Garmin has announced that it is dipping its toe into the AI-powered paid insights subscription service business. While this is hardly the first subscription service that Garmin offers (more on that later), this is the first time they’ve charged for features that ostensibly would have been included for free in the past. Garmin says it’s a “premium plan that provides new features and even more personalized insights in the Garmin Connect smartphone app”.
But what does that mean exactly? And is it worth the $6.99/month (or $69/year) price? And further, what does this mean for regular features? While it’s still early days, we’ve got a pretty clear vision on what Garmin thinks are worthy extras.
What’s Included:
The subscription service includes the following extra features. These are exact quotes from Garmin, and then after this I’ll get into how it actually works:
Active Intelligence, powered by AI: Receive personalized insights and suggestions throughout the day based on health and activity data, powered by AI. As customers use Garmin Connect+ more, the insights will become more tailored to them and their goals. The AI providing these insights and suggestions was built to help keep users’ data secure and is currently releasing in beta powered by AI.
Performance Dashboard: Compare fitness and health data in customizable graphs and charts over different periods of time to get a more comprehensive view of training progress.
Live Activity: Start an indoor workout activity on a smartwatch and use a compatible smartphone to see real-time heart rate and pace data, workout videos, reps and more in the Garmin Connect app.
Training Guidance: While following a Garmin Run Coach or Garmin Cycling Coach training plan on a compatible smartwatch or cycling computer, receive additional exclusive expert guidance from Garmin coaches – including educational content and videos – for peak performance.
Expanded LiveTrack Features: Whether training or racing, user-selected family and friends can be notified via text when an activity is started. Users can also create a personalized LiveTrack profile page to share with their followers.
Social Features: Add unique frames to your Garmin Connect app profile and access exclusive badge challenges – like a Running Climbs challenge to record 500 meters of total ascent during a month of running activities, or a Power Cycling challenge to record at least four hours of cycling activities in power zone 3 during a month.”
As noted, the Garmin Connect+ is available as a monthly subscription for $6.99/month, or an annual deal for $69.99/year. There’s also a free 30-day trial. Just for context, Strava (the entire platform) is just $79/year. Makes that look cheap, doesn’t it?
Now, the way I see it, Garmin has roughly put things into three buckets:
– Additional Analytics: This includes the little snippets of AI guidance, and the performance dashboard, which is basically just a boatload of charts. Essentially, more charts than you had before, but not really anything substantively unique compared to a million other platforms.
– Additional Training Features: This includes the ability to see your real-time heart rate/pace data on a phone as well as additional training guidance. That comes in two different portions, first being the extra workout videos, and second being tied to Garmin Run/Bike Coached plans, which have further educational content.
– Social & Sharing Features: Finally, there’s the expanded LiveTrack page + new text notification option, and then a bunch of extra badges you can earn.
Generally speaking, most of these are things that I’d have fully expected to see within the Garmin Connect platform for free. The exception though being the additional educational content (e.g. videos) for Garmin Coach plans, which most other platforms (e.g., Fitbit, Apple, etc…) have charged for. Likewise, I don’t have an issue with the text-notification of LiveTrack being there, since at Garmin’s scale, there’s a real cost to that many text notifications. I’ve long said I don’t really have an issue with additives like that.
But the other bits are trickier. Over the past 3-4 years, while fighting Fitbit, Garmin often doubled down on the free nature of their platform and access to your data. At the time, that was in reference to Fitbit locking a bunch of metrics behind their Fitbit Premium subscription, including basic metrics they were trying to charge for.
In various product announcement press releases, as well as interviews, Garmin executives and product leads in media tours, saying at the time:
“It’s your data,” [Phil] McClendon said. “We’re not charging you the ability to access your data, and that’s something we will continue to do and that we feel very strongly about.”
And in a press release at the time:
“Designed for customers seeking a simpler solution for monitoring their wellbeing, the vívosmart 5 features at-a-glance health stats for Pulse Ox, 24/7 heart rate monitoring, Body Battery energy monitoring, all-day stress tracking and more — no subscription required.”
Now, in fairness to them, all those things are true today, too. You don’t need a subscription to view your existing data. At least your existing data. Instead, this is ostensibly new data they’re charging you for. In one of Garmin’s videos announcing it, they go to great pains to say everything you have today, stays free:
Additionally, this new data/insights doesn’t seem to impact anything on your watch. Though again, I have a hard time believing that’ll be the case long term. After all, many insights are already delivered to your watch today.
But let’s get into what’s actually being shown with the new insights.
How it Actually Looks:
You can sign-up within the Garmin Connect app by going to Settings, and then following the prompts to enter your credit card info (or PayPal). The PayPal sign-in is weird though, they do it inside a tiny window, versus popping out and authenticating elsewhere. Likewise, I already have my credit card on file for other things in Garmin Connect, so I’m not sure why I needed to re-enter it. In any case, that I did.
So, with my payment complete (or, my trial started anyway), off I went. The first thing you’ll want to do is activate some of the features. It’ll prompt you to activate the Active Intelligence feature, but there are also more options in the settings.
It took a few minutes until I got my first Active Intelligence tidbit. This is roughly akin to what we see in Strava today, with its AI features offering little snippets. In Garmin’s case, these are at the top of the main Garmin Connect Mobile dashboard/homepage. The first one it offered me for today was about intensity minutes, and simply telling me that my intensity minutes were the same as the past four weeks.
I would struggle to think of a less useful tidbit. But then again, I’ve been around the Strava AI tidbits for 6 months, so…I suppose I’m conditioned to useless tidbits by now. Still, maybe in a few weeks I’ll get more tidbits. I do appreciate Garmin showing the little thumbs up/down icons, allowing you to tell it whether or not it’s useful.
Now, fast forward through the rest of the day. You can see the timestamps at the top. None of these seem super insightful and are just the same as me looking at my watch and the snippets shown there. Garmin’s gonna need to do far better than this.
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- After Trainer Ride
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- Later Afternoon
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- Later Evening
The second day, things got slightly more useful, but still super limited. The e-bike ride was simply a cargo bike ride dropping the kids off to school. Whereas for my main workout (the indoor trainer ride), it focused on speed from Zwift, a metric that is entirely meaningless on indoor trainers. As for the usefulness, at the end of the day, right before bedtime, it seemed to suggest I might have energy for some…umm…extracurricular activities. So that’s a win?
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- After wakeup
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- After commute
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- After Zwift
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- Spicy time?
Of course, it’s still a bit early to see if these will be more useful in the long term. At the moment, it honestly doesn’t seem that much different than what we already get in various places on the watch, such as these:
Next, there’s the performance dashboard. This isn’t actually on the smartphone app, but is instead on the web-based Garmin Connect. You’ll see it on the left side:
From there, you’ll choose a specific sport profile, and then after that you’ll see a whole whack of new report options. You can customize these, move them around, or delete them. In total, there are some 123 different report dashboard elements you can add/tweak.
Here’s what some of those look like. Note that my data is kinda wonky here for some of these, since I’m often recording a single workout on multiple devices.
All of this underlying data has been there previously, but now there’s new charts/graphs that bubble up some of those more comparative-focused insights.
After this, there’s the new Live Activity feature. This is definitely new/unique to Garmin (well, if you ignore Garmin’s Live activity feature from the Garmin Fit app some 13 years ago). The idea here being if you’re using a Garmin device, it’ll replicate some of those data stats to the phone. This is only available indoors (non-GPS), for structured workouts with secondary animations/guidance; it’ll also give you animations on the phone itself. Likewise, it’ll give rep info too. For gym/strength/core workouts, that’s far more practical for most people to have their phone, than trying to look at movements on a watch. Note that it doesn’t work on outdoor workouts, and doesn’t show GPS location. It requires both watch and phone, and must be started from the watch.
First up, no matter the workout type, the moment you start a workout on your watch, you’ll see a new panel show up within the Garmin Connect dashboard (with ‘Live’ in red, below), showing the Live Workout stats:
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- Dashboard Live Tile
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- Heart Rate Tab
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- HR Zone Tab
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- Power Tab
When you tap on it (above), you’ll see different panels of Live Data. This is relatively similar to what both Apple & COROS already do. I’m not entirely sure why this is a paid feature in Garmin’s world.
