I reviewed Garmin’s $1,000 Apple Watch Ultra competitor. It’s an odd one

Like all aspects of technology, smartwatches have always prioritized thinness and design over the chief complaint that most people have: battery life. The laws of physics always prove true: you can have something thin, something that lasts forever, or something that does everything, but you can never have all three.

Yet, amid all the best smartwatches sold by Apple, Samsung, and Google, a range of thicker watches promises battery life of up to several weeks longer. Some of these are hybrid smartwatches, focusing on combining analog watches with limited digital capabilities, while the premium range of smartwatches offers better battery life in a bigger build.

The Garmin Fenix 8 sits somewhere between a regular smartwatch and a hybrid. It offers all the usual features you’d expect from a sports watch. The benefit? Seventeen-day battery life and all the sports tracking you can ask for. The cost? A heavier build and an average smartwatch experience. The result? A watch that’s hard to recommend at $1,000, unless you’re serious about sports. This is our Garmin Fenix 8 review.

Garmin Fenix 8 specs

The Garmin Fenix 8 is big and built for anything

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There’s no getting around it: the Fenix 8 is a stylish-looking rugged watch. This wtach is designed for those who know no bounds, and while many design changes ensure it’s suitable for everyone, Garmin prioritized battery life and ruggedness over thinness. The design language skews far more toward rugged appeal than the Galaxy Watch Ultra and Apple Watch Ultra 2, which achieve far less, but blend better into daily life.

I’m using the 47mm model in stainless steel, which weighs 80 grams with the included silicone wrist strap or 59 grams on its own. The titanium model is a bit lighter at 73 grams with the watch band (and 52 grams on its own). For context, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 weighs 62 grams. The added heft is a necessary trade-off for the ruggedness and battery life, but that doesn’t stop the Fenix 8 from feeling heavy on the wrist.

This heft comes with many benefits. Every smartwatch can double as an average flashlight, but this means a quickly depleted battery and having to place your arm at an awkward angle. The flashlight at the top of the Fenix 8 beneath the display faces forward, and it’s an ideal, if not perfect implementation. I often turn to my phone for a flashlight, and while the iPhone 16 Pro flashlight is significantly brighter, the Garmin Fenix 8 is more practical.

From diving in the Atlantic to skiing in the Alps, the Garmin Fenix 8 is designed to survive it all.

There’s no doubt that this watch is made to be rugged. Regardless of which model you buy, there are leakproof metal buttons, a new guard covering the vital sensors, and a military rating for shock, thermal, and water resistance up to a depth of 100 meters. From diving in the Atlantic to skiing in the Alps, the Garmin Fenix 8 is designed to survive it all.

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This is my first Garmin watch and, after having used more traditional smartwatches for many years, the buttons on the Fenix 8 are great, but mildly confusing. However, if you’ve used a Garmin watch before, these controls will be super familiar. We’ve all been frustrated when trying to use a smartwatch with a wet screen, but being able to navigate through the entire experience using buttons is more useful than I would have expected.

On the rear, you’ll find the optical heart rate sensor, as well as the charging connector pins. Unlike most smartwatches, there’s no wireless charging. Instead, the Garmin Fenix 8 connects via a proprietary USB cable, which means it’s unusable while charging. Thankfully, you can still prop the Fenix 8 up on its side while it’s topping up, but it’s far less convenient and secure. There are a few design decisions that may feel odd coming from a regular smartwatch, but the Garmin Fenix 8 delivers on its ambitions of being a rugged smartwatch that’s ready for anything.

A choice of two displays

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When researching the specifications of the Garmin Fenix 8, I quickly realized why I had strayed far from Garmin in the past. Alongside a few watch strap styles and two choices of build, there are also two choices of display. Each has its benefits, but much of this is the remnants of merging two previous product lines into the Fenix 8 range.

First, there’s the model I’m testing with an AMOLED display. The Fenix 8 I’m testing is effectively a Garmin Epix watch, although the smallest sizes have a 0.1-inch larger display. Then there’s the MIP-based Fenix 8 Solar, which has a less-reflective and less-vibrant display, but can also recharge itself using solar. This is from the previous Fenix range. Not confusing at all, right?

The AMOLED model I’ve been testing is fantastic. It’s vibrant and fairly easy to read in all conditions, and it’s large enough to be useful for mapping and triaging information. In particular, some of Garmin’s watch faces have improved massively, and the color-rich AMOLED display makes them a joy to use. It’s designed to work in a variety of environments, which plays into the sports focus of the health features.

Plenty of sports-centric health/fitness features

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Everything on the Garmin Fenix 8 is designed with specific sports in mind. If you are interested in skiing, diving, hiking, surfing, or golfing, this is the smartwatch for you. Like the Garmin Descent series, you get a fully functional dive computer that you always have on you. It offers key information like depth, time, compass, and water temperature from your wrist, but it won’t integrate with an oxygen tank, so it won’t be suitable for serious divers.

The Garmin Fenix 8 is ideal if you are multidisciplined. It’s more than just a companion on your wrist; many of the new features are tailored to help you get better at the sports you like. Enjoy surfing, golfing or skiing? There’s a dedicated workout profile for these, and there’s support for tracking almost the entire spectrum of popular sports. In college and want to make the big time? This is probably the watch you need to track your data.

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There is a lot more value than just for sports enthusiasts. The heart rate monitor is ECG-enabled and offers 24/7 continuous heart rate monitoring. The watch can also use the data from a paired heart rate monitor during the activity, which appeals to me for its benefit of tracking my heart during exercise.

There’s also detailed sleep tracking, and the long battery life on the Garmin Fenix 8 makes it ideal for this challenge. However, it’s worth noting that the interface on the watch and the accompanying Garmin Connect app means there are several taps requiredto find the previous night’s data. The Garmin Fenix 8 tracks a lot of data, but makes it far too difficult to access and learn from it.

