Garmin Fenix 8 Amoled

This is a very capable albeit expensive fitness watch. "Expensive" is typically a term used relative to worth, and this indeed is worth paying a considerable sum for. I have owned a Garmin Fenix 6 Sapphire for some five years, and very much enjoyed the experience. Due to sub optimal vision, I decided a larger face watch would make it easier to… Read more

read, one of the reasons I upgraded. The Fenix 6 of mine is still in perfect condition, I actually gave it to a family member and she's very pleased to receive. The Fenix 8 has a torch function, something else I considered useful. It's the first Fenix model to support phone calls, and performed such function adequately for me. Something that I find exceedingly useful not just on a daily basis but for considerable part of each day, is great support for multiple timers. Although multiple timers were supported on the Fenix 6, the Fenix 8 organises timers in a more logical way. I daily use a different preset timer for each of 3 tumble dryers, a 10 minute nag to check my breakfast in the frypan, a 77 minute timer to let me know the washing machine has completed another load, as well as others to nag me for tasks such as checking weather in case rain is approaching and in which case I should get laundry items off the clothes line. Yes, I'm quite busy on daily basis doing chores and often reach my "steps quota" (something your Garmin Fenix 8 will notify you of) purely from walking around house doing chores.

The latency (speed of response within user interface) of the Fenix 8 is far lower than Fenix 6, meaning that responses to input is much quicker. There is such a great range of features that I will not be covering here as I consider that I'm probably not a good judge for features that I have not personally used on this particular watch yet. I do ride an ebike, own and use a Garmin cycling computer which interfaces to the rest of the Garmin gear just fine, as does the HRM-Pro heartrate monitor I use on ebike rides. This is not just an outstanding piece of hardware, it's supported by possibly the best fitness app suite in the industry. If not absolute best, then best for the price. I am most proud of owning this watch, certainly not for how it looks but for how useful it is to me, every day of the year. When I buy anything, it's my Fenix 8 that supplies the credit card credentials to the scanner. I don't even bother carrying a wallet any more, in fact I haven't done so for around four years. One needs their smartphone, but the Fenix 8 watch is something you'll want to keep on you even more of the time. Even during sleep, it is monitoring bodily functions such as heartrate and oxygen saturation levels, providing health related feedback at appropriate times. The "report" that by default is given at certain times daily, is useful to catch up on things that you don't need to know every minute of the day, just once or twice daily perhaps. The Fenix 8 is feature packed and I doubt that many here will ever get to use anything close to all of them.

Battery life: I typically charged my Fenix 6 approximately 3 times per day for duration of a shower only, so around 15 minutes, 2 to 3 times per day. It's totally different now. I still charge my Fenix 8 during showers, but only 1 shower, every 3 to 4 days. Not only is charging faster, but the charge lasts much, much longer, even with the setup that I use which has brightest screen, backlight stays on much longer than default etc. Very impressive indeed. I realise that the solar function is helping with battery levels, but I don't actually spend much time in sun, perhaps 30 to 45 minutes per day.

I've written many reviews here including many I've given five stars to. My intention is to generate a list of items that I've given five stars for, and present them in order as a way of discerning which are more or less deserving of the full star count. Look out for this, I intend to paste at end of each review I've done here.