46 thoughts on “Garmin ENDURO – What’s Rubbish So Far”

1. Ouch! What a burn! That’s painful. My experience was nothing like it.

   Setup was a breeze, no weird hangups or anything, Garmin Express on Mac seemed a tad sluggish but it never was a speed demon with other watches to begin with (I started with mobile, then added to Express just in case there were any updates as Garmin OTA is pain). Stryd didn’t have their data field/app updated for Enduro until late Feb 18 if not 19, and then needed another update to fix the screen alignment. That was the only real bummer. Can’t say much for GNSS — haven’t been running outside. But after about 18 miles on treadmill, 3 hours+ gym and increased daily usage due to all the setup over the past 6 days, the battery is still at 83%, which should be good for 36 days. This in my book is priceless. I finally don’t have to itemize cables going somewhere for more than a few days.

   Oh, and I’d say the watch feels pretty good on my hand, but I’d imagine it’s mostly due to a new strap. These loopy nylon things definitely improve fit.

   PS I know people kind of hate that yellow green ring around screen but I sort of dig it. Makes the watch less boring black puck it would have otherwise been.

2. Record alerts are per-device in Garmin-world, I think.

   Are you comparing experience directly to a fenix 6X or 6X solar? Some of the navigation and setup must be identical.

   It’s not uncommon to have hesitations of up to a second or two switching modes in the 6X from time to time. I suspect that is related to power management.

   I bet the GNSS stuff is due to power management and dialing in a balance of power for sampling accuracy vs drain.

   To me this corroborates the idea that it is a new platform board inside. The whole reason to come out with a low volume specialty device for a new platform (eg Chronos, Marq, enduro) is to shake out problems and inflict them on a small customer base that values some other special feaure (high end case or extreme battery life).

   1. I wonder if the neon yellow is a deliberate choice meant to limit the appeal of the enduro because they know it has enormous battery life but must also know it has some issues.

      It seems like a lot of what is putting you off is the actual fenix 6X case design.

      FWIW, I have had the strong impression that the 51mm case design has always had the best RF (and therefore GNSS) performance. It’s essentially the fenix 3 case design with tweaked bezel styling. (I never saw an OG fenix or fenix 2 but maybe it goes back to the beginning.).

      The 5 and 5S had RF problems induced by the case shrink. I still think the 6 and 6S have problems that the 6X case doesn’t. I switched from a fenix 5 to a 5X because of this during the f5 generation.

      To have a huge regression in GNSS performance suggests to me that the electronics have changed significantly.

      I find the 51mm case totally normal having worn it daily for years. I have several friends with 51mm fenix watches down to tiny women. Most people who thought it felt huge to begin with say they are used to it and don’t notice after a week or two. I preferred the wider straps on the 5X from the jump and actually the thickness is the same.

      The significantly larger display on the 6X-derived SKUs is a huge deal for the 40+ crowd once presbyopia starts to set in, it’s a big help, especially if you are not prepared to run in glasses with progressive lenses.

      1. I have had the strong impression that the 51mm case design has always had the best RF (and therefore GNSS) performance.
         Same here. The bezel is part of the satellite antenna system on the Fenix units, and the x-size units’ circumference is closer to matching the wavelength for GPS than the smaller units, so it makes sense physically. This could have implications for future dual-band watches – the second frequency is lower, so the sensitivity might be compromised at the longer wavelength on the x units, never mind the smaller ones.

         The fenix 1 & 2 had plastic cases with no metal bezel, and weren’t stellar performers for position.

      2. The bezel is part of the satellite antenna system on the Fenix units, and the x-size units’ circumference is closer to matching the wavelength for GPS than the smaller units, so it makes sense physically.

         EE here. Anything and everything on the watch is part of the antenna (including your body). This is regardless whether it’s metallic or just changing the dielectric constant. Putting an antenna next to your water-filled body will detune it downwards in frequency. We saw that with the 2.4GHz antennas on our hearing aids.

         Regarding the size, then it is correct: the smaller volume, the poorer radiator (this goes for both receiving and transmitting).

      3. <i> Putting an antenna next to your water-filled body will detune it downwards in frequency.</i>
         Speaking as someone who has built a lot of MRI transmit/receive coils, too true – not just water but salt water at that.
         But the GPS chip is actually connected to the bezel by gold pins, see
         http://www.f-blog.info/garmin-fenix-6x-pro-disassembly-or-teardown-whatever-you-say/ which contains a teardown, so it’s clearly engineered to be part of the receiver, there’s no handwaving here.
         A loop antenna at L1 would be about 6cm diameter, still a bit bigger than the F6x or Enduro bezels (that would be a seriously hefty watch)

      4. Dom,

         Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that you were hand-waving about the bezel, more that everything in and about that watch affects the antenna performance.

