Garmin ECG Now Available in EU & Australia

After a very long process, Garmin’s ECG feature is now available in the EU & Australia, along with previously available countries including the US and a slate of countries in Asia. This applies to watches that have Garmin’s ELEVATE Gen5 optical HR sensor, which was introduced in June 2023, though isn’t on all new watches since then (see last week’s Instinct 3 release with Gen4 instead, or the recent Garmin’s $3,100 MARQ® Adventurer Damascus Steel watch).

The watches that now have ECG as of publishing are:

– Garmin Enduro 3
– Garmin Epix Pro series
– Garmin D2 Mach 1 Pro
– Garmin Fenix 7 Pro series, Fenix 8 Series
– Garmin Quatix 7 Pro
– Garmin Tactix 7 Pro AMOLED
– Garmin Venu 2 Plus (with Gen4 sensor and added hardware but ECG), Venu 3

However, Garmin seems to be differentiating in that some Gen 5 watches (e.g. Epix Pro or Fenix 7 Pro) aren’t getting EU support, yet do have Asian country support. Ultimately, this makes very little sense to me. I’m sending over a note to get clarity on why it’s not yet showing for Fenix 7 Pro/Epix Pro in the EU, when the it is for the other watches. Given the way certification works, there’s literally zero difference to which watches Garmin is toggling on/off.

From a country standpoint, it includes all countries in the EU (but not countries within Europe not in the EU, such as Switzerland or the UK). They also added Australia, and then there are further countries in Asia previously available but not heavily advertised including Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, and more. The full list of available countries is here.

I’ve previously written how to get started on the ECG capability, which only takes a minute or two and is pretty easy/straightforward. I just activated it on a Fenix 8 here in Spain in about 90 seconds. As a general rule, you need to activate the feature in one of the countries listed/linked above, but then can use ECG in any country after that point. For example, previously I had activated ECG on watches in the US, and then travelled back to Europe and used them here without any issue.

Oh, and if you haven’t updated your watches (or Garmin Connect app) in some time, then definitely do that first, as it is required to enable the feature. All of the above watches support updating via WiFi, so you can simply ensure WiFi is connected/available, and then go into the About menu to update pretty seamlessly

(Also, a reminder that the ECG function is disabled for public firmware beta builds, until usually the last build before it releases. So if you’re on a public beta firmware, it won’t be available.)

As always, note that the ECG feature (on any watch) does not detect a heart attack, and in Garmin’s case, is doing Afib symptoms detection (when manually started). Garmin is not at this point doing passive Afib detection like some other companies.

With that – thanks for reading!

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