Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar Bands: AliExpress vs Genuine
Gear · Published 2/1/2023 ·
I use the Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar. Wow, that’s a mouthful of a name.
They’ve packed all kinds of tech right into the product name.
As you can see in the photo above, the Apple Watch lets you swap out a huge variety of straps — bands, that is. There are so many third-party options out there, and honestly I always envied that. But! Our friends in China weren’t about to sit this one out. They went ahead and made the very same style of bands for Garmin watches too, and put them up for sale. Behold — straight from AliExpress~~
I shot this lying flat on the floor, so it comes out a little dark, but the colors are accurate. Starting from the right: the genuine leather band, and one over to the left (the black one) is the genuine silicone band. From the orange silicone band one step further left, then next to it the orange Alpine Loop — which borrows Apple’s Alpine Loop idea wholesale — and then the rugged-looking band beside that, all of those are AliExpress finds. The Garmin Fenix 7X’s QuickFit — meaning the attachment point, the band size — is 26mm. I get confused about this every single time I go shopping.
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This is the genuine leather band. It looks a bit greasy and grimy in the photo, but I’ve owned it less than a year and didn’t wear it over the summer, so you have to assume it looked like that from the start. As you’d expect from the real thing, the quality is very good. Garmin’s logo, that ∆ mark, is crisply stamped on, and the mark on the attachment point of the silicone band on the right is sharp too. As for the silicone band, even the genuine one isn’t all that superior in quality. It’s pretty much on par with the AliExpress stuff.
This is an AliExpress silicone band in the 26mm QuickFit size. Between sweating after workouts and washing them, I ended up ordering several to keep in rotation. I think they ran under 10,000 won each. The silicone part is more or less the same as the genuine band, but the coating on the attachment point is starting to peel. They do cost a bit more than the Apple Watch versions, but hey, I’m just grateful someone’s selling them, so I bought them happily.
Ah, this is the Alpine Loop copy — my favorite of the bunch. The QuickFit piece that attaches to the Fenix is built in as one unit, and the rest is identical to Apple’s version. In some respects I’d even say it’s better. I love Hermès orange, so I ordered it in orange. Like Apple’s, this band shows dirt easily. I wear it 2–3 days, then wash and dry it when I’m washing my face. You can fine-tune the fit to your exact wrist thickness.
The band-fastening mechanism is exactly the same, and I’ve worn it for one hike and about four runs so far with no snapping or slipping off. And even if the loop were to break and come loose, it’s designed so the watch can’t make a clean getaway off your wrist in one go, so I use it feeling reasonably secure. I think it cost me a bit under 10,000 won.
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Having just the one orange band felt a little lonely, so I picked up one labeled “rugged.” That one cost me over 20,000 won. I’m not crazy about it, but it does seem to suit hiking, so I keep using it. It fastens with Velcro, and since no metal touches the surface underneath, there’s less interference between the metal and my laptop body when I’m typing. The same goes for the Alpine Loop above.
Once more for emphasis: the QuickFit size for the Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar is 26mm. Keep that in mind when you’re shopping on AliExpress.
Thanks for reading.
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