         I wasn’t aware that it was electrically connected to the antenna proper. Very interesting read, thanks for the link!
         How is the antenna in other watches? My ancient FR210 had a rather small ceramic chip antenna, which would point mostly upwards if you carried it on your left arm. That one could be taken apart with screws (and had to, when the SW crashed hard), but not so with the 735.

      5. Yup, sorry, hand waving was probably a poor choice of word. Agree with you entirely about everything affecting performance, so many interactions at those frequencies. The 310xt had a little ceramic chip below the screen, tilted at an angle to face the sky, same sort of thing. Not sure about the newer ones but I think they’re chip as well. Don’t know if they’re tilted, which is harder when you’re trying to make the watches thin. Trouble with the bezel antenna is that it isn’t pointing in the ideal direction. I am so hard on watches hiking and trail running that I’ll take a minor hit on precision for the robustness though.

         Can’t find a tear down of a 935 or 945, but there’s a partial disassembly of a 735 here: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Garmin+Forerunner+735XT+Teardown/117852 It looks as though the black component with the long number starting 700- might be the antenna.

      6. I think titanium is an order of magnitude less conductive than iron. It has been a long time since 2nd semester physics but would that not influence its usefulness as an antenna vs steel? The point of an antenna is to receive an induced current from the remote source.

         It seems like a reasonable prediction that all other things being equal, a titanium bezel on a 51mm fenix 6X case would have poorer reception of GPS than a steel antenna/bezel in the fenix 6X. That would make a difference at the margin between picking up a reasonable GPS point and not.

         Maybe 5K will spring for the other enduro SKU and compare them side-by-side to test this hypothesis.

      7. “Maybe (TFK) will spring for the other enduro SKU and compare them side-by-side to test this hypothesis.”
         🙂
         I’m not DCR and I have budgets! I’m going to have to sell the Enduro in a few months.

      8. Brian, titanium has a conductivity approx 4x lower than iron (2.4 vs 10) according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity

         Having a lower conductivity will result in higher losses, but I’m not sure how it would impact the reception of RF energy (if at all)

      9. I don’t think it will affect the signal much, but it will affect the noise levels, though not as much as it looks as first glance. The Johnson noise from its resistance scales with square root of resistance, and at that frequency the current will be flowing in skin depth, which is deeper for poorer conductors, so the resistance goes roughly as the square root of resistive rather than linearly. So overall roughly root 2 increased noise from that source, and it won’t be the only noise source, so overall might not be very important

      10. Agree, that black component (700-00073-02) would be the antenna. If you look in Step 7 (last picture), there are two pins that would seem to connect to it.

          That means that the antenna is at the “top” of the device, which means that unless you’re turning your wrist, it is actually looking downwards to the ground. I recall that the FR210’s antenna was placed at the other end, so it would have pointed upwards. That might explain why I found thr FR210 tracks to be more accurate than the 735 tracks.

   2. the GNSS can be normal for 5k then weird then normal again.

      1. That seems consistent with a power management hypothesis.

      2. yes!
         also FYI (Which you wont believe!)
         The memory available on Enduro for CIQ is the same as F5, F5, F6, F6s ie lower than 5X/5plus, 6 PRO Series, 6X.

      3. I’m not surprised about the memory at all. Why wouldn’t it be the same memory as a fenix 6 “standard”? It is clearly running a firmware and hardware derivative of the same capability as the f6 “standard” (non-pro). Volatile memory costs electricity to power and refresh it, so they wouldn’t want to put in more than “necessary”.

         I’m almost surprised that they allow ConnectIQ at all. The MonkeyC interpreter consumes noticeably more energy than native data recording capabilities. It’s quite noticeable with the Stryd Zones and Power Zones Chart data fields running or if you are were to install a 3rd party watch face. I’m sure it’s an effect for running the music apps too but decoding the mp3 and streaming over BT uses so much power it swamps all the other effects.

   3. Record alerts are per-device in Garmin-world, I think.

      You can sync them to a new device by going to https://connect.garmin.com/modern/personal-records and clicking Send to Device. Has to be done separately for each sport, though. I think our host’s point is that it would be easy to sync that automatically during setup (and I’m not about to disagree with it!)

      1. indeed so 😉

3. GPS tracks are crap in fenixes, so no suprise here(shifted to side of your wrist with watch), another thing u are not the first one to notice that it is slower than fenix 6 pro 🙂

4. Why doesn’t Garmin give you media loaners? Seems like they give it to everyone except you.

   1. only Ray is allowed to say what he wants.

   2. Probably due to articles that talk about leaks?

   3. Garmin has never told me what to say about either leaks or products (edit:actually they did once ask). When I comment on leaks or FCC filings the info I refer to is already in the public domain.

