Garmin Enduro 3 In-Depth Review: The Cheaper/Better Fenix 8?

The Enduro 3 is here, and seemingly has one mission, and one mission only: Go big on battery. Nearly triple their competitors, upwards of 320 hours in a regular GPS configuration. At least in theory, anyway. But fear not, I’ve been testing that.

Oh – and the kicker? It’s $200 cheaper than the Fenix 8 Solar, yet has all the same software features. For real.

The Enduro 3 essentially takes all the functionality of the existing Fenix 7X Pro (including that ECG-capable sensor, offline music, payments, etc…), and merges it with the new software features and user interface of the new Fenix 8 Solar. And atop that (literally), they revamped the solar display to be 120% more powerful, and improved the display clarity by concurrently removing the majority of the solar panel surface. Don’t worry, I know that sounds confusing, I’ll explain more below.

The result is a watch I’ve been beating to death over the last little while, across epic hikes in the Pyrenees, rides, runs, swims, and more. All in the pursuit of, mostly, figuring out just how far I can push the battery life. Albeit, I admit that unlike my Enduro 2 test, I wasn’t able to allocate however much time was required to hike until the battery died. Not sure my kids would want me gone for a month.

In any case, as always, I’ve been putting all these units to the test with crazy long mountain hikes, runs, rides, swims, dives, and more. Finally, note that Garmin sent over media loaner units to test out. As usual, this review is not sponsored (nor does any company get to preview anything I review), and I don’t take any advertiser money from any companies I review. Once this unit goes back, I’ll go out and buy my own for any future testing needs. If you found this review useful, you can use the links at the bottom, or consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which makes the site ad-free. And, of course, it makes you awesome.

(Oh, quick note: I’m experimenting with doing certain reviews a bit differently, namely ones where things have boatloads of overlap with concurrently released products, like the Fenix 8 yesterday. So in this review, I’m focused on spending more time on geeking out on the differences and what they mean, versus spending time writing about how to look at your steps and basics. Might tweak later on a rainy day.)

What’s New & How it Differs:

What’s actually more interesting though, is that in its third iteration, Enduro has had a rather dynamic life. At least in terms of its hardware parents. Here, let me explain (and, why this matters):

Enduro 1 (2021): For this first edition, Garmin took a Fenix 6X Pro, and gutted all the features people actually cared about to achieve higher battery life, including maps, leaving you with breadcrumb and battery. Obviously, this didn’t go over well in the real world, because the exact people that wanted the battery life, very much wanted maps. Still, it put a marker in the sand for Garmin.

Enduro 2 (2022): For this second go around, Garmin took the Fenix 7X, and simply gave it a bigger battery. It had all the features of the Fenix 7X, just more battery, a slightly bigger case, and actually even a new flashlight twice as bright as the Fenix 7X (that would eventually become standard on the Fenix 7 Pro, and now Fenix 8).

Enduro 3 (2024): Garmin is now splitting the difference. Think of this more akin to a Fenix 7X Pro, but with the user interface and software features of the Fenix 8. It doesn’t have the speaker/microphone or dive features of the Fenix 8, but it has all the software features. It’s also got a redesigned solar panel to give it crazy battery life.

In other words, I’d actually argue that out of all of today’s releases, the Enduro 3 embodies the product that Garmin listened to the customer base most carefully on. Most of the Enduro users have said they don’t care or want smartphone features like microphones or speakers. And thus, Garmin seemed to give them what they want.

First though, let’s dig into exactly how the Enduro 3 differs from an Enduro 2:

– Price reduced from $1,099 to $899 (seriously, they actually decreased the price)
– Added new Garmin Elevate Gen5 Optical HR sensor (ECG and wrist-temperature capable)
– Increase the battery life claims substantially
– New solar technology, increases solar harvesting (2x energy of Enduro 2), but also increases clarity
– Increased thickness of solar band around outside edge, changed to black
– Removed transparent solar panel across surface of display (increasing visibility)
– Enduro 3 case/housing is 57g
– Enduro 3 UltraFit band is 6g
– Enduro 3 total weight is 63g (compared to 69g on Enduro 2)
– Revamped user interface, found on the Fenix 8, which adds the following list of items
– Added new maps radius zoom UI change
– Added new maps North Up quick toggle
– Added new maps layer selection quick access menu
– Added quick access touch unlock feature (temporarily unlocks touch, such as for a map during workout)
– Added new ‘Active Navigation’ menu system while navigating a course/waypoint/etc
– Added new consolidated ‘Saved’ feature, to find saved routes/waypoints/etc..
– Added new dynamic round-trip routing, to auto—change route mid-way to achieve a specified distance if you go off-course (e.g. set for 5 miles)
– Added ‘Set a Target’ distance reminder, to remind you to turn around after the half-way point
– Added Ski difficulty tracking option
– Added strength training plans (4-6 weeks, via Garmin Connect)
– Added new watch face editor, and new watch faces
– Added new Countdown app to countdown to various dates/events
– Added new Focus Modes
– Added new online processing of troubled GPS tracks, using internal watch sensor data to correct them
– Major redesign of user interface, including widgets, settings, and activity/workout pages
– Revamped Notification Center to include Garmin-based notifications (e.g., Morning Report or Daily Summary)

Phew, got all that? Good.