However, where it is different is that if you’ve got a workout, notably a strength/etc workout, you’ll see little videos/animations of those movements, along with reps, and the ability to skip:
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- Live Workout Page
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- Workout Steps Tile
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- Full Workout List
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- Step Details Page
Next, there are expansions of LiveTrack. First, you get a new profile page that can be your dedicated LiveTrack profile page. Basically, you can share that out, and new LiveTrack activities automatically appear on it. Further, it’ll now send out text notifications when a LiveTrack session is started, versus just the e-mail notifications before. As someone with a spouse who never looks at those e-mail notifications I send, I find value in this feature. :)
When it comes to the new LiveTrack Profile dashboard, you can configure that in the LiveTrack page, including privacy settings and your custom URL (which you can always change later):
The big gap here, though, is there isn’t a privacy zone like there is in Strava. So while I always start my workouts away from my house, I’d love to have something that hides things inside a predefined buffer, like in Strava. But you do have a landing page with all the activities on it. And beware: Even if you use Garmin Connect’s Privacy Zone feature for your activities (normally), that doesn’t actually apply here (which is bizarre).
Next, there’s additional content for Garmin Run Coach and Cycling Coach plans, including videos and other tidbits. However, despite adding a half-marathon plan to my calendar, and getting all that setup, I don’t see anything additional/special. Basically looks the same to me. It’s supposed to look like the below, according to Garmin’s video on it.
Finally, there are some new badges you can earn. Here’s what it shows as new unique (Garmin Connect+) challenges for April, there are 11 of them. Oh, and you can add a picture frame around your profile picture, plus, it adds that little star next to your picture.
Got all that? Good.
Wrap-Up:
Now, as I said at the beginning, Garmin has been doing subscription services for some number of years. For example, they have their Garmin inReach plans, for satellite communications. They’ve also had Garmin Outdoor Maps+, for added/more complex/fancy offline maps (and prior to it being named Outdoor Maps+, it’d been around for about a decade). They also have cellular service for watches like the Garmin Forerunner 945 LTE and Garmin Bounce watches. And on car cameras, they have Garmin Vault, for cloud-storage of your videos. Point being, Garmin has been doing this for a while, and slowly expanding it each year (like most companies).
The key difference though (at least in my mind), is that all of the above had a secondary provider element to it. Meaning, Garmin was paying Iridium for satellite messaging capabilities on your behalf. In the case of Outdoor Maps+, Garmin was licensing those maps for you from a host of mapping companies. And in the case of cellular devices, Garmin was paying cellular network fees for you. Even in Garmin Vault, you were using substantial storage on their cloud network providers (e.g., Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure).
Whereas Garmin Connect+ is largely in-house on-device software features that in any other year would have just been built into the Garmin Connect product. The singular feature that might have some sort of real-world cloud-cost dependency would be the AI insights, but that’d depend very highly on how much real AI backend processing is there, versus just marketing it as AI. After all, most of these insights don’t really seem all that different from what Garmin is already doing.
Look, I don’t actually have any problem with Garmin charging a subscription for added features – as long as those features are substantial enough to warrant it. And more critically, not taking away from features that should have been included in Garmin’s $1,000 (or $3,000) watches. After all, this isn’t a $99 Fitbit, or an effectively free via subscription Whoop device/band. I think Garmin could go in the direction of providing more value by tying in some of those other subscription costs. For example, they could add in one free Outdoor+ map/region download per year, or they could add in some carrot for inReach devices, and so on. Same goes for a much larger library of workout videos, akin to what Apple, Fitbit, and others have done. These are things that would substantially increase the value of a subscription to consumers.
And, if we fictionally set aside the payment aspects for a second, Garmin has added an absolute boatload of new features here. At no point ever before, has Garmin launched this many new Garmin Connect software features at one time (or heck, even in one year). So kudos there.
That said, I’d recommend Garmin go with a *much* longer free trial period than a mere 30 days. For example, when you purchase a new Apple device, you get 6 months of Apple Fitness+ as a trial. Same with Google/Fitbit, 6 months as a free trial to get you hooked. Whereas Garmin’s 30 days seems hardly enough time to get you hooked into the platform. In general, the longer the trial, the more successful a company is in cementing you to the features. Especially when those features are new.
Ultimately, the more important question is whether or not Garmin Connect features will largely taper off for existing users. And that’s simply a question we probably won’t know the answer to for a few years.
With that – thanks for reading!
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Wow, that doesn’t sound good at all ( being the most expensive watch on the market with no subscription is understandable but being the most expensive and requiring a subscription on top of that feels sad. Especially for people in contries where Garmin doesn’t accept payments (
> being the most expensive watch on the market with no subscription is understandable but being the most expensive and requiring a subscription on top of that feels sad
Yeah, I agree. If Garmin tries to be exactly like Apple and other modern companies, they will fail because by adopting subscription-only features (for example), they will remove some of the reasons people buy Garmin in the first place.
> Especially for people in contries where Garmin doesn’t accept payments
This comes up a lot, but *Garmin Pay for contactless payments* is the feature that’s heavily restricted by countries / banks, not Garmin Pay for the Connect IQ store, and probably not paying for the Connect+ sub. Especially considering that you can use PayPal to pay for Connect+.
Ah, the lure of enshittification.
Totally
Yeah… Software updates for the Epix/Fenix 7 and Pro lines have been a dumpster fire in the past year or so. They don’t even bother fixing bugs reported during Beta.
Garmin is still selling them and less than a year ago they were their flagship watches but they basically dropped them already. So, I’m not optimistic about the future of newer devices or or the free version of the Connect app. Most of their efforts will probably go to the subscription plan.
This will be a big flop imo…
It’s $79/yr not month for Strava.
The opportunity to pay Garmin to use their dreadful software, with interfaces seemingly deliberately designed to annoy their customers is one I’ll pass on thanks.
I think you have a few errors with the pricing listed, especially between the per month versus per year costs.
e.g. “$6.99/month, or an annual deal for $69.99/month” I assume the second should be $69.99/year. I think you have the same error with “Strava (the entire platform) is just $79/month” unless everything just suddenly got far more expensive.
Thanks!
Uncomplicated hot take: this is dumb.
Several xxxGallery text blocks in there.
All sorted, thanks!
They better not choke off basic connect functionality. F that S. I don’t love Chinese Coros but if Garmin starts squeezing users who are buying $600+ watches then bye bye.
Nowadays, with how the US administration is behaving with its domestic campaign of intimidation against Americans with whom it disagrees, and its external campaign of economic warfare against its closest and most loyal allies that’s darkly and sadly a better choice than if it were an American company.
At least with the Chinese you know that the motive is profit. With an American you could also be up against ideology.
Garmin is still releasing $1,200+ watches with software bugs. For example, skin temperature just isn’t being reported on the new Tactix. Their response is we will try to fix that in a May software update. Issues like that make it really hard for me to even consider paying for a subscription.
“The first one it offered me for toady”? Today??
These performance dashboards remarkably resemble the previous custom dashboards we were able to set-up on connect. Looks like they were already planning to move free features into this new subscription for a while.
Does importing activities from other watches or apps without faking the manufacturer work with the subscription or do you pay money and are locked into th platform?
Thank you for the info
LOL – in Poland it is €89.99 yealry or €8.99 monthly…
the yanks see us as business savvy and consider us wealthy ;)
Back, or rather as sheep to be sheared to the bare skin :D
Yeeeeaaah, I don’t think they will have a lot of success with that pricing in Poland. Maybe if they throw in a year or two with new watches, otherwise – hard pass.
LOL – Garmin has same price in Finland as well….
I’ll pass.
Slovakia is the same. I suppose it’s the same for all of EU. Hard pass.
same in the Czech Republic
Same in Portugal
Perhaps it’s because sales tax isn’t included in all prices in the US?
90€ is around 97$ right now. That would mean around 40% tax from 70$. I don’t think tax is to blame here
Sales taxes vary by state and usually aren’t imposed on things like digital subscriptions (again, vary by state, maybe some state does, Pennsylvania doesn’t). They’re also generally charged as a separate item, so you know exactly how much is going to the state. There’s no Federal sales tax in general, although there can be for things like gasoline. On the other hand, does the extra 20 euro over there come from VAT, hidden in the cost?