      1. +1 on FCC filings. They are public domain knowledge.

5. It seems to me that fenix platform is getting worse and worse. They are adding a lot of features but the main issues are still not fixed. I’m curious to see how the ecosystem will evolve with the new CIQ4. Maybe we will have a big increase in performance.

   at the moment it seems to me that Apple is becoming more and more competitive . Polar has great recovery and training analysis , Coros is trying to become competitive in this market from a price point (while still lacking in a lot of features that you want to see in a sportwatch) and Garmin is the brand with the most features but not great at doing basic things.

   Im using a coros pace 2 but I’m not so impressed by it. From a price point is great but not the best platform to use. I keep thinking at the polar ecosystem as an alternative even if they have some big problems too.

   1. Garmin are losing the plot and although they have made record profits I still think this is the start of the rot that will sink the ship.

      Unsustainable and not customer friendly business practices by Garmin in my view include:

      1. Not supporting old devices with latest features beyond 4 years. Whilst from a technology perspective (think cellphones) this makes sense from a watch perspective it doesn’t. Fenix price is basically the same as a Tag Heuer. Tag Heuer lasts a lifetime (granted with no sports features). Fenix redundant after a few years. Worst of all only a 1 year warrantee after which you pay exorbitant prices for repairs or warranty replacements.
      2. Expensive – Fenix models especially are way overpriced. Compare the price of a Fenix 3 years ago to a Fenix 6X today. Its like a 5 times the increase with no real new features that work accurately. The only real improvement was maps and battery life. OHR – fail and worse than a chest strap, all the other fancy metrixs like Vo2Max, PulseOx, Recovery – are all data driven best guestimates and nowhere near accurate. Useful maybe but not at the price that Garmin are charging for essentially best guess estimates.
      3. Garmin Enduro is a big fail. Less features for a much much higher price. The battery life is great yes but at that price who are you kidding Garmin.
      4. Releasing products before they are ready for mass market and essentially your customer who paid a high price for the product in the first case become your test subjects for bug fixes.
      5. A confusing and every growing array of product lines with features removed or added that in some cases just make no sense. Garmin Enduro with no maps? Venu SQ with no barometer, the list goes on.

      I was a big Garmin supporter but I sincerely hope competitors manage to catch up and drive down these ridiculous prices.

      1. I sense you are frustrated and I get that, but I don’t really agree.

         The all day oHR (incl Body Battery, respiration rate, sleep tracking, and pulse ox), maps, music, and battery life make a 6X a substantial upgrade from a fenix 3, in my opinion.

         Every, every modern electronics manufacturer ships bugs. Lots of bugs. Sometimes they ship problematic but non-fatal hardware designs (I’m looking at you fenix 5, iPhone 4, and Apple TiBook). Garmin is not especially poor in this regard. Every company that supports their software over time ships an initial firmware that has less features and more bugs than they eventually support on the same hardware.

         Price is a value judgment but a Tag Heur is 2 to 30+ times more expensive than fenix 6X pro. I agree they feel expensive devices but I also use my fenix daily so it’s less than $0.75 /day for the expected 3 year life. Garmin has set prices that sell in quantities they are happy with or they would lower them.

         A big part of Garmin’s product strategy is clearly market segmentation with a lot of different case designs but seems to be about 2-3 electronics board designs per generation shared across all of the watches. Tons of cases and adding or removing software features at different price points are their strategy, which is the opposite of Apple’s one device for everyone strategy. As their wearable revenue is way up, it seems to be working.

         To me the problem Garmin has is making the features more accessible and easier to use. The Garmin Connect Mobile platform could be better and have more useful presentation of training data like Polar and Whoop, if not Training Peaks. Ideally the FirstBeat performance metrics would be a lot more accurate. I think they are useless for a well-trained athlete as currently implemented.

      2. Apple Watch has VERY VERY few bugs and Apple’s strategy is more profitable than Garmin’s
         (Different target markets, I know)

      3. To each their own. To me the useful features you mention – body battery, respiration rate, sleep tracking and pulse ox are not accurate enough for the price charged but that is my view.
         Also when I see the profits Garmin has made this year it confirms my own suspicion that the mark up on their devices are ridiculously high.
         Agreed that software bugs is common in the technology space. I understand its a complicated issue, I still don’t have to like it. My Garmin 310XT was a bullet proof device that worked perfectly at a reasonable price. Modern devices although improved misses the mark.

6. Is this a CIQ3 or a CIQ4 device? – why would you want to buy a new CIQ3 device, when you have no idea if it’s going to be supported by CIQ4 and will be effectively obsoleted very quickly?

   I’d never be a customer for a Fenix, but the CIQ3/4 thing is definitely holding me back from considering the 745 (it’s come down to sensible price levels now).