And here’s how it differs from the also-released Garmin Fenix 8 Solar:

– Enduro 3 doesn’t have speaker/microphone features (does have a normal beeper)
– Enduro 3 doesn’t have dive features
– Enduro 3 offered in a single larger size (51mm), versus multiple Fenix sizes
– Enduro 3 has bigger solar ring around the outside
– Enduro 3 is lighter at 63g, versus 95g for 51mm Fenix 8 Solar
– Enduro 3 is thicker at 15.7mm versus 51mm Fenix 8 Solar at 14.7mm
– Enduro 3 is priced at a more reasonable $899, versus $1,199 for the 51mm Fenix 8 Solar
– Both 51mm Fenix 8 Solar & Enduro 3 have same 1.4” MIP display @ 280x280px
– Both have Sapphire glass, and Titanium
– Both have 32GB for maps/music

Beyond that, all other features are the same. Thus, things like offline music, contactless payments, daily activity tracking, etc…are all identical to the Fenix 8 Solar.

Looking at the battery life, I made a little chart showing the differences, which are exceptionally notable in the GPS-only mode:

The new solar panel gets 30 minutes of GPS battery life for every 60 minutes of sunlight, whereas Enduro 2 got only 15 minutes of GPS battery per 60 minutes of sunlight (assuming 50K lux conditions).

Again, this is all about battery life. So, let’s test it. But first, let’s talk about the new UI features briefly.

New UI & Navigation Features:

The new user interface over on the Fenix 8 is also on the Enduro 3. This user interface won’t be going back to any previous watches, only the current gen units and beyond. Roughly speaking, you can divide it up into three core categories:

– Barely revamped widgets/glances
– Significantly revamped settings area
– Moderately revamped data field and navigation pages/structure

Starting off with the widget glances and such, these will feel all basically the same on the Enduro 3, since the MIP version of the Fenix 8 doesn’t get as big of a revamp in this area, as that’s largely reserved for the AMOLED capabilities with higher resolutions, colors, etc… So as you can see below, basically same-same.

However, the settings are where you’ll see a number of changes, as Garmin consolidates settings into the most used areas and new groupings. The most frequently accessed settings groups are at the top, while the others are lower down in the list. On the whole, I’m a fan of this, and it works well.

In fact, the very first option either the Fenix 8 or Enduro 3 will ask you when you power it on for the first time out of the box, is the font size. All the photos here are with the default size.

Moving along though, let’s press the upper right button to start a workout/sport/app. This is where we’ll see the new menu to choose our favorited activities. Here we can select three items for the first row, with the remainder of the sports under those four dots to the upper right. Below that, are non-sport apps (stuff like Music, Garmin Share, Messenger, etc…)

The idea here being to make non-sport apps more obvious, and less buried in the menu. The downside there is that it requires more button presses to get to sports beyond your top three.

If we have other sports, we can scroll further and see them categorized. The slight change here is that these extra sports aren’t as hidden, which is probably useful for new-to-Garmin users, to make it more obvious just how many sports Garmin has.

After selecting the sport we want, the upper portion of the page will look familiar, as it’s the GPS waiting screen, and sensor/etc waiting screen. The upper right button will start the workout like before. However, down below you’ll see there are easily accessible settings pages. Daily Suggested (or planned) workouts show up here automatically, and routes are easily accessible as well:

Routes and navigation items are re-arranged into a new control panel as well, including a new ‘Saved’ bin, that puts them under one umbrella, as opposed to all over the place. Here I can select the route I want:

Once that’s done, you’ll see it listed back on the main sport waiting screen:

At this point, off you go, to start your workout/activity. Except, there’s been a redesign here too. Instead of just scrolling up/down through data pages like every past Garmin watch, you can now swipe left/right within three lanes (like lanes in a pool).

Lane 1: The settings page where we started the activity from + navigation bits
Lane 2: Your data pages/fields as you knew them from the past
Lane 3: Music controls

At present, you cannot disable the music control page, but that’s apparently coming. If you’re not navigating, you’ll just live in that middle lane, and really not think about it. If you go to long-hold the middle button to access settings, it just pulls you back to Lane 1.

Below, you can see me in my ‘normal’ data pages, and if you look at the right image, you’ll see the indicator as to which of the three lanes I’m in at the bottom.

