Comments in this thread are fairly dismissive of the Ultra as a serious competitor for Garmin's high end sport watches, and this article seems like an example of it not stacking up.<p>But if I was Garmin I'd be terrified of Apple coming into the space. I was at Fitbit when the first Apple watch came out, and we laughed at how inferior it was to many of our products for the first several releases. Then around series 3 we started saying things like "actually it would be really nice if we had this too", and now (series 8) they're clearly the smartwatch leader in most dimensions.<p>I hope Garmin can remain competitive in this space, but Apple's massive resources and the long term strategy that enables is very hard to compete with.
Fenix 5 owner here who recently upgraded to the Ultra. For daily stuff and "normal" workouts, it's way more useful. I get alerts from my cameras with useable images when they detect faces around our house, for example. I can do useful things like watch my grill temp + probe temp from the watch. The face customization experience is a LOT better than the Fenix. It feels like an entirely different class of device with the responsive touchscreen and bright screen that refreshes quickly. The Fenix feels like a souped-up version of the Timex Ironman Triathlon watch I had in the 90s (with Timex Datalink to sync data with a PC via CRT flashes! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink</a> ).<p>As far as which I'd take backpacking: neither. The Fenix isn't a better UX than our iPhones, and we already take battery backups for the phones + put them on airplane mode with low brightness and get ~2-4 days of battery life out of them that way (usually shutting them down completely at night). The watches aren't worth the grams yet -- it's weight I'd rather spend on a nice phone pocket for my backpack (I like the Prometheus Design Werx SPX Pouch). I'm hopeful that another year of software updates for the Ultra might fix that -- if it did have useable topo maps + dynamic offline route planning, it might be worth it.<p>The other big benefit I see is cellular. Now, when I go for a run / bike ride / etc I don't actually need my phone, and if I'm confident that I might stop somewhere with Apple Pay, I might not need my wallet either. Back when I was riding pretty seriously, it was common for folks to just bring their ID and some cash. I'm also excited about the prospect of using the watch as a fully-featured bike computer, given it's about the exact same size as the old Polar bike computers I used to love.
Just buy a Garmin if you want to do anything -useful- with your watch for sports or outdoors. Apple is 5-10 years behind their reliability or battery life. And if you’re going somewhere without a cell signal… or god forbid, you don’t have (shudder) wifi, it’ll tick right along.<p>Not to mention they don’t sunset their products after 12 months… your watch will get updates for a long time. They’re also -very- repairable to boot.
Lack of offline maps are a showstopper for using the new Apple Watch Ultra for multi-day hiking. This post tests the only workaround against Garmin Fenix.
I’ve been hanging on to my Series 3 for years now waiting on a watch refresh that brings another useful sensor or expands the screen large enough to make the watch usable for at least viewing Twitter-size content.<p>Along comes the Ultra with a massive footprint and a temperature sensor (albeit one only useful for monitoring averages). My time has finally arrived.<p>And then it turns out that the usable screen size is essentially a rounding error compared to the Series 7 and the temp sensor is limited to reproductive tracking (guessing this is a regulatory thing).<p>Ah well, maybe next year.
Offline map situation on Ultra is complicated. WorkOutDoors + Garmin Explore combination is a decent workaround, but nowhere as robust as Garmin Fenix. Various details may make the workaround no-go for you: do you have access to the Garmin Explore app, is having only a small map acceptable for you, is the battery life sufficient for you, is routing on watch a must have for you, …
European smartphones (Nokia) in 2010: "here are offline maps of the entire developed world free of charge". Americans in 2022: "offline maps - yay or nay?".
I love my Garmin Fenix 7 watch. Built in surf session tracking is superb. Lots of other cool features, solar charging and over a week of battery for my use. I ditched my Apple watch for it.<p>Having said that, one dangerous area where Garmin is missing a boat is their Garmin IQ store - that ecosystem is basically dead with very few useful apps.
I'm clearly an outlier... But a Casio for a watch, and then an old Garmin bike computer with OSM maps has proven the best for hiking.<p>Large screen, incredible battery life, and OSM maps when off road just beat everything except Ordnance Survey in the UK.<p>I do have a Fenix 5, but it's not very good TBH. I did try an older Apple watch and similarly not very good. I thought about Suunto but they seemed more watersports oriented.<p>The best of the outdoor devices I have has no hiking features. That's my Hammerhead bike computer. The software is great, the maps are OSM, the hardware is great. If that came with a neck collar loop and a hiking profile it would be my single device for outdoor things.
I get what they’re going for but apple made it clear with two things he’s not the target audience (yet):<p>- cellular only (first in this space that no one speaks of with this battery capacity)<p>- them catering to planners/trainers in their adversing.<p>Sure Apple is pricey and they don’t make for everyone, but no one markets with bullseyes like Apple in tech. I hope Garmin truly welcomes the competition. It’s getting sad and I would love pressure on Apple to really continue attempting to push the space of wearables and not get idle from being on a market island
Work Outdoors is an amazing app for logging hikes and showing allowing me to glance down and see a OSM map of where I had walked, lovely little Apple Watch app.
Even though I've only had it since Friday morning, I love the Ultra so far and see a lot of potential for it.<p>I think that there's a big enough market where the Garmin devices and the Apple Watch Ultra will both coexist and fill their own niches. I'm looking forward to what we see on the Ultra here in the future.
this was a fun article and I love seeing users already working on this.
The elevation profile of a planned hike really is the one thing I miss from WorkOutDoors. Too often do I look at my iPhone to see where exactly I’m at in the climb.