Garmin Fenix 7X vs Apple Watch Ultra: The Sports Watch Battle
Gear · Published 11/5/2022 ·
First up: the Garmin Fenix 7X, one of Garmin’s flagship sports watches.
Depending on how you use it, the battery runtime ranges from 20 days to over a month, and it does accurate GPS tracking.
The second contender is Apple’s brand-new Apple Watch Ultra.
It’s the model that dramatically improves on the Apple Watch’s biggest weakness — battery runtime — and Apple claims they’ve also improved it to deliver more accurate GPS tracking.
Let’s start with size.
The Garmin Fenix is no slouch in the size department either, with a 51mm diameter.
The housing is titanium, and the five buttons on the outside give you an interface you can use even with gloves on.
It supports touch as well. The display is always-on, but the quality is pretty mediocre.
Next to it is the Apple Watch. It’s 49mm, and the housing is titanium — the same material.
The display is really high quality. The touch response is very fast, and there are three buttons on the outside.
This is the newly launched Alpine Loop band. It fastens with a hook, so there’s no way it’ll come undone on its own.
It’s a design well suited to outdoor activities.
Even that hook is titanium. Given the price, they certainly didn’t cut corners on materials. Apple is still as serious about security as ever. ^^;;
Even up close, the detail is impressive and the finish is excellent. There’s nothing that’ll cut your hand, and it’s a natural titanium color.
The band, which looks like it’s made from woven fabric, is also good quality.
The sensors have changed compared to the previous Watch Series 7, too. The water resistance has gone up — it says it supports diving to 40 meters.
It says it uses scratch-resistant sapphire glass.
Unfastened, it looks like this.
Here’s the back of the Fenix. You can see Garmin’s charging port.
Other brands have all moved over to magnetic charging, so this is a bit of a letdown. That said, the charging speed is very fast.
You can buy a compatible charging adapter on AliExpress, and it’s dirt cheap.
First, you need to understand the sports wearable market.
I’m someone who used an Apple Watch for about five years.
When you’re actually out running or hiking, the thing that frustrates you most is the battery.
Turn on GPS (start recording a workout) and the battery just melts away at an alarming rate.
It’s a battery that lasts about a day — but that’s for everyday use.
When hiking, it drains in about 4 to 6 hours.
Even running, after a half marathon you’re left with around 20-30%. This was something the Apple Watch 7 didn’t fix either.
And if you wanted to go on a bike trip — figuring you’d ride for about 10 hours — the Apple Watch was simply unusable.
But you couldn’t exactly throw it on the charger every time you took a break, either. It was an awkward product in that sense.
But the Ultra changes the story.
It’s generally rated for 36 hours of use, and where the previous Apple Watch 7 lasted 18 hours, this one went well over 24 — so in normal conditions, you can reasonably expect it to last a three-day, two-night trip.
In other words, it can run 10 to 18 hours with GPS on, which means it looks usable as a tracking device for events with 10-to-18-hour time limits — triathlons, ultramarathons, ultra running, and the like.
It seems Apple has finally thrown its hat into a market that only Garmin and other brands’ sports watches could handle.
A friend of mine who commutes by bike 2 hours 30 minutes a day says that, so far, he hasn’t run into any battery shortage in his actual usage. He charges it once a day during his shower, then wears it — and even after sleep tracking and the next day’s commute to and from work, he says he’s still got 55-65% battery left.
If I were to buy again, I’d want to go with the Apple Watch Ultra, not Garmin ㅜㅜ
That said, Garmin has plenty of strengths too. It’s not a smartwatch like the Apple Watch, but it shines when it comes to workout records logged with very accurate GPS, seriously long-lasting battery (I only charge mine once a week), and integration with Garmin’s accessories.
For now, I’ll keep using it, and maybe think it over when the next version of the Ultra comes out ^^
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