Garmin fēnix 7 Solar Multisport GPS Watch, Black with Silicone Band

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I use TrainingPeaks LT2 estimate (not Garmin’s) and the Joe Friel zone calculations, not Garmin’s. I have decided that Garmin is much better at collecting data than giving training advice. I think Polar is better as a first party but TP is the gold standard, unless you are going down the rabbit hole of Golden Cheetah and Kubios. Speaking of widgets, these show all manner of data from your watch, such as steps, the weather, your sleep, training status, and so forth. You can also install 3rd party ones too. You’ll simply swipe or press down from the watch face to access the widget glances:

Added finally, for the love of all things holy, the ability to configure activity profiles and data fields from your phone It's rare in the world of wearables to have a watch with a battery that lasts for an age, to the point you could easily forget it needs charging at all. But that's what Garmin has managed with the Solar edition of the Fenix 7. Here’s a chart (it shows this later in Garmin Connect, both mobile and desktop), showing this workout of 800’s and how it played out. In some cases, the interval wasn’t as impactful – such as those last two longer ones, largely because I was struggling to hold the same intensity levels (HR’s). Visual Race Predictor – Historical trend data for finish times of your target distance as you get fitter. I think the most important features that everybody wants on his previous gen Garmin watch is the ability to customize sports profiles, settings…Etc on GC App.

Increased power efficiency of the base unit compared to Fenix 6 Series, which in turn increases battery life This is one of those things that at first glance didn’t make a ton of sense to me. I mean, yes, it was spot-on accurate, but why bother to spend the time on this was quirky to me. In asking Garmin, they said the intention was that for certain racing/training, such as steeper incline training, it allowed folks to start to analyze whether or not the pace/HR tradeoffs were worth it on walking versus running. Since you can overlay all those stats atop it, I can see the logic there. Per-Sport/Activity Profile: This allows you to increase (or decrease) GPS accuracy on a given sport, likely in exchange for battery life. Before we dive into sport usage, we’re going to briefly cover the flashlight. This is one of those features that’ll probably seem Inspector Gadget-ish at first, but in practice is actually surprisingly useful. I just wish it wasn’t limited to the Fenix 7X.

And all of this data is ultimately synced to Garmin Connect where you can dive into days/weeks/months/years worth of data. For example, here’s my steps data on Garmin Connect Mobile (the smartphone app): Take this one from a few nights ago, this is about as succinct an explanation of my sleep as I could write. And it’s literally spot-on perfect. Yes, it was long-ish sleep, but it was crap sleep.Watches in the Epix and Garmin Fenix 7 series let you see your seven-day training load on your wrist (Image credit: Garmin) Then you can look at your VO2max value (for running and cycling), as well as your 7-day load. I find the 7-day load one of the best ways to quantify how much I’ve been working on over the past week (trailing 7 days). Especially where I might not have a set schedule I’m following. This next section is specific to only the Solar editions of the Fenix 7, as only those editions have solar panels in them. Solar capabilities was first introduced on the Fenix 6 series, and then later added to the Garmin Instinct and Enduro series. In the case of the Fenix 6, it added almost negligible battery life for most users. Whereas in the Instinct series in particular, the impact could be quite significant. Keep in mind that while many watches, like Casio, have had solar for years, those watches tend to be super basic in their functionality, and thus in turn, require less power to operate.

