Garmin Fenix 7X vs Apple Watch: Why Battery Life Won

Gear · Published 10/2/2022 ·

[The Data]

I’ve worn an Apple Watch for years now.

I used to track and analyze my runs with an app called NRC, but it was never quite accurate. The GPS would drift, and the distance it recorded always came up short of the real thing. To be fair, Garmin isn’t completely immune to this either.

The heart rate and the graphs lay it all bare — every hard, painful moment, right there on the screen.

That last stretch, I really had to squeeze everything I had left.

[The Analysis]

To get good at anything, you have to keep figuring out where you stand — what you’re doing well, what you’re not — and then adjust, change, and put in the work. That’s how you improve.

I started wearing a Garmin watch to collect at least the bare minimum of data — enough to have a conversation about whether the training I’m doing is right, what my pace looks like, how far other people are running.

And by analyzing that Garmin data and tweaking my training, I finally got my 10k under an hour.

It’s a bit chunky and not exactly pretty. And it’s bigger than I expected, too.

At 80% battery, it lasts 18 days.

The screen quality isn’t all that great, honestly.

[Battery]

The reason I set the Apple Watch aside was battery life.

An Apple Watch lasts 24 hours at best, and even the Apple Watch Ultra — out as of October 2022 — will get you maybe 2–3 days if you’re lucky.

For someone like me who keeps training or does long ridge hikes, the battery drain is enormous. In the end, even the Apple Watch Ultra can’t capture the tracking log for an overnight ridge traverse.

The Garmin Fenix 7X lasts more than 21 days under normal use.

On a ridge hike with GPS running the whole time, about 14 hours of tracking only burned through around 30% of the battery. Even a two-night, three-day hike is no problem for it.

[Conclusion]

For everyday running — say one or two hours a day — any ordinary smartwatch will do just fine.

But if, like me, you love activities and workouts that keep you outdoors for long stretches, it’s worth factoring battery life into your choice.

I’ve tried hiking while topping up the charge during breaks out on the trail, and honestly, it was miserable.

#BoughtItMyself #GarminFenix7X #AppleWatch #SportsWatch

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