Far more average than a regular smartwatch

The same Ring camera notification on the Garmin Fenix 8 (left) and Apple Watch Series 10. Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends

If I were a serious sportsperson, the Garmin Fenix 8 would likely be my dream smartwatch. But it’s precisely because I’m not that it has left me wanting. Although it’s billed as a smartwatch, it’s a significantly inferior experience to those offerings from phone makers.

The navigation buttons make it easy to traverse the interface, but as you do so, the Fenix 8 starts to fall apart. There’s a big display, but once you get multiple menus in, notifications still show very little. There are no quick replies or actions, making it a fairly useless way of triaging your life. There are also a lot of different menus that require acclimating to; the Garmin Fenix 8 is a watch that you can evolve and explore with, but there’ll be growing pains along the way.

The experience is limited, and this may be by design, but the rest of the watch is equally frustrating. Most smartwatches are fast in the transitions, but the Garmin Fenix 8 is noticeably slower. There’s a perpetual lag, especially after using the buttons for input, and while it has improved with an update, it’s still frustrating given the price tag.

The Garmin Fenix 8 is a watch for all your adventures, but there’ll be growing pains along the way.

A particular surprise is the lack of cellular connectivity. The Garmin Fenix 8 is designed for the great outdoors, but you always need a phone nearby for anything other than some simple voice commands. There’s an irony to this, as one of the new features is the speaker/microphone, which can only be used for voice commands. These voice commands are useful, allowing you to start activities, set timers, or record notes straight from the watch, but the lack of cellular connectivity is missed.

You can get some features like satellite SOS, tracking, and weather with the inReach features in the Garmin Messenger app, but this requires additional hardware and software. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 costs $200 less and includes both satellite features and the hardware for cellular connectivity.

There is one particularly nice feature about the Garmin Fenix 8: the Glance menu. This combines key information such as calendar, battery, weather, sunrise and sunset times, health metrics, and more in one easy to digest screen. There’s just enough data to make it very useful as a dashboard for your life. It’s simple, yet incredibly effective.

Battery life for days

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Even though there are challenges with the Garmin Fenix 8 experience, it excels in the key area that most wearables fail: battery life. How much battery life you’ll get will depend on how you use your watch.

The model I’ve been testing (47mm AMOLED non-titanium) is slated for a maximum of up to 23 days on a single charge. However, that’s in the battery saver watch mode that disables many features. If you want to use it as a smartwatch, it’s rated as up to seven days with the always-on display (AOD) or up to 16 days without. That’s less impressive, but still significantly better than the competition.

The Fenix 8’s charging cable. Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends

As expected, the battery life drops when using various sports modes or with intensive tasks. In GPS-only mode — the basic type of GPS tracking — the battery life is rated as up to 47 hours without the AOD and 37 hours with. Need GPS while preserving battery life? You’ll get up to 81 hours, but it’s not available with AOD enabled. Want the best signal using all satellite systems and multiple frequency bands? You’ll get up to 35 hours of continuous usage, although if you enable music mode, this drops to just 10 hours (the lowest possible).

Things get interesting when considering the size. I’m using the 47mm model, but if you go for the smaller 43mm version, battery life drops significantly. The maximum battery life drops from 23 days to 15 days, while smartwatch mode drops to just four days with the AOD enabled (versus 7 days). Every rating is significantly lower, sometimes up to 40% lower.

The Garmin Fenix 8 is a shining example of smartwatch battery life done properly.

Conversely, if you go for the bigger 51mm model, the numbers increase by a similar amount across all metrics, with battery saver watch mode increasing to 41 days and up to 29 days in smartwatch mode without the AOD. That’s phenomenal battery life given everything this watch can do. Not enough for you? The Fenix 8 Solar drops the AMOLED display, but offers the same experience with up to 107 days of battery life using solar charging and 48 days without. The Garmin Fenix 8 is a shining example of smartwatch battery life done properly.

Garmin Fenix 8 price and availability

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The Garmin Fenix 8 represents an amalgamation of features available on other Garmin devices. Garmin has packaged it up as a new product with new features and, crucially, significant price hikes.

The cheapest Fenix 8 is $1,000 for the Fenix 8 47mm Slate Gray with a black band that I’ve been testing. The titanium option costs $100 more and comes in two color combinations: titanium with an orange band like the original Apple Watch Ultra 2, or a dark gray titanium body with a black silicone band.

The 43mm model is priced the same, although it comes in different color combinations. Then there’s the 51mm model, which costs $100 more at $1,200. This is the best value for the significant battery life increases, if you don’t mind the larger size. If you want the Solar edition for the extra battery life or the alternative display choice, it’s priced the same as the AMOLED versions.

Should you buy the Garmin Fenix 8?

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The Garmin Fenix 8 is one of the most feature-rich smartwatches ever, but all this comes at a cost, both literally and figuratively. The $1,000 price tag makes it hard to recommend given an average smartwatch experience, while the sheer suite of features means it does too much for most users.

The biggest issue with recommending the Garmin Fenix 8 is that most of the features are available in other Garmin smartwatches that are significantly cheaper. In many ways, it is a repackaged smartwatch, the product born of a desire to include all of Garmin’s greatest hits in one device. Considering this is aimed at loyal Garmin fans, the price increase of up to $300 over the last generation is a step too far for most people.

If you’re a hardcore fitness enthusiast, enjoy Garmin’s smartwatch experience, and have at least $1,000 to spend, the Garmin Fenix 8 is an undeniably powerful smartwatch — and one you’re bound to enjoy. But for everyone else, you’re likely better off with a rugged watch from Apple or Samsung, or even one of Garmin’s cheaper smartwatch options.