And if you swipe to the right, you get to the music controls (for any music you have on your watch, or phone). Again, you can see the lane now showing ‘Music’ at the bottom.

However, where it gets different is if you’re navigating, then you get a new option that shows up within that first lane that you can open up to see a dedicated set of navigation pages. Think of this like multitasking apps, and that this doesn’t affect your main data pages. The rough idea is that people end up with sport profiles jammed with all sorts of extra data pages they only use when navigating, but stay there cluttering up their data pages for all other workouts. This tries to solve that. Here you can see the left swipe first (to the hamburger three-lined menu), then I tap into ‘Spanish Mountains’, and I see four pages of navigation-related data pages, starting with a split-screen map, then ETA, and so on (I show this fully in the video).

In reality, I don’t think they’ve solved it quite yet. Now I’ve just got even more data pages, and those data pages aren’t consistent either. ClimbPro shows two different things depending which lane I’m in, and atop that, getting to the navigation pages requires even more swiping/tapping/entering. I see the dream, but right now it’s just not executed as well as I’d like, and has resulted in just more pages than before (especially since I don’t even want the music one either).

There’s three other tidbits worth noting. First is that you’ve got a touch unlock option to quickly use touch on the map page. You simply tap the little touch icon, and then swipe down, and it temporarily unlocks it. This is cool and super useful:

The second is you can tap the compass icon on the map page to instantly switch between North Up view and direction of travel view. And the third, is that you can now quickly toggle between map layers (such as popularity routing, shading, etc…) right from within the activity and map page.

This also lets you toggle between different maps quickly as well, such as if you had the Garmin Outdoor+ maps (satellite imagery, among others). This piece is actually pretty slick, and far faster than before.

Beyond these items, virtually all other elements from a sports/fitness standpoint are the same. This is true of things like sensor pairings, navigation features, training load and recovery features, etc… So instead, let’s move into the solar panel components and battery pieces.

The Solar Panel, and Battery Testing:

The biggest change on the Enduro 3 is the Solar panel. Specifically, there’s three changes here:

– A new technology altogether, increasing the outer solar ring to get more battery life
– Made the outer solar ring black, versus red, so you don’t really notice it as a solar ring (appears like the bezel)
– Removed the transparent solar panel over the screen/display portion, increasing visibility

So, looking at them side-by-side, you can very easily see the difference between the red vs black rings around each one, and how much thicker the Enduro 3 is:

Regarding screen clarity, yes, that too seems clearer to me. I wouldn’t describe it as massively clearer, but slightly clearer:

However, I will say, using it side by side with the Fenix 8 (AMOLED), I forget how bad screen visibility is compared to AMOLED watches in dimmer settings. There was one particular moment on our first hiking day where we were in the forest, and trying to confirm our directions, when I looked down at the Enduro 3, and the display was completely unusable from a visibility standpoint. At least without turning on the Enduro 3 backlight, which Garmin specifically made a point in the media briefings as saying wasn’t needed. Yet both myself and Des looked at our respective wrists, and given the map shading used in that particular area, on the Enduro 3, it made it quite challenging to see without enabling the backlight):

Yet inversely, when I was on top of a ridgeline in bright sunny conditions, I had ZERO issues viewing any of the AMOLED display units (taking photos of AMOLED displays in bright sunny conditions is always challenging because your camera will first expose the brighter areas properly, making black-background areas look darker than reality. But to my eyes, it was zero problem). Of course, the MIP-based Enduro 3 did great here too, as it does in bright conditions.

Nonetheless, let’s look at battery life across two key scenarios, On the first day of this hike, we had made a pact to try all the watches on the map view the entire time while hiking. Some of us did a better job at remembering that pact than others. In this case though, my Enduro 3 was set for GPS-Only (saves battery life), while Des’s was set for SatIQ (which can leverage multiband GPS when needed). Otherwise, we were identical with all our settings as defaults, and using optical HR.

You can see here that leaving it on the map screen absolutely buried the battery life. You can also guess which one of us did a better job at remembering our map-only-page pact during those 8 hours of mountain trekking.

On paper, Garmin doesn’t have a ‘map-always’ claim on their battery charts. That said, for SatIQ, the claim is 72 hours without Solar, and Des rang in at 70.83 hours. Whereas with GPS-only the claim is 120 hours, but again that’s not leaving it actively navigating on the map page. I hit an estimate of 57.22 hours. Just to be clear, those are actual rivers of water below us on the ground:

The next day, while Des’s legs considered his poor life choices, I went out for another 10 hours of trekking. This time, I aimed to keep it on the ClimbPro page the entire time (or other low-update text page). I again kept it at GPS-only as I was further curious to see the impact of that on GPS accuracy, and how post-processing might fix that (see the next section). The Epix Pro, I left on the map page, cause much bushwhacking was to be had this day (still, unclear why that performed far below other days). Here’s that result, 38km and a lot of elevation:

As you can see here, that 123.96 hour estimate is incredibly close to Garmin’s GPS-Only no-solar estimate. In my case, I had very strong sun during the day, but that’s counteracted by having navigation enabled. Still, it would see far from the 320 hours Garmin claims for GPS-Only with some 250K of solar lux hours (according the widget). Here were the conditions for probably 70% of the day:

In this case, I brought the data back to Garmin, and they said that the use of ClimbPro and other slow-updating text, but not plain text fields, was causing more battery burn than it should have. There will be an update in a few weeks to fix that. Thus, I’ll try again sometime in September.