„ Ultimately, the more important question is whether or not Garmin Connect features will largely taper off for existing users. And that’s simply a question we probably won’t know the answer to for a few years.»
That is good question. Maybe we will see a 2 class software updating behavior soon to get people to the paid version?
Interesting article. I am not sure, if I will like connect+ or not. I will not use it anyway. So I think I won’t like it…
I’m a coach and I’ve recommended Garmin over Apple Watch to loads of people based on the amount of data you get in Connect (UI could be better). If that tapers off, it makes Apple+TrainingPeaks(name paid platform here) as more compelling alternative
100% my feeling
This company is getting increasingly pathetic. My 7X Is riddled with bugs that my 6X never had, they don’t seem to have any intention of fixing them, despite many pages of complaints. Disgusting for a flagship device.
Now, they’re basically charging for laughable AI insights? I’ve had them on Strava, and they’re terrible. Knowing Garmin, they’ll do a far worse job than Strava did.
Whenever another company makes a watch that can rival their maps, I’ll be jumping ship without hesitation.
The prices in Europe looks to be 8.99€ a month and 89.99€ a year, at least it is what is showing right now on their website.
Screw you, Garmin. You can’t charge £1,200 for a watch and then decide to load a subscription on top for features that should be standard. I’m happy to bet that within two years all the performance and recovery metrics will be hidden behind a subscription, followed shortly thereafter by routing and mapping capabilities.
Congratulations on losing a customer.
I do not have any issue with Garmin adding truly differentiating features as subscriptions (e.g., LTE, premium maps, or potentially training videos). However, they risk alienating their users, especially the dedicated Garmin enthusiasts. These individuals, including myself, were somewhat disappointed by the rapid discontinuation of support for the Epix 2 Pro shortly after its release. Consequently, I opted to purchase the Garmin Fenix 8, anticipating that it would provide access to all the latest features Garmin would offer for an extended period.
In my opinion, Garmin should either adopt Apple’s approach, where watches are supported feature-wise for a long duration while charging for subscriptions, or return to their previous model, where new features are only available on the latest watches. Attempting to combine both strategies does not seem effective and leaves me very disappointed.
Furthermore, I find the current value proposition lacking, as the subscription includes:
a) features that do not appear to add significant value (e.g., the AI summary at the top of Garmin Connect)
b) features that should be part of the basic functionality (e.g., Live Activities should be a standard feature and currently are for navigation [Garmin Explore]).
Garmin needs to carefully consider how to transition its high-end users, particularly those with watches such as the Fenix 8, to this new business model without alienating them completely. A potential solution may be to grant them access for the lifetime of their watch or for a reasonable period, such as two years.
I am not sure what you are smoking man but “discontinuation of support for the Epix 2 Pro shortly after its release” ???
Whaaa?
Bruh, just had my firmware update a couple of days ago, you tripping. I never saw a company that releases FW updates even 5 years after release like Garmin is doing.
I have Epix 2 (non Pro), it’s just over 3 years old and also got the firmware update in the last few days.
Epix Pro 2 is not even 2 years old and it is not getting the new functionality that 955/965 gets, let alone Fenix 8. Bug fix releases are not exactly value add
As somebody who already pays per month for live sharing with the 945 LTE, does this mean my subscription will automatically change to this new Garmin Connect+ premium subscription? And, does the new live tracking feature with Garmin Connect+ require you to have your phone on you (unlike the 945 LTE which does not)?
I suppose this sort of points to the direction Garmin is planning on going (or not going) with their LTE service in the future.
Thanks for everything you do!
I wonder if this subscription would include Tacx eventually. It would make even more sense to combine these than Outdoor Maps+ or InReach.
I love me some Garmin, but they sure do make it hard to love them sometimes. It’s akin to dating a supermodel. You better have the pocket book and TBH be able to smile when you know you’re probably paying a premium for something that is almost as good somewhere else.
If I were just a runner, I am not sure I would still be using Garmin. Sure they are great, but the premium is debatable if you have a good heart rate strap and a Suunto or Coros. Suunto metrics seem to be pretty good and they have free AI. coaching that I have found more useful than Strava. Their GPS is great everywhere and Zone Sense has been interesting to play with. Coros is a little more earthy. Metrics are debatable (like weekly training load) and their GPS has not performed as well in heavily wooded areas for me.
But as I add a bike to my line up that is when Garmin starts to make more sense. It really is seamless for someone into multi sport. The Dura can be endured, but wow there is a gulf there. Suunto seems more mountain adventure.
Then I see the Rays of the world that add water. Garmin in that world makes even more sense.
But again, as a runner that dabbles in cycling…………… Time will tell when we see the next Suunto and Coros watches.
American companies are obsessed with adding subscription models to their already expensive products. Whoop , Peleton , aura etc.
it doesn’t work outside of USA no one is stupid enough to pay for these subscriptions. Stick to making solid devices and you’ll keep your base.
“Making solid devices” is the main reason why companies go into subscriptions – eventually you sell the devices to everybody who wants them but you still need the steady cash flow to keep the company running.
Garmin (and others) tried simply locking the latest software features to new devices only (remember when there were no quarterly feature updates on Garmin devices?), but with the pressure from bigger manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Google) rolling out new features for years after device releases they clearly can’t continue on that path.
If you buy a bicycle for example, you don’t need a subscription and magically the companies still continue to exist.
“Whoop , Peleton , aura etc.”
Note: Oura is a Finnish company.
This isn’t about American companies. It’s a global trend. Samsung does it, with their various subscription models.
Bike companies sell bikes, parts, apparel, customization options etc – more ways to get your money there. Moreover – bikes are more expensive (my TT bike probably costs more than all the Garmin gadgets I had combined) compared to watches (even considering MARQ Damascus) and it’s not uncommon for people to own multiple bikes at the same time whereas owning multiple watches is more of an exception than a rule.
As for subscriptions – sorry to disappoint you, but there are subscriptions in bike world as well, especially when it comes to e-bikes.
Time to switch back to apple or whoop! Thanks Garmin for making things easier for me :)
Yeah go back to those 3 day battery life devices. That will teach them lol
Yeah, I feel like it is definitely not apples to apples on the devices. Apple watch is opposite extreme of the Fenix. The issue here is more around the data representation and how we get to leverage the information coming out of the devices.
Considering all the other platforms that provide these and many other services, etc. It seems just a play to make more money.
Also the formula’s Garmin uses to determine ‘ftp’, VO2, etc. aren’t very accurate compared to others.
Thank you for another great info session.
Love reading and watching your content and am a subscriber.
What are these other platforms? Are they free or paid for (whether one off or subscription)?
And who provides more accurate ‘ftp’, VO2, etc. Estimates?
Some good examples of sites I’ve used:
For multiple sports:
Intervals ICU–everything is available for free, but you can pay $12 USD every three months to help keep the site running. I believe there are few minor benefits (your activities keep downloading even if you haven’t visited in a month, you get faster support for bugs), but all the analytics are completely free to my knowledge
For running only (technically other stuff is supported but it’s really only for running)
Runalyze–all the useful metrics are free, but there are some interesting (but not useful) metrics behind a paywall, which is $65 USD a year for me
The big advantage to both of these sites, to me, is that they’re run by people, not corporations.
Went into the app to take a look as of 9:30 eastern today. I can see the option for Connect+ in the settings but the app throws an error if I click on it.
Even paying Garmin still can’t add an option to start the livetrack in the watch. :(
It’s funny because it works on the Edge devices so the API is there they just didn’t include it on the watches.
Just out of curiosity, why not simply use the automatic start option?
Every time I start an outdoor/GPS workout, my wife simply gets an e-mail.
I’m not the original commenter but in my case (Epix), two reasons:
1) I don’t always want my contacts to know where I am or to spam them if I’m going to be in a safe area.
2) I track walks, many per day) and there’s no way to make them automatic only for running and cycling (iirc). So the same problem as 1).
Wow this sucks so much. They overcharge for their devices – that are generally not well polished, but you can kinda argue that at least there’s no need for a subscripion – until now.
Many of those “new feature” should have been included for years anyway and now they’re charging for improvements on features that they just never brought out of its infancy, but should have.
The videos itself for the strength trainings and stuff aren’t new, btw! They’ve always been there and are displayed on the, just the live view is new. Why does that require a subscirption again?
