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

Product Information

The total spread in ascent between all those units is 27m (out of 1,341m), which is a max spread of 2%. The COROS Vertix 2 seems to start off however about 20-25m higher than the other units, but over the course of five hours, drifts closer to the other units. Given there was no absolute known good reference point along the trail to compare against, it’s hard to say exactly who was perfect. But I think it’s fair to say that any unit would have been more than sufficient in this scenario.

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. If you’re tired of your usual running, cycling or walking routes, you can use the course creation tool in Garmin Connect to create a new one; just select a starting point, a distance, and an overall bearing (north, south, east, or west) and the app will generate a suitable route in a couple of seconds. You can then sync this to your Fenix 7, which will give you turn-by-turn directions as you go. GPS is similarly strong. On running over some of our most worn running routes, distances were near enough identical to previous efforts with other watches and the prior Garmin model. More importantly, it was consistent with itself: we didn't see any unusual or glaring irregularities with the distance, effort and pace information. Later in the workout, you can see that my short-term Stamina as I end a brief interval is now down to 47%, whereas my long-term potential is 56%. The red arrow indicates it’s trending downwards.However, you’ve also got two additional data fields you can add: Distance and Time till empty. These two fields look at your current intensity and then figure out when you’re going to collapse. You’ll see a few minutes into my casual warm-up, it projects that at that pace, I can do 22KM or 1 hour and 45 minutes. Both short and long term are currently equal, cause things haven’t got crazy yet. The Fenix 7X contains a three-LED flashlight at the top of the unit. Two of those LEDs are white, and the third is red. There are basically four core scenarios for the flashlight here: Adding Solar, Sapphire and Titanium each bumps up the prices. You should seriously consider sapphire to protect the lens plus Sapphire is the ONLY way to get the dual-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS goodness.

All of this is spot on. However, it’s not as if they’re on the correct side of the road (or consistently on any given side of the road). So that’s where we need to park the Holy Grail GPS Bus, and remember that hasn’t arrived yet:

Design: Touch(screen) for the very first time

I also have a strong suspicion, though no personal experience, that the 6 and 6S are worse at GPS than the 6X because they have smaller antennas. The original engineering antenna and case design were for a 51mm case and the bezel is and was part of the RF system. The standard Garmin Epix is more expensive than the standard Fenix 7, but different versions of both watches carry different price tags. Sapphire crystal and solar charging add to the price, as do premium materials like titanium and leather.