Flaws/Problems of Garmin Watches you should know before buying them
Garmin made some excellent smartwatches. But there are some issues that you should know before you decide whether to buy them. I realized them after I received my Garmin Tactix 7 - Pro Edition. Now, I just returned it
1. It cannot record your multiple sleeping periods or daytime naps a day
Garmin watches only record one sleeping period (probably your nighttime sleep) per day. If you travel a lot, as a shift worker, have an irregular sleeping schedule, or want to take some naps during the daytime, it just won’t record any of them. Many people cannot have a regular sleep at night no matter that is because they need to work at midnight or because of some medical condition. Garmin just doesn’t let you record those fragmented sleeping.
Since 7 years ago, this problem of tracking sleep for shift workers has already been discussed on Garmin’s forums, but it just never got resolved.
On the other hand, if you have a regular sleeping schedule, although Garmin watches can track that, it’s probably not that important to track your sleep anyway.
2. It won’t detect your activity and ask you whether you want to start recording your running/walking/biking… automatically, if you forget to
If you do not manually select what activity you are doing and start recording manually, Garmin watches only tag such activity as a Move IQ Event. Move IQ Events neither shows up as an activity in Garmin Connect App nor records complete information such as GPS tracking of your activity.
Even some cheap $30 smart band will detect your activity and pops up to ask whether you want to start recording your running/walking/biking…
Of course, this shouldn’t be a problem if you are doing some training on purpose. But this can be very useful to let you record your commuting walk/biking when you are very likely forgetting to press the start tracking button.
3. You cannot choose which notification from your iPhone shows up
Suppose you use iPhone and want to manage the notification from which app should appear in the Garmin watches. In that case, the only way is to turn the notification on/off for the iOS notification center as described on Garmin’s website. This can be super frustrating because we usually want to keep unimportant notifications in the iOS notification center while only sending important notifications to our smartwatches.
Again, even some shitty cheap smart band’s app allows you to do so on iOS. So, it’s really not a technical restriction, and I have no idea why Garmin does not take care of this kind of basic thing in their iOS app.
4. It cannot select which calendar to sync from your iPhone
I used to access my Google calendars in the iOS built-in calendar app. However, there are some unimportant calendars in my Google accounts. So, I’ve hidden them in my iOS calendar app. But the big problem with Garmin smartwatches is that they sync all calendars on iOS even if you already disable (hide) some calendars in your iOS calendar app.
Final thoughts — Fantastic hardware with poor software/firmware
Finally, I’d like to say, although the built quality, the battery life, the physical buttons, and even the flashlight of the Garmin Tactix7 are excellent, its general user experience is not ideal. The menu system is unnecessarily complicated. And the UI response speed is not very good. If you have ever used a professional stopwatch like Seiko S141, you may be disappointed that how come a $1000 smartwatch’s UI/UX in 2022 still works like a Nokia 3310. I even doubt whether they have some good UX designers in their company. I hope that Garmin will improve the UX design of their products such that I can love their products in the future again. And I can say Garmin Tactix7 is an excellent watch, just not smart at all.
Take action
If you also share the same feeling that we do love Garmin, but we really want Garmin to improve their products, please don’t hesitate to submit the request to Garmin: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/forms/ideas/
The more customers give them applicable/specific feedback, the more chance we can get great smartwatches from them in the future!