Improved graphing was long overdo – but not as a premium feature either. That’s core functionality.
Challenges/Badges is another feature that they added at some point but never worked on – it also doesn’t warrant a premium subscription.
If there is one thing I DON’T want it’s social sharing of health data which is what this is. Not from Garmin, Strsva, or anyone else. Screw that. Imagine all the data mining that comes with this. Insurance companies snap it up and will use it to deny care.
As long as data is properly anonymized and cannot be linked to specific users – I don’t care if they use my data to train their AIs.
So, in fact, you give them the base to train their AI for free, and yet you still pay for the subscription…
And I doubt that ‘properly anonymized data’ truly exists when you share your exact location at a specific time.
You provide a lot of data and you pay Garmin to derive meaningful conclusions from said data. Seems fair to me.
As for anonymization:
1. You don’t need location data. At least I can’t think of a specific use case where your location data would be relevant to your training.
2. If the location is not tied to you (i.e. it’s not a track of John Smith but a track of a random person) – I don’t see the problem.
I am deeply disappointed with Garmin’s approach to charging extra for what are, essentially, software updates. When I decided to purchase the Fenix 8 at over €1200, I made the investment with the expectation that such updates would be included as part of the premium price tag. It’s frankly absurd to now find out that long-awaited features—like improved strength training integration—are locked behind an additional subscription fee.
For years, I’ve been patiently waiting for Garmin to provide better support for strength training, and to see it offered at an extra cost feels like a slap in the face to loyal customers. It’s not just about the money; it’s about the principle of respecting the commitment of users who trusted Garmin to deliver excellence without nickel-and-diming us for features that should have been part of the deal.
Garmin has historically been a company that championed the accessibility of user data without subscriptions. Watching them move in this direction undermines the trust and loyalty many of us have had for years. I hope Garmin reconsiders this strategy and shifts back to prioritizing value for their core audience.
If you are looking for an app that makes strength training a bit better on Garmin, I would look at LiftTrack, which I use on the iPhone (not sure that it exists on Android). The app makes programming strength workouts much easier and updates for reps/weights based on what you did in the gym. It is a subscription but ‘only’ 1 GBP per months (and it is from an individual, very responsive developer).
Hevy on the Apple Watch does all the things that Garmin should do already (even in the free version). I would argue that the Apple is unfortunately, the better option for strength training.
I think this confuses thee collection (and access to) data with the more advanced analytical, contentt and social features.
“Garmin has historically been a company that championed the accessibility of user data without subscriptions.”
_I see no change to that._
What is changing is how some of the more advanced features are provided .Unfortunately, that is ultimately a reflection of the way software is bought/sold nowadays. Whether computers, phones, or watches (or even increasingly appliances, etc.) the world has moved/is moving to subscription/as-a-service models.
I have argued before that the Garmin model of the only charge being the upfront device price was difficult to sustain in the face of competition from Apple, etc.
The reality is that making hardware and making _and maintaining and updating_ software have very different economics.
With current technology it is not too difficult to make hardware that collects the basic metrics (steps, heart rate, GPS tracks, hrv, SpO2, sleep tracking,etc) with good accuracy at a compelling price – just look at Amazfit.
What is more difficult and _costly_ to build and maintain a system to collect/warehouse all the data, present it, analyze it, export/sync it, – examples for how hard that is include again Amazfit (a shambles), Polar (the long decline of Polar Flow), Suunto (Movescount debacle etc).
It gets even more challenging and expensive to provide the service of drawing conclusions from the data, making personalized recommendations or having other rich content (like videos, workouts, training plans, etc).
Garmin has had a superior, integrated offering for a long time, enabling them to charge a premium one-off price for their devices.
They have occasionally pushed into the third layer of providing analytics and ‘content’ to justifyand support that premium pricing. Some of the offering was more useful (eg Training Readiness – despite its obvious limitations), some of it somewhat useful (I kind of like the much-derided Body Battery) and some of it just faff (Endurance or Hill Score). And of course the coaching plans and workouts were great if they fit your needs, but each one narrow in appeal.
It was good enough for many people but clearly not as good as dedicated/more specialized platforms and services (TrainingPeaks and/or coaches for training plans, Strava for social aspects, TR for bike training).
But that traditional Garmin combination looks unsustainable in a world where there is increasing bifurcation between commoditized (or at least little differentiation in) hardware and software that is inherently dynamic (eg because of the coaching feedback aspect, because of the social aspect etc) and requires ongoing investment, upgrades, etc.
Well said. I just disagree with the implicit conclusion or rather the approach Garmin seems to be taking that adapting the business model in that direction means charging fees on top of their expensive products. I wouldn’t mind a 15€ a month subscription if that meant their products were priced at half of what they are at the moment.
Yes, the balance between upfront payment vs. ongoing charges is a tricky one. It seems to work for Apple (almost as expensive upfront and _much_ more expensive on an ongoing basis), but consumers might find it worth it because of the additional functionality (smartwatch functions).
I’m confused about the videos / animations for strength workouts. I already have that on my garmin coach workouts. Does this mean it will go away for “free” users?
Nope, that’s still there. It’s just synced to your watch animations now (both on phone and app).
You got them on the watch. If you pay, you can see them on the phone while the watch is recording the activity.
This is going to test my mettle. I told myself;
When Garmin drops MIP, I’m moving on
When Garmin Connect goes subscription, I’m moving on
Looks like I going to get called on that sooner than later.
I’m ready for the Garmin Grumpies out there to poop all over this thing, and so far, you’re all true to form. I’ve never seen a user group that complains more about their product than the mass user base of Garmin devices. Any new feature is shat upon, any new device is derided mercilessly, and it seems Mother Garmin can do nothing right, based on all the griping I see (yes yes I know – it’s the vocal minority, but man you guys are VOCAL hahah)>
I’m going to give this thing a shot – no reason to poo-poo it until you’ve tried it. Give it a go and THEN do your bit**ing if you want. Just be open minded….. ya know…?
“Why is everyone jumping out? The water in this pan isn’t THAT hot!”
“Whereas’s Garmin’s 30 days seems hardly enough time to get you hooked into the platform”
wow, did you mean to write that Ray? Do we need to get hooked, or do they need to create something actually valuable enough to justify the cost to the consumer of their products? It takes me less than a day to get hooked or bought into something of actual value to me.
Having just returned to Garmin, to see them put a bunch of software behind a paywall irks somewhat, particularly performance and training/coaching related. Maybe Garmin should focus on releasing fewer bugs into the world. And I’d suggest you might want to rethink the concept of Garmin hooking in users as a good thing. Please call them out where it’s justified, otherwise suggest otherwise!
My take: This will explain the car crash rebuild of Garmin Connect. Like Komoots sale, if something doesn’t smell right, there’s normally a reason
Yup, meant to write that. I’m not going to sugarcoat it in marketing terms and call it “find compelling justification”. It is what it is: Garmin is trying to get you hooked into you finding these features worthwhile for your money. Simple as that.
At present, I’m not convinced the AI features can do that in 30 days.
I’m not sure that AI can ever do that, considering the months I’ve had with Strava AI. What stupidly obvious thing is Strava’s AI going to tell me today?
@Matt
“Do we need to get hooked, or do they need to create something actually valuable enough to justify the cost to the consumer of their products”
It seems that you read a very negative connotation into “hooked into”, like being _forced_ or _tricked_ into something, when can (and generally does) have a more neutral meaning.
For instance, I am “hooked” on sports and training because of the health benefits, the social aspects, the competitive elements, the exposure to nature etc But it took me a while to get “hooked into” it because some these benefits only became apparent over time.
I read Ray’s usage of “hooked” in a similar way: 30 days might not be enough to determine whether the AI services are of sufficient perceived benefits to justify the subscription.
This is very surprising for Garmin to do, Training Guidance and Live Activity should’ve absolutely been features added as standard for Garmin Connect, not behind a paywall.
And then, like a lot of companies attempting to implement AI into their products, they are adding it at a beta life cycle and expect you to pay for it.
I’ve had Hardware issues with almost every Garmin device i’ve had (which they’ve been amazing at replacing btw), and software issues (or kinks like you mentioned on the podcast) for years that i’ve been managing, but competition is fierce these days, and Coros is starting to look more and more enticing these days now that they have a watch+cycling computer product.
