LAS VEGAS — When Garmin launches a $600 smartwatch just a few weeks before Apple is about to introduce its category killer, the company must be pretty confident.
Here at International CES, Garmin is showing off its new line of Fenix 3 Sports Watches — multisport fitness trackers with built-in GPS that can pair with a smartphone to show various alerts and notifications. It comes in three models, including the handsome Sapphire, which has a hard sapphire crystal face. It’s a beauty, but surely doomed, right?
When asked if Garmin was worried about the Apple Watch, due to be launched sometime this spring, a spokeswoman confidently said absolutely not. She explained that Garmin’s watches are unapologetically outdoor fitness devices built for sportspeople who want a watch to do very specific things — track workouts – and aren’t interested in beaming heartbeats or sending emojis.
“They are purpose-built,” she said, gesturing at the display. “They’re built for hiking, biking and running. Garmin has been in the wearables market for 10 years. We’re not worried at all.”
The Fenix watches are designed for running, biking, skiing, snowboarding, climbing and fitness training. They are water-resistant to 100 meters and include the standard altimeter, barometer and compass sensors. They have lots of watch functions including alarms, alerts, timers and stopwatch, and have a wide range of pairing functions via Bluetooth LE.
The spokeswoman called them “relatively smart” watches. They can’t make phone calls and can’t respond to texts, but can display alarms, calendar items, texts and phone calls. The watch face can be customized from a variety of analog and digital watch faces. The new watches will also run apps. Garmin has launched an open platform for third-party developers to create apps for the watch.
Battery life depends on mode: They get up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode, 16 hours in GPS mode and up to three months in watch mode. (It’s expected that the Apple Watch will have to be charged daily, but Apple hasn’t yet made any official announcement).
Playing with the Fenix 3 Sapphire at the booth, I was blown away by its design and functionality. It does everything, from pairing with a heart-rate monitor to recording swimming strokes. The Sapphire model is a super-good-looking watch. It’s unapologetically metal: big, chunky and hard-edged.
But the interface is the same old multi-button mishmash common to most digital watches. There are five buttons around the edge, and I quickly got lost. Even one of the Garmin PR people got confused a couple of times when trying to show me the watch’s functions. Lots of times, I tried to press the screen, but alas, it’s not touch-sensitive. I’m sure I could master it if I sat down with the inch-thick manual, but I’ve become accustomed to intuitive gadgets that need no explanation.
The Fenix 3 watches will be available in the next couple of weeks. The Sapphire will cost $599; the Silver and Grey models will be $499.
I loved the industrial design of the Fenix Sapphire, but I’ll wait for the Apple Watch.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
14 responses to “What? Us? Scared? Garmin shows no fear of Apple Watch”
UH – Well, or maybe its the other way around. Lets sell as many as possible while we can. Not being a fanboy, but history shows that people (samsung, esp) try to beat apple to the punch because they know that after, will be too late.
And they still do. What’s your point?
I can only imagine it’s to remind us all what a mindless fanboy you are. Trust us, we know already.
You seem to be completely forgetting just how late Apple was to this party. Despite having GPS capabilities since day one, iOS didn’t get inbuilt turn-by-turn navigation until it’s sixth generation. Android beat Apple to the punch here by several years(and still has a vastly superior solution). Giving Apple credit for putting the hurt on Garmin’s GPS sales is just rewriting history.
If anything, I wish Apple would revise the iPod line to go right at Garmin. Everyone I know that uses Garmin stuff, myself included, has a love-hate relationship with them. Clunky, inconsistent, buggy and not at all intuitive.
I’m not sure what products of Garmin you own, but you either own zero, or are thick between the ears; I have Garmin in my boat, on m wrist(s), in my car(s) and our flight club owns a number of in panel Garmin aviation products.
Top notch every one of them. The only complaint I have with Garmin is their Connect web-site of late…and even with the outages there for my fitness logging, their customer response has been absolutely stellar.
I cannot imagine NOT having Garmin products in our family.
On the other side, I’ve owned a MacBook Air; great device and 3 iPads: the iPad is crap on steroids. Worst user experience in any e-device I’ve ever owned.
Clearly you’ve never owned any Garmin Edge bicycle computers. So you’re wrong on both counts. But your Mom must be oh so proud her son owns a boat and belongs to a flight club. ;)
Actually, I own the 510 and 810 and Vector. Love ’em. And yes, Mom is proud, thanks! To be transparent…it’s a dinghy. ;)
HAHA! (I appreciate the humor)
Many of us in our cycling club owned the 800 – and that along with the Connect problems really soured folks on the Garmin brand. But at least with the 810, I can get a full 100 miles in without having battery issues.
To be fair, they are aiming at different users. Still, it reminds me of the phone executive who said Apple wasn’t going to “just walk in and take over” mobile phone sales.
There have been boxers that showed no fear against stronger opponents due to over-confidence and were quickly knocked down in the ring. It doesn’t matter whether Garmin shows fear of Apple or not. They should be confident but what really matters is can Garmin go toe to toe with Apple without being pummeled to death. Apple is going to try to do its own thing and probably doesn’t care about the countless other companies with smartwatches. Apple is taking its time to at least satisfy loyal customers.
Garmin shouldn’t concern itself what Apple does and stick to its own game plan. I think the Garmin Fenix line is pretty awesome and I wish Apple made fitness devices like that. The AppleWatch and Fenix would seem to target completely different users and I think there would be plenty of room for both companies to prosper.
Great until you cannot use your $600 watch because Garmin Connect is down again. I love my devices but the reliability of their web service is worse than anything else I have used in years. After months of user complaints Garmin have only today created a status page http://connect.garmin.com/status
It’s interesting to me how differently we see Garmin Connect: I’ve been using Connect for years and it’s never had a problem until recently. My complaints were met with personal emails from people at Garmin. Clearly they acknowledge they have an issue and are working on it…not the same can be said for a lot of companies. As a rabid photographer and Nikon fan boy…Nikon may well be the worst on the planet when it comes to customer service and acknowledging their customer base.
You are in the minority, trust me. If you were using a product such as the Vivofit which is dependent on the Connect service being available then you would understand. It’s been unreliable for months but since the holiday period has been down or unstable for most of the time. The Garmin support forums are full of people returning Christmas gifts to the store as they have been unable to use them.
I am sure if you had asked Motorola if they were worried about the original iphones release, they would have said similar. It is their job. It doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be eaten alive. It just means they are showing a brave face.