When looking at all the features today, I’m happy. I’m happy that I made the switch from Enduro to Vertix 2 a month ago (as Vertix 2 was on sale for 595 EUR!) and there is actually nothing big in F7 that makes me regret my move. After the “detox” from the Garmin ecosystem (and it was tough for a while), I like the COROS for some unknown reason 🙂 For once, a touchscreen is added that boosts general usability rather than hindering your sports performance where others become responsive in the wet. But you still won’t miss the 5-buttons if that’s what you prefer. ecg would only ever be a single point reading but placing a finger on the start button. it wouldn’t be a continual use thing. One feature that you'll only get with the Epix is a set of animated workouts that you can follow on your wrist. At the moment there's a handful of programs for Pilates and yoga, but we expect more are likely to come in the future. These make use of the Epix's bright AMOLED display – as do Garmin's Muscle Map graphics, which illustrate which muscle groups you've worked most recently. I had considered placing this section within the GPS accuracy section, or perhaps within the sport section. But both were already pretty long. So consider this a shorter primer to a slate of changes Garmin has made. There’s actually more than just the addition of dual-frequency (multi-band) GPS here. Garmin has also revamped pretty significantly both its base GPS mode for big battery life savings, as well as gotten rid of the GLONASS/GALILEO options. Sorta.A good example of where Garmin seems half-way on this is the Sensors & Accessories section. You can see here that you can tweak all the onboard sensors (like whether or not your heart rate broadcasts), but you can’t pair any external sensors from the phone, you’ve gotta go to the watch. I’d imagine over time these will converge. Garmin is hardly the first company here in this space. While Garmin did roll-out multi-band GPS to some of their hand-held devices a year ago, the Fenix 7 & Epix are the first wearables to have it (despite rumors to the contrary, Garmin says the Tactix Delta nor any other wearable from them had multiband prior to this). In any case, the first endurance sports watch to add it was the COROS Vertix 2 this past summer, and then more recently Huawei has touted it in their GT 3. In my testing of the COROS Vertix 2, I didn’t see holy-grail-like results. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the promised land either. Of course, the tech is new, and thus we’re likely to see (and have seen) firmware updates rapidly that’ll improve that. More on that in a minute. In the case of COROS, they’re using the MediaTek/Airoha chipset ( AG3335M), and Garmin confirmed they are also using Airoha as their supplier. Prior to confirmation from Garmin, this made sense in my testing, as in almost every scenario over the last 6-7 weeks, the Vertix 2 and Epix/Fenix 7 units made the exact same errors in virtually identical ways (and inversely, did things correctly in near-identical ways). Garmin also confirmed that both Sapphire and Non-Sapphire units across all Fenix 7 and Epix units are using the same chipset supplier (Airoha). GPS in cities is a problem – footpods and my features like Suuno ghost Racer could be a solution for some Watches in the Fenix 7 range have color MIP displays, which are less vivid but use less power than AMOLED (Image credit: Garmin) Battery life

i dont know if body battery accepts readings from the strap (if it did it would be wrong as it would then not be comparing like with like) The 5X is definitely too big for most of those of use with smaller wrists. If worn over clothing I guess its different. As we round home, it’s worthwhile noting that the Fenix 7 and Epix series watches are the first to have the new on-watch app store. This means that you can install Connect IQ apps directly from the wrist, versus having to grab your phone. Garmin outlined this feature last fall as part of the Connect IQ Developer summit. And, as outlined then, it’s pretty darn basic. That said, the Apple Watch is bizarrely slightly more accurate for both GPS and heart rate. Who would have thought that? But it is. IDK whether Garmin has officially stated if the F7 uses a different chipset to the F6, or whether the antenna design is different or whether there are GPS software improvements compared to the F6 or whether the choice of material for the case means the satellite signals are better or whether any of this matters and actually leads to an improvement over the F6. IDK how the multi-band F7 compares to the ‘cheaper’ F7 versions. IDK if the cheaper versions use the same chipset as the F6? IDK if the cheaper F7 versions are as bad as the F6? If the cheaper F7 uses the same hardware as the F6 but is considerably more accurate can all those F6 owners who have a problem soon expect a software change which stops them from expressing their displeasure.

First though, on the Fenix 7 and Epix series, Garmin has revamped the GPS selection process. There’s two places you can change satellite things: just a short shout out: Some Fenix 7 and Epix 2 are having massive problems with bluetooth audio quality on headphones. It seems to boil down to a HD-codec problem – SBC, the worse codec, seems to sound better than AAC.