.
I am so grateful to you because your gesture
opened my eyes to Garmin and the options that they offer.
But you know me… There are things in this watch that are well above and beyond what
the Watch Ultra can do, and I look an idiot wearing two watches right now.
But equally there are things on the Watch Ultra that I just can’t ignore,
they are just too good to ignore.
But I think I found the perfect compromise. And, it’s not the Fenix! Let me explain.
Actually just before I do that,
just a reminder to like this video if you are enjoying it. And after this video,
have a look around the channel and if you like my stuff it would be awesome if you subscribed.
I am here at least once a week with a down to earth tech video
for you. And so is that cow by the looks of it!
This is the Fenix 6X Pro Titanium Solar.
This thing is an absolute menace. In a good way. It’s built like a tank, and it looks gorgeous!
Amazingly it makes my Watch Ultra look a little bit childish in a way.
I’ve done triathlons before but I don’t run marathons every month, or actually,
ever! And I don’t do extreme sports at all. I am active, I do like football every week,
and I go for runs and stuff. But wearing this watch makes
me feel like I could run marathons and I could climb Everest! This thing is a beast!
And you’re probably asking, why did you say earlier… that the Fenix wasn’t the answer for you?
Well, this is where the Epix 2 comes in. I will do a proper review of this watch once I spent
a bit more time wearing it, but really, I just missed the display on the Watch Ultra you know?
There are many things I prefer now on the Garmin,
but I couldn’t get used to the Memory in Pixel display. It’s bright enough,
it’s perfect. The sun actually makes it look brighter which is counter intuitive.
If you’ve never used a smartwatch with this sort of display,
you will probably find this fine and you’re not gonna see any issues.
But I found it difficult after so many years of wearing Apple Watches,
to go back to a display that is not as bright and is not as colourful.
It’s plenty bright and it works great in direct sunlight. But there’s a lot
to be said about that deeper black and more colourful display that you get on the Epix.
The downside, you could sa, is that the Epix does look a little bit less…
serious… But you could say that that’s a preference thing right?
I am really loving the Epix 2. The question now is, should I go for the Pro instead? But from a
features perspective, I am pretty happy with this, maybe I will wait for the Epix Gen 3.
And sure, the Epix doesn’t have the same battery as the Fenix,
but… Come on, who needs a month of battery?
I am not going to wilderness for a month. Lovely to know that it’s there. Anything
more than four or five days is a bonus for me. And you’re getting six days with the Epix so
far. That is what it says on the watch itself, I haven’t really seen if it’s gonna last six
days. But that’s amazing right? In comparison to the Apple Watch Ultra which for me anyway,
is only lasting like two days… yeah that’s an amazing improvement.
And I think it comes down to your taste as well. They are fairly similar watches.
But I think the Epix is a little bit less aggressive, if you like.
As you can tell, I am loving this watch!
But… Remember what I said this was going to be a rollercoaster?
It’s a shame really Garmin watches, for all they cost, how little smartwatch features they offer.
Okay let me rephrase that. There ARE enough smartwatch features,
but they’re not as polished and in some cases, just straight up don’t work.
I will go through some of the features that I think are important.
But I’ve also asked my fellow YouTube creator Pete,
who’s been trying out the Garmin as well and here’s what he thought…
But Alex, this is Garmin watch cost me over £700.
It’s a great watch, there’s no doubt about that. But for £700, I was kind of expecting something
a little more than what to me, feels a little like a modern version of the classic Casio Watch.
You know, the one with the little keyboard ?
It almost feels as though this is what one of the best smart watches
would look like today if Apple hadn’t created the Apple Watch.
But that might change right? And in typical fashion, since spending over
£700 on the Fenix 7X, they’ve released an even more expensive Fenix 7 Pro,
and Epix Pro which have beautiful OLED screens.
Which looks beautiful. But it doesn’t look like the interface has
changed. It still looks like you control everything with the buttons on the side.