   1. i’ve asked but no-one seems to know the answer.
      Several, including me, ASSUME it will be ciq4 compatible.

   2. I asked that question on DCR site. He said Garmin’s reply was a “no comment”.
      I suspect once the cat is out of the bag as to which watches are not CIQ4 compliant it will have a negative effect on sales – or Garmin further reduce the price.
      If CIQ4 is important to you I’d hold off any future purchase until that position has been made clear.

      1. Thanks Will, that’s an intriguing answer.

         CIQ4 is only important to me from the viewpoint that new features/updates for the older products tends to get dropped like hot coals when the newer CIQ comes out.
         My 735 is a CIQ2, that’s how I know…

         I’m definitely holding off on purchases until I know what’s up with CIQ3/4. My gut says that they’d want a high-end device to be the first (couple of) products with CIQ4. So my guess is that a 255 would still be CIQ3, and the 745 would not be upgradeable to CIQ4. Dammit.

7. Saving me money here, ‘preciate you LOL

   1. I thought the Garmin Purchase Links at the end were a bit hopeful 😉

8. Surely buying any Garmin device in the first six months after release is fraught with danger? Personally got burnt by the 645 so won’t be repeating that experience.

   1. i thought Garmin had turned that corner.
      I suspect what we see is a ‘new watch’ introduced and then refined via new variants over 2 years, or more. thus the variants normally appear ever-more stable
      eg 745 was pretty good
      so maybe the Enduro really is the start of the next generation.

9. why doesnt dcrainmaker find the same errors?

   1. I only skipped through his detailed review but I DO remember noticing that he found similar GLONASS errors. Maybe there were other negative comments there I can’t remember.
      Regarding some of the other negative findings, above, there’s no point in putting them into a review as one moth later Garmin will have fixed them all! Negative reviews sell ZERO product. Literally ZERO. No-one (including me) is going to REGULARLY spend a week writing negative reviews for no return. That’s why some products don’t get many reviews….it’s pointless doing the work if they are rubbish.
      If you want a more detailed answer you’ll have to ask him.

      1. https://youtu.be/16zEfsA_Y1w

         I don’t make this stuff up. Here is a prime example. I’ve done lots of testing on this, if you use the climbpro stuff a LOT you can pretty much always get to the scenario where you can’t save at the end. This really is Garmin’s job not mine. I want to write about the awesome features and not the bugs they have.

      2. Ah the blue triangle of death, I remember that well on the 645 ’til Garmin fixed it. No doubt they’ll do the same on the Enduro, give it 6 months or so 🙂

      3. Yeah, I’m not doubting your making it up. I’m simply point out I haven’t had it yet on this unit (including using ClimbPro). My guess is some other factor is at play, but there’s no easy way for either of us to know what that factor is.

   2. Dartmart-

      I talked about GPS accuracy issues. But, as illustrated perfectly, people don’t bother reading that.

      I included boatloads of data, so you’re more than welcome to pick it apart. But I show the good and bad points for HR & GPS accuracy. I just don’t make it the title of the post (nor do I do that on any product). My post titles are pretty vanilla. It’s just the way I am. In fact, about the most non-vanilla I’ve ever been on a post title was a very strong anti-Garmin post.

      I didn’t see UI slowness issues in the final firmware, in fact, one could easily watch my 20 minute long user interface video to see that quite plainly. But again, people don’t bother doing that. I saw UI slowness issues in earlier beta ones, but not the final firmware. I don’t typically focus on beta issues because they aren’t what the end user sees, unless the issues continues, or if I suspect the issue isn’t actually solved. In this case, they said they solved the issue, and I clearly saw on two units it solve instantly with the update.

      I saw zero crashes on either unit.

      As for taking it on/off a charger taking 5 seconds longer…umm..I don’t know? I’m not sure I’d notice or care to be honest, but I was far more interested in not using the charger at all, to see how battery life faired longer term. After all, that’s kinda the point of this watch.

      I write products whether or not they get good reviews. If a product doesn’t get a review posted yet, it’s simply just cause I haven’t had the time to write it (or because interest from me other others have faded to the point nobody cares). There’s no benefit to me writing only positive reviews, ultimately, I know you’re going to buy something – so I’d rather you do the research across all the reviews and buy something that you like. I have zero care for which brand someone buys, as long as they’re happy with it (via my links would be great, but there’s all the products there on Amazon/REI/etc…so…shrug).

10. I think everyone more or less tolerated Garmin models because they were good and had lots of features for the price point. But with the price hike of recent years, people get tired of looking the other way, there are bugs not acceptable in a 900 euros product with a lifetime of (probably) 3 years.

11. “What’s Rubbish So Far” – The price. I suspect it’ll follow the usual path of reducing by £100 every 6months until it finds its natural level.

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