Still, setting that aside, in a worst-case scenario here with GPS-only, we’re talking 120 hours of real-world battery life, assuming you don’t leave it on the map page. And with SatIQ, even leaving it on the page we’re talking

GPS Accuracy Testing:

Now, from an accuracy standpoint, I had two more questions. First, generally speaking, is the Enduro 3 accurate in a normal SatIQ scenario. And frankly, the answer to that is an easy yes. Here’s a quick city test, and you can see it’s spot on:

And of course, heart rate on the same sensor as the Fenix 8 and all my testing there is spot-on too (and the same sensor as the Epix Pro & Fenix 7 Pro):

Again, I’ll add in more data sets later, but for now, let’s get to the next question:

If we really wanted that theoretical 320 hours of GPS battery life, is the GPS-only mode actually viable from an accuracy standpoint? Well, let’s take a look. Here we’ve got four watches:

– Me #1: Enduro 3 in GPS-only configuration (right wrist)
– Me #2: Fenix 8 in SatIQ configuration (left wrist)
– Me #3: Epix Pro in SatIQ configuration (left wrist)
– Des #1: Enduro 3 in SatIQ configuration

Across the entire day, we were rarely more than a few meters away from each other, and virtually always taking the same track. So here’s a climb through the forest of the four units:

As you can see, there’s a little bit more wobble on my GPS-only track, but not a massive amount. It does lead to differences in distance though (more on that in a second).

However, on the descent next to steep cliffs, there’s almost no meaningful difference here:

And at the end, on this hike, the stats were nearly identical for mileage totals:

However, the next day when solo, I’d see nearly 2km of distance difference by the end:

Yet again, on the whole, the GPS tracks looked great here:

So that then gets to an even more fun question: How does Garmin’s new automatic track enhancement feature work?

This new feature on the Enduro 3 and Fenix 8 will automatically analyze and re-process for improved GPS accuracy, tracks which show signs of poor GPS conditions during the route. This won’t happen every time, but what happens when it gets flagged as a questionable GPS track? What changes?

Well, I’m going to look at this over a bunch more data sets, but for fun, here’s my hike’s Enduro 3 GPS file (in GPS-only mode) before and after that processing. In general, you’ll see very minor tweaks, but it seems to remove some of the more wonky twists/turns that show up in poor GPS signal scenarios.

Again, I’ll dive into that in an upcoming post with more details on how that works (fear not, you can turn it off if you want).

Wrap-Up:

I wrote this entire post last night, up until this last section. Before I completed this section, I went and filmed my Enduro 3 review. And it was in my final 60 seconds of filming that unscripted video that I realized something: The Enduro 3 is ironically the solution to the overwhelming negative comments about the also new Fenix 8 Solar, specifically, the pricing.

With the Enduro 3, you lack the speaker/mic/diving that most MIP-owners don’t seem to care about. Yet you also magically lack the $300 price increase of the Fenix 8 MIP-based models (up to $1,099 from previously $799). All the while gaining better battery life than the Fenix 8 Solar, yet also keeping all the new user interface bits and features. Given Garmin has stated the new user interface and features won’t be going back to previous-gen models, the future of updates for the Fenix 7 series seems questionable right now. This solves that.

Sure, it doesn’t solve for everything – namely, people that don’t want a larger 51mm watch (like my wife, who wants a 42mm MIP option, such as her existing Fenix 7S Pro at 42mm). Or, the six MIP-based people that want a speaker/mic in their watches. But hey, for the thousands of others that expressed their frustrations yesterday in the comments section across both the site and YouTube, this epiphany moment might be a winner. Also, can we take a moment to appreciate Garmin actually reduced prices here (the Enduro 2 was $1,099, and now it’s $899).

But enough about pricing. In terms of all the other technical things, it worked well. I’m looking forward to testing out the upcoming firmware tweaks to the ClimbPro page battery bits, to see how much more I can eke out of it (and other non-map pages). Likewise, to see Garmin put a bit more polish on the current new user interface, namely in the speed realm, but also finish-up some sections like Focus Modes.

Overall though, if I was into larger MIP-based displays, then this would be the easy choice.

With that – thanks for reading!