While a lot of people seem to be complaining about this, I am interested. I’m a subscriber to ChatGPT and use the hell out of it. So, I am interested to see what Garmin’s AI capabilities might offer. The fact of the matter is that AI (LLM models) are expensive to run. Garmin has to turn a profit margin on this endeavor, so I’m not offended at the idea of a subscription.
That being said, when is this going live? There don’t appear to be any updates within the Connect app or the website.
I had to restart my iPhone. It is showing now. Gonna give it a whirl!
Unsolicited advice for Garmin:
1. Put the live activity in the free tier. In fact, put all software features in the free tier. People really don’t like subscriptions for things they know you aren’t incurring an ongoing cost in providing.
2. The AI features can be premium for now but soon enough it’ll be just another software feature like autocorrect that nobody will want to pay for.
3. That leaves actual training content for the premium tier. Build it out into a full fledged training app.
I can understand why Garmin would want to charge for AI features which are expensive on the compute side to generate.
Some of the other features are not justifiable to charge as a subscription model for a company who sells me a fenix 8 amoled 51mm at the top of the market. It is not ok to charge for access to standard features that Apple and Coros have.
Paying to access the opportunity to compete for badges is 🐂💩, as they say in Kansas.
I think what actually happened here is that there was a pipeline of normal Garmin Connect features and also and AI initiative in development. The normal features included new challenges, incrementally improved dashboards, incrementally improved livetrack, live activity feature copying Coros, enhanced coaching plans… And an AI LLM powered thing because every C-suite has been convinced they need an AI LLM thing in order to compete.
It turns out that the AI thing is really expensive on the compute side which would affect margins but also the feature is not very good. Therefore they decided to tie all these normal incremental improvements in order to compel people to pay for the enhancement.
But really once you start tying ARPU to subscription services it is really hard for executives to walk that back. $70/yr is something like a 15% increase in revenue from someone that buys a fenix watch every 2 years and a much higher percentage from people who buy less expensive SKUs more often — if they can convince people to pay.
To be honest I hope this is a disaster and nobody subscribes because if it is successful then all new Garmin Connect features are likely to require the subscription and there will be a strong incentive to start putting older good features behind the paywall too.
All of the pay to play badges that I have looked at seem easy but worth 4 points!
I tried it now(in Israel) and the price is 8.99 usd/month
Huh – I came here today thinking about upgrading my 645 to a 955 solar or a 975 and I am leaving to check SUUNTO out.
I cannot see this end well for Garmin users, and I want no part of useless AI tips or a subscription to access my data. My data.
me too. exactly. no to garmin now. just lost a soon to be customer. this will save me 599.99 US.
thank you , garmin.
Garmin is getting greedy. They already have good profit margin on those hardwares they’re selling, like shitty CPU and RAM with $1k price watch. Guys, vote with your wallet, stop paying.
All those metrics you can easily get from other health apps as well. Those AI summary are nothing fancy.
So how can you trust Garmin for it’s “AI” analysis when they pay low ass salary to their software engineers that makes shitty apps like IQ store or garmin drive or whatever those small individual buggy as hell apps.
At this point I’ll stick with my apple watch ultra, in the end Apple is the company that is less greedy, how ironic.
I’d understand if they kept some “premium” Garmin Connect software features for their “premium” watches to add another differentiator.
But trying to charge for an extra subscription after that absurd price increase for the new Fenix screams nickel-and-diming to me.
If they needed something new to monetize via subscription, they could have bought Komoot..
Yeah, just what I need. Some AI system telling me “that workout was harder than usual” because my HR monitor picked up my cadence again.
The only thing i need from Garmin Connect is the platform suggesting all your past similar courses for comparison of the results…
I heard that it is available with some others vendors
It seems does not works on my country. I tried to sign up for the trial, but it just shows the running guy and then gets back to the settings page
I’m generally all in for using data analysis en masse to improve your trainings, but I think I’ll skip this one for now.
My training plans come from outside Garmin, so I don’t need that extra guidance, I have no issues with looking at the watch for the strength exercise examples and I have no use for either LiveTrack or performance dashboards.
I’ll see, maybe there will be interesting tidbits rolled later on, but so far, IMHO, the offer isn’t worth 90 EUR per year.
It may not be such a problem now, but in the future?
Here’s what I see:
The watches and sensors are actually developed out.
-> new software features for the next Garmin watches will be behind the Garmin subscription.
Is there any information on how well Fitbit/Google’s subscription is working or has been accepted by buyers?
I love my FR 265.
But I’m excited for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and even more excited for Apple’s next watchOS!!!!
If they catch up on metrics and some features (mapping running shoes to running sessions) then Garmin will have a growing problem.
PS:
Perhaps a manufacturer like Suunto will also benefit from changing Garmin users?
Luckily I’m still within the return window for my Fenix 8. Cool watch, but honestly I kinda prefer the simplicity of COROS. This helped make my decision. I’ll return my $1100 Garmin today!
Why? Nothing _at all_ has changed in terms of the offering and functionality that you already had (and based on which you presumably chose the F8).
Must be a joke: Next Tuesday is April Fools’ Day
Maybe this is just a placeholder for an acquisition? Perhaps adding some Orange to the GC colours in a short while 🤔
Otherwise it feels like Garmin not reading the room. I mean they know hardware price competition will only get stiffer, and so far they haven’t really responded to that in some areas (power meter pedals and trainers). Adding sub services could maybe help them offset lost income from falling device prices.
But… GC has been around for ages, and altho it has wayyyyy more/better *data* features than Strava, it’s just never gained traction in the popular sense. (That doesn’t mean it’s unused, it’s just rarely talked about.) They’ve tried many little things to increase active usage (challenges, etc). Being limited to Garmin devices obviously doesn’t help either. So to suddenly decide to charge for new features seems… dense 🤷♂️ Particularly in a climate where Strava’s sustainability is questionable (as are others), and some users have been dropping that subscription, or leaving the platform entirely.
The only reason they add new features to devices is to one-up competition. (It’s why there are soooo many fake fitness metrics flying around, “AI” garbage included.) If they can’t compete there at their chosen price point, then adding paid services hardly seems like a smart idea to hold/gain market share.
Hoping this doesn’t devolve into subscription-only devices, and “legacy” devices being bricked.
Acquisition by whom? Garmin is a public company (NYSE:GRMN) with a market cap of US$41.74 billion. There aren’t many companies who could acquire it and those that could would have huge antitrust problems.
I think the comment was meant the other way around, ie Garmin buying something like Strava.
In all my conversations with Garmin over the past decade, they have consistently noted that it makes no sense to buy Strava. There’s no upside to that investment. They get everything they want today, without having to pay for it.
Due to its market share position, Garmin already has what is effectively investor-stakeholder control over Strava. From a pure brutal business perspective, it’s the best possible deal for the company. All of the control, without any financial investment.
Likewise, had we thought Garmin was interested in those sort of platforms, they would have picked up Komoot on the cheap. Komoot had been pitching it to everyone for a few years now.
Interesting, Ray 🤔 The dots are a little too far apart for me to connect tho (especially on a Fri afternoon lol 🥴)… Perhaps good fodder for a “Why Garmin wouldn’t buy Strava” op-ed post / podcast topic?
That acquisition comment was just a bit of pot-stirring… My main question was why would Garmin think subscription options are a winning idea in current climate, and I wonder if it’s a hedge against needing to cut device prices in increasingly competitive / flooded market.
Cheers
I meant Strava as an example, rather than as a suggestion that there might be a deal in the making.
That said, I think Garmin “doth protest too much” when it comes too Strava. Strava has succesfully created what Garmin has mostly failed at with Connect, namely the social media and network aspect. For the moment Garmin might enjoy the best of both worlds, by effectively having a social media platform for its users without having to build it itself. And by having it as third party, Garmin does not have confront the strategic dilemma whether to open up Connect to other devices. But that could become a double-edged sword very quickly if 1. Strava ever gets it act together and becomes a credible fitness data warehouse, and the 2. the hardware game continues to get more competitive (with Apple moving more and more into Garmin’s space while at the same time lower priced competitors like Amazfit might not have to worry about building a full software platform).
Make no mistake, developments around Strava are closely watched at Garmin corporate.
