Garmin fēnix® 8 – 51 mm, AMOLED, Sapphire, Premium Multisport GPS Smartwatch, Long-Lasting Battery Life, Dive-Rated, Built-in LED Flashlight, Titanium with Spark Orange/Graphite Band

Serious powerful outdoor powerhouse of a tool
Awesome tool that has grown on me vs Apple WatchComing from the Apple Watch Ultra I wanted a smartwatch that had extended battery life and gps features that didn’t require phone connection and that also had topo graphic view format with water/weather indications on the gps map feature. So far I’ve done multiple hikes and scuba adventures these past few weeks and I can say that this watch really shines for the hardcore outdoorsman. I wanted the solar 47mm option so it would not be so bulky on my wrist. I opted for the solar option so I could extended the battery life in real-world scenarios. The display is perfect for sunny days and outdoor activities. One key feature that I did not anticipate liking so much was the Garmin connect app. You can find tons of hikes local to your area and also map your own trails which makes getting out there super easy! This could be pretty cool if you are an avid cyclist or runner and want to find/build/track your exact distances for a coordinated route and monitor your progress as simple as looking at your watch. One feature that I really wish was available for the fenix 8 was the ability to use air integration for scuba diving. However I believe that feature is only available on one of the other scuba specific watches made by Garmin. The menu is not as intuitive as the Apple Watch Ultra, however once you spend some time with the watch you will quickly overcome that small learning curve. The Apple Watch Ultra is still a useful tool if you are going on sub 2 day adventures or working in an environment that needs features such as the walkie talkie or picture messaging directly to your watch but I feel much more confident wearing garmins Fenix 8 47mm solar on my wrist for real deal outdoorsman situations. Both watches have a place on my nightstand but the Garmin is a beast that keeps on going with battery life measured in days not hours.

Significant upgrade over Apple Watch Ultra. FENIX 8 BUTTON FIX HERE!
I’ve been a loyal Apple Watch user, having owned many models since the first Apple Watch. I’ve always liked the health and wellness features of the watch, as well as its interoperability with other Apple devices in my home ecosystem. Over time, I grew tired of constantly having to charge the watch on a daily basis – even the Apple Watch Ultra pretty much required daily charging even though they say you can go two days between charges. I also wanted something with a more robust build quality. I was gifted the Garmin Fenix 5 Sapphire a few years ago, and I loved the long battery life, solid build quality and health and wellness features of the watch, but I hated the MIP display, which looked faded in both indoor and outdoor light. I sold it on eBay, but the Garmin health and wellness features and the onboard maps stuck in my mind as being very useful.Enter the Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED. This watch is the ultimate tool watch! It’s built like a tank, the screen is larger than the Apple Watch Ultra, and the AMOLED display is beautiful. It has a very handy flashlight that I use almost daily when sleepily navigating to my attic at 5 am to work out without waking up the rest of the family. It also has a Strobe light for those dark, early morning runs. Garmin’s built-in health and wellness features are vastly superior to the Apple Watch. If you are a health metrics junkie like I am, this is the watch for you. The watch has onboard HRV and sleep tracking that I have found to be more precise than the Oura Ring 4, which I returned after getting the Fenix 8. Garmin features such as Training Readiness, HRV Status, Sleep Score, Body Battery, Recovery, and Training Status are all meaningful metrics that I rely upon daily, and the watch has even more health metrics and features, including Endurance Score, Hill Score, Stress, Heart Rate, ECG to detect irregular heart rhythms, Pulse Oximetry, and more. All of this can be viewed on the watch or viewed in expanded form in the free Garmin Connect smartphone app, which is the storehouse for all of your cumulative health and fitness data. You will also receive a weekly Fitness Report and Wellness report from Garmin Connect, which will alert you to any trends in your health data. Fantastic!In addition, the watch has loads of other useful features, including Garmin’s awesome built-in Maps; an excellent Golf app with distance to pin and ‘plays like’ distances factoring in slope, wind, and elevation; a Meditation app; Compass; Altimeter; Barometer; Weather app, etc. The Fenix 8 also has an onboard microphone for you to take phone calls while within range of your phone and dictate simple commands like setting timers, which I use often. There is also an onboard Phone Assistant app that allows you to connect to your smartphone’s assistant (e.g., Siri on youriPhone). Oh, and the battery life on the Fenix 8 is fantastic! I keep the watch charged between 20 to 80 percent to preserve battery health, and I get about 7 days per charge, working out about 1 hour per day with a heart rate monitor chest strap and with always-on display disabled and overnight pulse ox readings enabled. I charge to 100 percent before vacation to avoid bringing the charging cable with me.The only issue I noticed with the Fenix 8 out of the box was that the buttons felt a little mushy and were sometimes unresponsive to presses. This is due to a change Garmin made in the Fenix hardware in order to make the watch dive capable. I almost returned the watch thinking something was wrong with it, but the button issue is easily and fully resolved using the below Button Calibration procedure from Garmin:1. On a Windows computer, open a plain text editor like Notepad in Windows. Create a New file. Leave it empty, but save the file as KEY_CALIBRATION.BIN. For file type, designate as All files or *.*2. Plug your watch into a Windows PC or a Mac that has the ability to read MTP devices (a third-party program may be needed for your Mac to see the watch as a drive).3. Locate the drive for your watch on the computer, and open the drive.4. Place the KEY_CALIBRATION.BIN file in the Internal Storage of your watch. It should not be placed in a subfolder.5. Disconnect your watch from the computer.6. A button calibration screen will appear on the watch with five red checks on the screen next to each button. Press each button fully a couple of times. A green check will appear as each button is calibrated. After calibration is completed, all of the buttons should work just fine.With the Fenix 8, Garmin has brought more smartwatch functionality to its already awesome Fenix platform. I am really enjoying the Fenix 8, and I hope to have the watch for a long time. I sold my Apple Watch Ultra on eBay and have comfortably moved on to something much, much better. I can’t recommend the Fenix 8 highly enough. I’ll update this review if I run into any other issues.

Tolle Uhr, trage seit Fenix 5 nix Anderes, die Farbe muss man sich im Vorfelde überlegen, das Armband lässt sich leicht tauschen, daß Plättchen vorne nicht.

This is the best watch I’ve ever had.the only downside is that the bezel literally gets scratched by the air…

Ich bin absolut begeistert von der Garmin Fenix 8! Besonders beim Krafttraining zeigt sie, was sie kann. Die Uhr zeichnet die Übungen sehr genau auf und erkennt sogar automatisch die trainierten Muskelgruppen – das ist richtig beeindruckend!In der Garmin App wird das Ganze super übersichtlich und anschaulich dargestellt, sodass man auf einen Blick sieht, welche Bereiche des Körpers trainiert wurden.Auch die Genauigkeit der Sensoren und die allgemeine Trainingsauswertung sind top. Egal ob im Fitnessstudio oder beim Outdoor-Training – die Fenix 8 liefert immer verlässliche Daten.Ich bin wirklich mehr als zufrieden und kann die Uhr jedem empfehlen, der sein Training auf das nächste Level bringen möchte. 💪