I think the Garmin needs a significant software overhaul, which for a now nearly
£1,000 smart watch, I’d kinda expect the best of breed for that price, what do you think?
Thanks Pete, I have to say… For that price,
I really have to agree that more is needed on the software side of things.
Like Contactless payments… I am not sure what it’s like in the US, but here in the UK,
one of the most popular banks is Barclays and it doesn’t work with it. So for me
it’s just the case of accepting that I can’t pay with my watch.
But unfortunately, that’s not all.
I have a lot of smart home and car stuff and lots of utilities
that I really use every single day and the watch helps me with that.
Like starting my car with an app on my Watch Ultra,
or opening the garage door or selecting different scenes for Philips Hue at
home, you know… And there are plenty of other… utility-like smart watch apps like 1Password.
Not to mention the huge elephant in the room. Which his the ability to
make phone calls. It’s not a feature that you typically care about… Until
you go out for a run without your phone and an important call or SMS comes in.
And of course, there’s the social aspect of the Apple Watch which is a lot of fun,
to compete against your friends and family.
And even when it comes to basics,
like adding music to the watch. It’s a huge rigmarole with the Garmin.
It was a little bit easier on the Fenix somehow. But on the Epix, it keeps ept asking
me to install Garmin Express on my computer and even after that… it didn’t quite work properly.
The interface on that… well it sucks.
Having said that though, when you look at the dashboard that you get with Garmin for
the data and insights that you really care about… Wow, this is much better on
the Garmin. Look at all this data, all in one place and very well structured.
This is something I feel like I’ve been missing out on, on the Apple Watch.
The watch itself will give you some of these data points in a really nice
way too, and in my opinion, much easier to find than on the Apple Watch Ultra.
If you’re preparing for a marathon or just doing some training… You’d
really want to see your progress, in the easiest and most concise way possible…
Just as an aside actually, the iPadOS 17 will have a better Health app apparently which will give us
better data. But again, that’s not out for a few months yet, so hopefully that will improve things.
But what about the ecosystem?
Yes. It’s a problem. As someone who uses android phones, it’s been nice actually
to have a lot of things syncing up between the phone and the watch…
But I still use MacBooks and lots of other Apple devices…
controlling things like my lights in my home and here in the studio,
or unlocking my computers… yeah this is when the Garmin watches will kind of fall short.
But I see these things as compromises right? I’d say there’s merit in the
ecosystem… If you care enough about those things.
Do you care more about that… all singing and dancing ecosystem?
Or do you care about having excellent data
points about your sports and exercise tracking with an amazing battery life?
And for a lot of people, you care about both, but the Watch Ultra juts gives you enough to
satisfy your needs. And that’s cool. And of course, you can make phone calls with this.
So what have I learned and what did I decide in the end?
What this experience has taught me so far is that the Apple Watch
Ultra is 100% the better smartwatch. No question about it, in my opinion.
But the Garmin, whether Fenix or the Epix…is the best sports watch. I would love for Apple to bring
more of this sports watch features to the Watch Ultra, including a better battery management.
And I’d love Garmin, like Pete said right? To really step up their game on the software
side of things. Because it does cost a lot of money, for the software that we are getting here.
At the very least I’d love to have a cellular option on the Garmin which
means I don’t need to carry my phone with me to get some of these features.
For now, I am going to use the Garmin Epix 2 for most days and really only
use the Watch Ultra when I am not training or exercising.
I will though, install watchOS 10 on it and give that a go and I will let you know how I get one,
but the Garmin is going to be my main watch for a little while.
The thing is… I got the Garmin itch now… and I am considering whether I should get
the Epix Pro next, or wait for the Gen 3…Maybe I will do a video about that!
Epix 2 vs Epix 2 Pro or wait for the Epix 3. Pro.
Lee… Thank you so much for sending me this watch and opening my eyes to Garmin.
It was indeed only a matter of time. And I will see you soon!