I kind of dread setting up new electronics, since there always seems to be an endless list of questions you have to answer and choices you have to make before you can actually start using the thing. You can also purchase optional accessories for the watch, like a bike mount kit and a bike cadence sensor. The company says that adaptation algorithms within the Fenix 6/MARQ/Forerunner 945/Edge 530/830 assume total adaptation after 21 days, and that adaptation is faster at the beginning of altitude exposure.

Whereas on the Pro models you can actually create a course on the fly on a watch, and then execute a PacePro strategy upon it from the watch. The Solar editions have Garmin's Power Glass, which increases battery life by harvesting energy from sunlight throughout the day. All of this is of course synced to Garmin Connect via WiFi (on the Pro models) or via Garmin Connect Mobile (via Bluetooth Smart on your phone). A lot of the time you just see yourself in white space – although the compass works to show your heading, which can be useful if you go off-piste. There's a new forged metal guard around the start button on the Garmin Fenix 7, which is designed to protect it from damage and help prevent accidental presses.On about a third of my runs, the heart rate has been consistently too high, throwing the training effect and analysis off considerably. You can access these power modes by starting an activity and bringing up the menu by pressing and holding the UP MENU button at 9 o’clock. You get room for a whopping 2000 songs, including support for offline synced Spotify playlists (if you have a Premium account). But as much as I love it, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the release of the Fenix 6 series means that you can now get Garmin's almost-as-great Fenix 5 series for much cheaper. While I can validate that the sleep times are usually within a couple minutes of my actual fall asleep/wake times, I have no method of validating the sleep phases bits.

I tried this feature a few times, comparing with a finger oximeter, and found that I got similar readings. Think of this like the old Street Fighter arcade game, whereby if you got a good night’s sleep it’d start at 100%, and then throughout the day would degrade. In fact, in early 2022, Garmin issued a huge firmware update for the series, which adds profiles for sports including cyclocross and gravel biking, plus tweaks to make the interface more intuitive (such as an alert if you move too much while taking an SpO2 reading). At midnight the unit will quietly take an altitude reading (actually, it’s doing it all the time anyway), and then use that reading to determine acclimation.James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. With incident detection, your watch will use the built-in accelerometer to figure out if you’ve fallen while running or cycling.

Of course, it’s a feature that’s especially useful for undulating races, and from this standpoint, it’s more useful than using running power to judge your effort in my opinion. It takes the concept of pace bands that any marathoner is undoubtedly familiar with and makes it all electronic.Love it or hate it, Climb Pro works as advertised and is one the many extra features that sets the 6S Pro apart from its competition.

Garmin Forerunner 945: This is pretty similar to the Fenix 6s Pro, but it has a lower waterproof rating and less storage space. Watches in the Fenix 6 range have exposed screws on the bezel, while most Fenix 7 watches have screws on the lugs. The respiration rate metric is probably the most interesting as it estimates your breaths per minute using your heart rate data. The feature does get more useful if you add GPX data to follow waypoints on a run or hike, and the extra data from the TOPO helps put your run in context with placements of rivers, woods, and the like.One thing I love is having easy access to widgets so you can see tons of data — like race time predictions, training status, heart rate, and more — without ever having to open the Garmin Connect app.