I rarely, if almost ever, post comments around videos/blogs/reviews, etc…..but, I will here. The topic is too compelling for me to remain quite on this one. I am fortunate in that I am an owner of both a Garmin Fenix 8 and the Apple watch Ultra 2. And, often, I am torn and go back-and-forth to determine what I like best.
The Garmin Fenix 8: Damn, expensive! But, I get really great metrics built into Connect…the light is killer, and used far more than I ever anticipated. I like the notices sent to my selected connections (family), so that they know I’m out on a ride. (Even though my wife is much like Ray’s, in that she doesn’t look a the email notifications. She’s a text sort-of gal). Brutally rugged, tracks everything under the sun, at least that I will ever do, etc… But…replying to text messages just doesn’t happen with this watch. No Siri anything (I’m in the Apple ecosystem, by choice). I thought I “might” use the voice assistant…but it just doesn’t work for me. Not even “canned” text responses. Really? And….no cellular connection. Why oh why wouldn’t this have a cellular connection, or at least that option? Overall, pleased with this watch, but it is still missing a bit.
Apple Ultra 2: Yep, I pay for several apps to make this more of the watch that the Garmin Fenix 8 is, out of the box. But….I also have an almost $500 difference in the initial cost..so i can buy a LOT of apps, and still come-out way ahead. So I have Athylic and Workoutdoors, etc… Also brutally rugged, and shows very little, if any wear. But, much, much more connected. I don’t need my phone..everything is on my wrist. I CAN respond to texts…and touch-base with friends and family without my phone. Yes, the watch “light” mostly sucks in comparison, and I’m not as enamored with the analysis that I’m getting from combined apps (I sure love Garmin’s morning report pushed to the watch) but they suffice. I’ve never given any of them a real chance to shine, because after a few days, I go back to my Garmin (Epix Gen 2 before this Fenix). I’ve been in the Garmin ecosystem for years, so this “news” has me really disappointed an questioning how long I may remain. Not a good day for Garmin. But Apple, they are loving this news. As are the other watch competitors.
So what did I do after reading Ray’s thoughts/review? Turned-off my Garmin Fenx 8 and pulled-out the Ultra 2. I’ll give it a few weeks of 100% use and see how the data/analysis, utilities all stack-up against the Fenix 8. Kind-of a bad day for Garmin, at my house. We’ll see if this 11+ year Garmin guy remains a Garmin guy.
Apple and Garmin are two totally different watches though. The battery life and fitness features of the Fenix easily surpass Apple. But, then again, one is a sportswatch and one is a smartwatch. Fitness geeks will choose a Garmin 9/10 times. Its not even a competition. But, those wanting an everyday, do-it-all watch would like benefit more from the Apple Watch. I hate charging and would never buy an Apple Watch because the battery endurance is awful.
That’s one of the problems. Right now my Apple Watch Ultra is on my wrist, as it has been for 2 1/2 years, and I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch since they first came out. It makes a much, much better smart watch than my Epix 2, but the Epix is far superior for actual activities, even with third party apps on the AW. So what I’d like from someone is the ability to use measurements obtained by other manufacturers devices in their analytics. Today I rode Zwift, so the only Garmin device I used is my HRM-Pro. Tomorrow I’ll use my Edge 1040, but the Ultra will be on my wrist the rest of the day. In Garmin Connect (and I just signed up for the 30 day free trial), the only HR data I’ll see is from my HRM-Pro, and nothing from my Ultra, even though the Ultra will have about 22 hours of data to about 2 hours from an actual Garmin device. Connect and Health are connected, and I believe that Connect has permission to read such data (I’ll have to double check), but they never use it.
Depends on what kind of fitness features you want/need.
Feels like half my triathlon training group switched to the Apple Watch Ultra. Maybe not exclusively but that’s what they’re wearing while riding and running. I’m just too cheap to replace my Forerunner 965 already but when that time comes I’ll take a deeper look at Apple, too.
If voice control isn’t working, test the microphone with a voice memo.
I was unable to use voice command for months now and discovered last week that the mic is way unresponsive. The watch is deaf. I got a replacement today.
As a runner, I appreciate the 5-button design where all the features of the watch can be used without the touchscreen.
No modern smartwatch company (like Apple or Samsung) would implement a 5-button design in 2025. (And ofc Apple didn’t do it in 2015, when they released the first Apple Watch).
I also like MIP, because of its glanceability (*) but Garmin has already killed MIP for most of its lines. (* In daylight, MIP is visiible 100% of the time and at nighttime, you can configure the backlight be on all the time during activities) Contrast with AMOLED where you need to use the gesture or light button to bring the display to full brightness in order to see it properly during the day.
I can only hope that an “always-visible/always-bright” MicroLED display will come to Forerunner eventually.
But yeah, anyone who wants a real smartwatch would be better served by an Apple Watch. 5-buttons and/or MIP wouldn’t be good for smartwatches, same as e-ink is great for a Kindle but would be terrible for an iPad.
„Garmin…replying to text messages just doesn’t happen with this watch. … Not even “canned” text responses. Really?“
But the blame for this lies with Apple and not Garmin!
Apple is actively hindering the watch competition from implementing the same iPhone -> Apple Watch features.
Thanks to the EU, these dirty Apple tricks will finally come to an end (at least in Europe). Apple must also allow watch manufacturers to answer messages and much more.
Apple Watch:
For me (AW 10) the most annoying thing remains the battery life and sport metrics.
And the Ultra is not worth the money for me personally.
For the money of an Ultra 2 I get:
A Garmin FR 265 (or Suunto Race S or Polar M3) AND Apple Watch 10 :D
I certainly hope that Polar and Suunto benefit from this Garmin decision.
I hope their sales figures go up!
But Polar really needs to redesign their software interface (watches and their app).
What about users who currently pay for the Tacx app subscription? Are we going to benefit from the Connect+ integration or are we going to have to pay for 2 subscriptions?
I believe that Garmin has been deliberately holding off on several Garmin Connect enhancements, only to now introduce them all together as a premium subscription. The current training plans are very basic, and the graphs are ridiculous compared to what you can get from Intervals.icu which is free.
I have been a Garmin user for 15 years, I understand that a company has to evolve, and if I appreciate that a service brings me something valuable I have no problem paying for it, but what they have shown so far does not seem to me a substantial improvement.
Early April 1 joke?
Not too impressed with this milquetoast offering and the pricing is outrageous. When will companies release there are very very few things I will spend ten bucks (SGD) on a month – things like Spotify or audible that I use every day, and this anemic offering isn’t close – but one to three dollars a month would is a whimsy I wouldn’t really dwell on that much.
It’s especially irritating because of the deficiencies in their current high end products. Garmin took away my ability to set multiple alarms from the Connect app in the fenix 8, an issue they acknowledged and said they would ignore on the forums; their dashboarding/graphing has sucked for *years* – it almost impossible to compare workouts over time in any meaningful way despite the wealth of data; and the fenix 8 was buggy as hell on launch. There’s also the inconsistent UI and total mish mash of what can only be done on watch, app or website, what can be done on some and what can only be done on one of the three.
At this point the only key differentiator for me is the Spotify access, but that’s looking less and less critical. I’ll be looking hard at suunto in a few years for sure.
¥11,800 in Japan. Not happening. (I’ve been using Garmin products since 1995.)
This Enduro 3 will be my last Garmin product if they move basic functions to this pay-wall. I was already surprised when Garmin started charging for old watch faces recently.
Given that Garmin can’t get “Integrated training status” in Connect to effectively sync calories across my Fenix 8 and my Edge 1050, surely the most basic of metrics, am I really going to start paying them – I think not.
The performance dashboards is something that used to be freely available a few years ago. Is Garmin’s new model to take and give back via a subscription?
Strava also only had a few features when they launched their subscription, and now half of their features are locked behind it. But unlike Garmin, Strava doesn’t sell $500+ devices.
It’s actually different, and frankly, most of these report modules/panels already exist under the “Reports” panel. try it out, go to reports, and you’ll find many of these same ones there. What’s different is organizing all these into a single dashboard. Previosuly the customizable dashboard of old GC didn’t have 99% of these.
Now, should they be charging for these reports? No, I don’t think so. But, is Garmin doing something different here.
Thanks. Will use the 30 day free trial.
Well, users have the power. Just do not pay anything, and that’s it.
