The GPS performance has been extremely disappointing from day 1 – performance pales in comparison to my 3+ year old Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR.

The features for biking are pretty similar to the ones for running. You’ll get a glimpse at your heart rate, distance, speed, and time, as well as a map of your route. Below that, you’ll notice the little mountain and sun icons along the bottom. We’ll get to that shortly. First though, hit down twice (once past VO2Max) and you’ll see the 7-day load listed. This is color-coded by the type of load that you’ve gathered, as well as the total load values: The Garmin Fenix 6 comes in multiple flavors and price points, so we'll just break them down here first. Added Incident Detection: If you crash your bike it notifies someone (this was recently added to the Fenix 5 Plus via firmware update)

Battery life increased: Up to 80 days in battery saver mode for 6X, and up to 120hrs in max battery mode for 6X, all before solar (see full chart below)

Garmin also plots stress levels as well. Both on the device in real-time as well as later in the app. I generally find this metric pretty close to reality, for better or worse.

Connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and you’ll be all set to listen to music during your activity without having to bring your phone along. Overall, I like the design of the Fenix 6s Pro, but it took some tinkering to get it exactly how I wanted.

However, they do roughly trend higher, so there’s that. Ultimately, I’ve never found heart rate while swimming super helpful, in part because of how much it lags compared to running or cycling. Still, at least it’s an option I guess.Now what’s actually notable about the Fenix 6S in particular is that the lug to lug distance has been reduced. You can see it most clearly in the below photo atop the blue Fenix 5S Plus unit. Notice how the white lugs (where the straps connect to), are significantly smaller: Added PulseOx (pulse oximeter data): Within Fenix lineup it was previously only on the Fenix 5X Plus variant In addition, you can use Garmin’s Connect IQ app to create your own watch face with a picture of your kids, Ben & Jerry’s container, or whatever else is important to you. The Fenix 6S weighs 61g with the strap, lighter than a standard Fenix 6 which is 83g. A significant saving.

The Stress Score and Body Battery have also proved useful in assessing readiness for training – and in some quite hectic periods of training sessions have proved fairly accurate in highlighting fatigue.Once you’ve wrapped up and saved an activity you’ll get the new style end screen that mirrors the MARQ/FR945. This includes a course map profile, along with key stats. As you press the top right button you’ll iterate through some of the overriding training load metrics. He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014 . The Fenix 6 comes in three sizes – 42mm, 47mm, and 51mm – and there are multiple versions of each. The Pro editions have more internal storage, allow you to upload maps, and have Wi-Fi connectivity for faster data transfers. In the event you want to dig into another NYC run, I’ve got this one here on the DCR Analyzer. The Fenix 6 did struggle a bit to stay on the path, but did better than the FR935 once I got into the main building portion of the city.