I will be honest with you. When I first started
using the Garmin 6 months ago… I knew immediately that it was a good watch.
But deep down, I always thought I’d eventually be going back to wearing my Apple Watch Ultra.
To my surprise… that’s not been the case at all.
I will talk about how this compares to other watches I have when it’s
relevant, but the majority of this video will be about the Garmin Epix Pro itself.
I did do a direct comparison video earlier this year, which you can check afterwards, but today
I wanted it to be about this bad boy.
It’s that time of the year as well when you buy be searching for gift
ideas and I hope I can help you with this review.
It has been a bit of a learning curve… and the experience overall has had its.. .ups and downs.
There are a few reasons why I love this watch so much,
but this is a sports watch first and foremost!
I am a very competitive person and one thing that the Garmin
does really well is to keep pushing you in a way that… it’s very honest.
And I love that.
See, I do enjoy the nice graphics and animations we get on the Apple Watch
but there something that… for a long time I couldn’t quite put finger on it.
But I think I know what it is now. It’s the slightly fake aspect. From the social
oneupmanship that we see with your friends getting fictitious medals for burning 200 calories a day…
To this almost sarcastic tone of “well done, you stood up” or “well done for washing your hands”
With the Garmin, I found it’s more honest. It’s like a real
friend telling you… that was crap, you need to do better.
And you can see that same approach in the way they give you the data.
Look, I know.. not everyone needs or cares about the data. But if you do,
the Epix Pro … and Garmin in general, give you very easy access to performance data.
With other watches, this information is a little diluted and over simplified in my opinion.
Something I really enjoy are the prompts you get during activities.
You get this really simple, direct to the point…like get on with it!
And the rewards THEN…. feel more… REAL.
Look, I am no athlete and frankly the tech is probably wasted on me. But for the few things that
I use it for which is running, strength training and football (soccer), it’s almost perfect!
There are a couple of gotchas that I need to make you aware of, when it comes to heart rate
accuracy… and smartwatch functionality… but I will touch on those in a bit.
Something else that I really value is… sleep tracking.
As much as I try, with running another business outside of this content creation
work… most days it’s extremely difficult to maintain a regular sleep schedule…
So every tiny bit of information about my sleep is extremely important
to me. I really appreciate that everything is built into the watch.
If I had a bad night sleep, it will tell me in a very simple but with
a full breakdown… with some very useful insights about the quality
of sleep I got. This is based on stress level, variable heart rate
With my Apple Watch for example, the sleep tracking was ok, but to get the most from
it I had to have a sleep tracking app which cost me extra money every month.
Now, I am not gonna sit here and pretend that the Apple Watch Ultra didn’t tempt me again this year.
For quite a lot of people there are some compelling
reasons to still consider it OVER the Garmin…
But before I go into 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 new down to earth tech video for you.
When the new watchOS came out and then later on… the new iPhone 15… I tried it.
And I can totally see the benefits of it from a smartwatch perspective.
Remember I am compromising a lot by not using the Apple Watch.
For instance, there’s no cellular on the Garmin so you can’t really make or receive
calls on it. I do miss that aspect and enjoyed having it again with the Apple Watch Ultra.
But… after two days I went back to the Garmin. Because
I was quickly reminded of how poor the battery is.
And most people, including myself before trying the Garmin will say… 2 days battery is fine,
I charge my watch while I am having a shower or sleeping.
And I get that. But as someone who is constantly busy,
it’s nice… to not care about the battery for 5-6 days.
One thing I wish would be better on the Garmin battery is the alerting.
It tells on the display that you have a number of days left.
But I’d love for it to be a bit more aggressive on
that and maybe pop up an alert… when you get to like a day left of battery.
Which brings me to some of the gotchas I mentioned earlier. There’s only 3 or 4 that I found so far.
You know… These are things I think could be improved on the Garmin and I hope they do.
It seems very sensitive to water. Not from a water resistance perspective,
but the display becomes really sensitive and you get these random touches.
The other gotcha is Garmin Pay. I use a fairly common bank here in the UK called Barclays.
It wasn’t available in the summer and it still not available now, 6 months later.
The most annoying thing is that it will ask you for your name, FULL address.. .and card details,
then as again for your name, only to give you this horrible error saying check back soon.
Probably an issue with the bank but I tried with another bank, one of these more… digital friendly
banks called Monzo.. that I have for a separate business account… and that failed as well.
I hear this is better in other countries but I think this kinda
summarises well where this is watch is positioned.
The next one is probably a stretch because… Garmin don’t position these
products that way anyway, but I think with a touch screen and decent connectivity,
we could do with celular function here.
And perhaps even some support for basic apps. Nothing crazy,
but useful things like smarthome apps, proper Spotify integration.
What we have at the moment still feels quite limited.
As I said I understand that this is not where Garmin position themselves
but it feels like a natural step up for me.
Something that is very much within Gamin’s positioning… is the heart
rate tracking. It seems fairly consistent overall,
but it’s during an activity that I notice… a considerable slowness in catching up.
So if I am running up to my limit and start to cooldown for a bit,
it will be a good 20-30 seconds before I see that represented on the display.
With the Apple Watch Ultra for example, it feels way faster to update the graphics on the display.
Now an important part of using a watch like this, is how it interacts with other
things. There’s definitely some compromises here because… you know, there isn’t a Garmin phone.
Which turns out in my case… it was a good thing!
I wanted to call this out because many people talk
about this, which is how the Garmin could help people… move away from a specific ecosystem.
I did an entire video about this but here is the Garmin take on it.
And hey, this is NOT a like for like replacement for any smartwatch. But I
will share my experience and hope that helps you.
I REALLY liked the Apple Watch Ultra. I honestly think it was
one of the best Apple products in recent years.
But for my personal use, the benefits I was getting on Android phones.. quite frankly…
outweighed the benefits of keeping an iPhone just for the sake of having the Apple Watch.
I know I am playing it down a bit… but this is where the Garmin came
in. It’s not a smartwatch. It has some smartwatch capabilities
like notifications, hooking it up to your AirPods.. and playing music but…
Like you’ve seen in this video today… it’s really not where the strengths are.
And once I figured out… that with the Garmin…. I was getting the
THREE things that I care about the most, it was a no-brainer.
Those 3 things are:
Sleep Tracking and Exercise Tracking…And the battery life!
So having the Garmin meant one less thing to worry
about because it doesn’t matter whether I connect it to an iPhone or to an Android…
That part of my ecosystem is now free from any lock-ins.
But like me if you’re worried about losing your fitness data that you
ALREADY had with other smartwatches… a really cool way to remove that barrier
is through using an aggregator like TrainingPeaks.
I will leave a link down below for you, I am not sponsored by them,
it’s just a great service that again, allows me to be
free from any lock ins… and use whatever smartwatch and…. Smartphone that I like.
If I fancy using the Apple Watch on weekends and the Garmin during the week,
I still have a single source of truth for my fitness data.
Those things do cost money but if you are serious about moving… or
having both… this could be a good option for you.
The Garmin then… is not a fully fledged Smartwatch.
But it doesn’t pretend to be. And I really like that.
If you really want a smartwatch… Then you should look at other options,
but as a sports watch…. with some basic smart features,
this is an excellent product and I don’t see me moving away from it any time soon.
When it comes to the future… I’d love to check out the new Garmin
models when they come out… but we will see how it goes.
I WILL be checking out the Galaxy Watch Pro 6 next year.
And I’ve totally ignored the Apple Watch Ultra 2…but that’s a story for
another video. I talk about why I did that… in this video over here.
Hope to see you soon.