What are your thoughts about Sense?

[iamshepette]

• I've had Fitbits for years and years but I think I've reached the end of my rope due to frequent issues and no clear-cut fixes. I've begun to think about other options and because I am not an Apple fan, I am considering a Garmin. My needs are pretty simple... fitness/step monitoring, sleep monitoring, music and audiobooks would be nice plus it has to be very water resistant because I do a lot of outside work with horses and maintaining a small farm. Does anyone have guidance regarding their experience with Garmins? I appreciate any information you may be able to share. It makes me sad to move away from Fitbits after all these years but it seems like either throwing money away or pulling my hair out to atay with them. It's not right nor fun to spend time trying to find a solution in communities, the help documentation, the user manual, chats or phone calls to customer support. I deal with software and electronics every day -- it just shouldn't be this difficult. Thanks for your help.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Odyssey13]

Hi @iamshepette  I have friends in real life who have Apple watches and Garmin watches. The Garmin users came back to Fitbit and the Apple user just stopped using their watch. Everyone is different with what they prefer and how much money they have to spend. For outdoor work, it's going to be hard to find something that can handle the different environments that you encounter with horses and a farm.

[Guy_]

Hi @iamshepette - members of my family moved from Fitbit and Samsung to a Garmin Venu 2 Plus and are happy with their choice and have used it for swimming, though with all electronics the durability of the seal could always be an issue after a while.

They like the app, which has dark mode and detailed oxygen levels and sleep analysis and general watch accuracy, and also the watch alarm sounds and full Google Assistant and particularly longer battery life.

[t.parker]

@iamshepette it depends on your needs. What you pointed out are fundamental needs that almost any fitness tracker meets so you might find something durable and doing what you want at a lower price point. I have very few complaints about Garmin (I own Fenix 6 Pro and Fenix 7) but I use it mainly as a sports watch (one of the best options in the market). I never used Venu 2 (I'm not a fan of Garmin's smartwatch line, nothing wrong with it but it misses some features I need) but it has a much lower price point. Garmins get updates frequently with a full list of changes, you may revert updates in case something isn't right (using Garmin Express on PC) and in general the software/firmware "housekeeping" is better (I don't need to be guessing what has changed with the update and updates are announced when they are still in beta usually given to reviewers). Garmin has great battery life (and in the Solar version that can be counted in weeks). Also, Garmin isn't offering much in the health department either (is mostly a fitness/sports tracking platform), no food tracking (for that you need to use other software), etc.

Whether it's better or not it's a matter of opinion and personal requirements. With your list, you'd not use even half of all the features those watches offer. You may also miss some health tracking features (not sure if you use ones on Fitbit). For me, that doesn't matter as I focus on sports tracking and in that aspect, it is a far superior product than Fitbit but my requirements are probably sky-high when it comes to sports tracking and I do use a majority of features (even such rarely used features like using my bike computer as an extended display for the watch during rides). I didn't have any issues when it comes to hardware (both models I own) and I do swim a lot and I'm not worried about water damage (that may happen but by looking at forums and communities, it's rare). If you have no need to use a gazillion of external sensors, very detailed workouts data, training progress tracking, built-in satnav, structured workouts and whatnot then you may find it overcomplicated for what you need. Consider the pros and cons for your individual case.

One last thing. My wife recently got into running and took my F6Pro replacing her Galaxy Watch 5. GW5 has pretty good running tracking (better than Fitbit) yet even for my wife that wasn't enough and she's quite happy with functionality but she doesn't like its bulky look so still continues using GW5 daily and F6Pro during workouts/runs. She tried Sense and Sense 2 and after one use when she tried to find on the watch details of her workout right after the workout (like Garmin's Activity History) and that wasn't a function she gave up immediately. Like I said, it all comes down to individual requirements.

[iamshepette]

Thank you!

[iamshepette]

Thank you for this perspective.  It's very helpful!