I have all my activities recorded in an Excel spreadsheet, and I am able to analyze my performance for free. I am light-years ahead of Garmin. I can customize the output, draw graphs, etc.
Me paying Garmin? No way! For a good offer, I could lead Garmin to better analytics…
The challenge for me will be down the line, I have a watch and am in the ecosystem but….
in the future I won’t be paying a premium for a watch who’s tangible (to me) features then sit behind a subscription service.
Garmin would need to consider their business model and subsidise their watches or I would nurse my current device along whilst looking elsewhere
Gramin has become greedier than ever
So their watch prices have been increasing over the years, and now this. You give them all of your data, and they charge you more for getting the insights of your training. Just ridiculous IMO
As other people said a lot of those features should be given for free, or at leats for every new watch purchase give 1 year suscription for free.
I guess that they will eventually charge for some data that now is supposed to be free, just like other brands have done in the past, like strava as in example.
I think Garmin users would be more interested in a very expensive waterproof device that doesn’t get ruined by water infiltration after 3 years.
What is your point? That is what Garmin (and Coros…and Suunto…and Polar…and etc) have provided for years already.
Oh hell no. Suunto, please bring out a watch that doesn’t cut into my wrist bone :(
I am hoping this leads to maybe new watch features that are not hardware dependent being available as an add on for current watch owners. For example the Venu does not give you race predictions and AFAIK is not hardware dependent. If these would be available behind this Connect + paywall that would be cool, or even a 1 time purchase.
Nope, will never be paying a monthly fee for Garmin, these devices are way too expensive and have too much planned obsolescence for that already.
I’m an Android user, but in my mind Apple Watch is the real competition (as it continues to get “good enough” in most areas, the need for a Garmin or other device becomes more and more niche.) So out of pure spite, I’d love to see a huge Apple Watch update this year that hits Garmin hard. I’ll now be evaluating alternatives once my Epix needs replacement.
The more I think about it, the angrier I get, honestly.
Like they also force you to use one specific service for calorie tracking (which doesn’t allow barcode scanning unless you subscribe to that). How about pulling in the data from other services?
Or strength training in Garmin connect is abysmal (at least for my needs) so you really need another service to do that well too.
That’s not to mention the fact that my 1040 Solar occasionally doesn’t connect to sensors without a reboot, or the twice in the past month it had 0% charge when I tried to turn it on (and no it was not left in an activity or anything, but at the home screen). Or the pacing partner I can’t turn off. At least my Epix has been stable.
Really I hope this crashes and burns and blows up in their faces. Tired of it.
“Look, I don’t actually have any problem with Garmin charging a subscription for added features – as long as those features are substantial enough to warrant it.”
You are so in the tank for Garmin it’s pathetic. You know where your bread is buttered obviously. Paying hundreds of dollars for a watch and these pigs want a subscription but you don’t want to rock the boat. Pathetic. I knew you were not objective and acted out of pure self interest but this confirms it. Over and out forever – you are looking out for number one not the people you use to help.
Seems pretty harsh. If you’ve been following Ray over the years, this is actually one of his more harsh reviews. He basically said none of what they currently offer via the subscription is worth it.
Huh?
I literally post an entire post saying it’s not worth it, a video saying it’s not worth it, and yet still…that’s the conclusion you reach?
Because I say that I don’t have a problem with subscription costs if the features are worth it? That’s the same calculus every consumer makes. The internet bill you pay to type this very comment is based on you deciding it was worth the cost. That’s no different here.
Of course, I assume you missed the part that Garmin has been doing subscription stuff for more than a decade now. I think it’s closer to 20 years actually, for map subscriptions. Likewise cellular subscriptions, all the way back to the GTU-10 days in 2011, to the Vivoactive 3 LTE to the FR945LTE to the Boucne, and plenty of other devices.
But, seems like you just randomly decided to leave a rant comment without actually reading the post. No worries, sounds like you’re “over and out”, so, probably best for all of us anyway.
If you dont have a problem with Garmin charging subscriptions yeah. You didn’t use your considerable influence to call it like it is, a pathetic money grab.
You can’t say you are ok with Garmin charging subscriptions! Had you shown some courage you’d actually influence them! Not – I they need better features. You have disqualified yourself. I dont say this lightly – I have followed you for more than a decade.
If you dont have a problem with Garmin charging subscriptions yeah. You didn’t use your considerable influence to call it like it is, a pathetic money grab.
You can’t say you are ok with Garmin charging subscriptions! Come on this isn’t Inreach – I have happily paid those subs. You knew what I meant – them charging for you to use a running challenge on a thousand dollar watch! Get real.
Had you shown some courage you’d actually influence them! Not – I they need better features. You have disqualified yourself. I dont say this lightly – I have followed you for more than a decade.
There are basically zero features here that I’d be interested in. That said, I think it’s b.s. to finally implement better graphing and then put it behind a paywall, and imo it foreshadows them putting increasingly valuable features behind a paywall to get more subscriptions.
The other terrible thing is that I guarantee that if you decide not to subscribe, they’re going to litter the UI with upsells ads for the subscription service.
Feels like the beginning of the end for me as a loyal Garmin user. At the end of the day, though, it won’t be me leaving you, Garmin. It will be you leaving me.
They can now also release their new watches without hardly any features and and unlock them with connect+ to get the same functionality that their current watches have included.
It’s really a sad day…
Sadly that is the way of the world these days: Computers, phones, watches, even domestic appliances these days require subscriptions/ongoing charged services for many functions…
Well done Garmin, you’ve just broaden the scope of options for my next watch: Coros? Apple? Samsung?
I already pay for Strava and there is no way I will pay second subscription while buying a watch at premium (no to mention ton of bugs which are never resolved).
Yes, although I was sad to hear of this, I now have the option to search for better competitors, although seems like they’re all evil. I enjoyed the time before smart watches, inputting my data in an excel file. Garmin simplified it, but if I want to get better/faster, and save myself some money, I’ll be happy to go back to excel.
Just a few days ago, I was telling someone who was on the fence about buying a Garmin watch that the best thing about Garmin is that they don’t lock out features behind a premium subscription paywall, everything in the Connect ecosystem is totally free for everyone. Sure the watch is expensive, but it’s a buy once cry once kind of a deal, because once you own the watch, you have totally unlimited access to everything Garmin has to offer (apart from the obvious things like LTE, premium maps, and satellite messaging).
On the surface, this new model doesn’t SEEM like a big deal; like you said, it’s only some new features that are locked out, all the existing features remain free.
But history teaches us something. And what it teaches us is: When a manufacturer has the option to put new features on the free version of their software or the paid subscription version, they will ALWAYS choose to put it behind the paid subscription version. So I have a strong suspicion that the features offered in the free version of Connect are all it’s EVER going to have going forward, and all new features from here on out are going to be paywalled.
As a side note, it bother me quite a bit that they finally came out with a phone screen mirroring feature we’ve been begging them to make for years, and instead of making it free as it should be, locked it behind their new paywall.
I’ve never hoped for a Garmin product to fail before, but I sincerely hope that Connect+ is a failure.
Is this a early April-Joke?
Garmin makes S tier hardware and D tier software. The only thing that makes their platform bearable is disabling heart rate monitoring.
Let’s use their heat acclimation tracking as a proxy for their software ability. Today it is 80F, I go and ride by bike for 2 hours, no message about heat acclimation. Tomorrow it’s 50F and I go ride, and at the end it says 5% acclimated, hmm. Start a ride when it’s 71F and ride for 8 hours in 90F+ heat, 0% acclimation since the activity started when it was below the threshold which btw is ridiculously high. Running performance decreases above 50F.
Rant over, but my point is they cannot even fix their existing software to function properly 50% of the time, why should someone pay for new software features when they won’t even address the existing problems?
Battery life aside, I went with Garmin over Apple because all the data was under one roof and was in-depth. Now, I may need to shop value wise on the Apple sides of things. You pretty much need multiple subscriptions to get Apple Watch up to par data analytics wise with Garmin, but even multiple subscriptions which I know is required is a lot cheaper to have vs Garmin hardware and now this.
I have turned off always the stupid motivation messages from Garmin.
There may be people who pay for the junk.
Aside from the whole story I am wondering: aren‘t in App purchases on iOS restricted to Apple Store payment?
I would guess, Apple will end that offence soon.
Yeah, I don’t really understand that either. And I thought that even the carve-out exceptions Apple does have, I thought were EU only.
But, perhaps some iOS developer can clarify.
Apple says apps in the US can implement external payments as long as:
– they ask Apple for permission
– they give Apple a 27% cut (it’s this cut which may be why vendors like Amazon aren’t willing to go along with this.)
link to developer.apple.com
Tbf what’s described here specifically refers to linking to an external website that opens in the device’s default browser, which is not quite the same as what you showed/described in your post (where the payment is apparently made within the app.) Fwiw I am Canada, and I tried to start the process of signing up (without finishing it): I see the same thing that you showed in your post, where the payment page is within the app itself.
So I’m not sure what loophole/policy/entitlement Garmin is taking advantage of here.
Monkey see, monkey do. Garmin sees others in the space with a recurring revenue stream and thinks…hey…wait a minute…we *were* going to add these new features to GC, but how about…GC+?
I mean really Garmin. Let’s all wait and see how many free features they pull into this. Let’s bet that in a few years time they start charging for uploading an activity.
Not a chance Garmin and by the looks of these comments most people agree with me.
Main question here – will Garmin include the data from non-Garmin, or lower-tier-Garmin devices in the same analytics?
My Enduro 2 watch has Body Battery, Training Readiness and Acute Load for example, that my Edge530 does not. At the moment, in terms of Body Battery contribution, a bike workout recorded with Edge530 will be just as inefficient as one recorded with Karoo (and manually imported), because “Garmin does not trust 3rd party stats” (and even some of the own devices)
What will I receive as a paid subscriber? Same hassle of having to double-record all activities on my watch?
you’ll get access to special badges for levels that don’t mean a whole lot is my take.
There’s no reason Physio-TruUp can’t do the work of calculating the Intensity Minutes, Body Battery and so on when it syncs my 830 to my F7xPro, other than Garmin not wanting that to happen…
At the moment one gets to benefit from nice goodies like “Acute Load”, “Body Battery”, etc. only if you own a top-tier device AND record your activity on this device. Only.
I get the first thing. If I own a legacy 6yo Fenix I am “not worthy” to know my acute load today (even if it technically can be calculated online (off-device)). Fine. I’m cheap. I accept it.
But once I have bought a latest Epix/Fenix and have this device registered in my GC profile, I should be “worthy enough” to benefit from things like Acute Load even if I record my activity on my old Garmin. But no. Things like training readiness, acute load, body battery etc. simply ignore all other activities and make your stats useless unless you double-record everything on the newest device you own.
If the paid subscriptions were to remove this hassle I would buy it. In other words, a paid subscriber should get the analytics they’re “worthy” off, REGARDLESS of the device they own.
– record a run on an old Forerunner
– record a hike using Strava and import manually
– record a swim on FORM and import manually
– record a bike ride on Karoo and import manually
– record another run on latest Fenix
…should end up in 5 activities, each of which contributes to all of the metrics/analytics in the PAID subscription.
Anything else just doesn’t make sense…
There is/was already a way to send text message with some information and live track link. You may customize the message, set it to be sent every time interval or distance. In Android phone app I go to Safety and tracking and then the third option on sharing live event (I have it in Polish so cannot give proper option name)
Why would anyone pay for Garmin Plus when they can’t even get Climb Pro to work properly, thereby given you false statistics ?
I own three Garmin watches right now. I’ve bought several more for my family. I’m not paying them a subscription, ever. I’ll plug my watch into a PC after every run if I have to. If I can’t even do that I’ll go back to a casio stopwatch.
Just my 2c.
This feels worse than I think it logically should, but logic isn’t the most important aspect of marketing. I thought I was a die hard Garmin user until the Fenix 8 round. At least for now, this has completely soured me on the brand.
In Brazil the price is USD 8.99/month or USD 89/year. At this moment, I won’t pay.
Garmin is getting greedier every year.
– They didn’t show you all the data a watch is capable of producing in the past already. Like the Vivoactive 4 calculated Training Effect and Recovery Time, you could extract it from the FIT file, But nothing shown in Garmin Connect.
– Then they delayed ECG for last gen devices very much, at least in Europe until there was an outcry.
– Currently the Fenix 7 Pro and Epix Pro is missing features that have been implemented in the Forerunner 955/965.
– And now you have to pay for insights that others (Coros and Suunto) give you for free.
90€ / year (or 9€/month) for me (Italy). I was in doubt when i read 7$/month..now i’m pretty sure i won’t pay the subscription.
For so many years I was wondering which company would ever make me switch from Garmin… Now the closest to do so is actually Garmin 😆
Of all the products stepping up to tempt me to pay for them, this one doesn’t in the least.
I don’t see myself paying for any of this. Its just a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t use anyway. I just want to track my workouts and mileage. I don’t need to communicate with folks through Garmin. Seems pointless.
I’m in the same boat. There is nothing there that I would ever pay for, so I don’t really care. That said, I’ve had enough adventures with bugs on some Garmin hardware to switch platforms in a year or so anyway, rather than accepting their generous ‘upgrade replacement’ offers.
Secondary point, sorta tongue in cheek: Every foreign intelligence service in the world is signing up and following enemy agents and soldiers on Garmin given the lack of a privacy zone.
But there you can set up a privacy zone… If you go to your privacy settings and scroll to the bottom (link to connect.garmin.com), you can add multiple zones AND adjust the size of them. I’m not sure what else you need to be able to do with it?
It doesn’t honor those privacy zones for LiveTrack. Serious.
Repro:
1) Setup a privacy zone in GC for my house
2) Created a new shared URL (not the one in my post)
3) Started LiveTrack session at my house
4) Then looked at Shared Profile Page (using InPrivate browser to ensure it wasn’t pulling in my perms)
5) Shows my active dot at my house. :(
Sigh. Also, it doesn’t even apply the privacy zones for my saved activities on the LiveTrack page either. Only for activities pulled from within Garmin Connect ‘proper’.
oh, that’s not great, especially if someone puts together that custom livetrack url to share their adventures with their instagram or whatever.
I’ve bought every new triathlon watch since the 310xt.
I had been looking forward to the 975. Now I won’t buy one as I don’t know what I’m buying into.
If I’m understanding correctly, could the Live Activity partially replace an Edge unit?
I usually ride familiar roads and paths so a map isn’t really necessary, but I’ve been dying to see my speed/cadence/HR/Varia info reflected in real time on my Connect app since I mount my phone to my bars. I do it with other apps but then I’m managing both my watch and the app, then having data sync which overall gets clunky.
No, unfortunately it only activates on indoor workouts, not GPS workouts.
(Whereas COROS’s implementation works for both)
Unreal lol. Appreciate it, just confirmed that there is LITERALLY nothing valuable to me in this subscription…
I would actually have paid a few summer months of Connect+ if Live Activity had worked with GPS workouts. No, I’m not going to buy an bike computer for my occasional cycling activities.
I agree Live Activities would be great for outdoor GPS activities for those that don’t want/nned an Edge device. Personally on iOS I would prefer Garmin uses the Live Activity API like the Apple Fitness app does with AW when cycling rather than doing it in-app. Presumably battery optimisation is better with the official API rather than foregrounding the GC app. I suspect most riders take their phone with them on rides whether they have a cycling computer or not. I do like to use my iPhone on a quadlock case/mount when I’m riding with AWU mirrored to it. If I could do that with my Fenix and my phone that would be very cool.
Next step for non premium users are commercials like yt. on YOUR watch. Imagine 3 mins before starting your marathon and the commercial prevents you from starting the activity.
Now I’m looking at my watch and thinking “Do I really need this?”. Not sure that’s what Garmin was going for, but here we are.
Talking about expenses, let’s see how much I have paid to Garmin up till now:
2009 Forerunner 310XT = 320 EUR
2012 Forerunner 910XT = 390 EUR
2016 Forerunner 920XT = 330 EUR
2022 Forerunner 945 = 250 EUR
2024 Forerunner 965 = 625 EUR
2018 for girlfriend Forerunner 645 = 250 EUR
2017 Edge 520 = 200 EUR
2018 Drive 50 navi = 100 EUR
2024 for kids 2x Vivoactive 5 = 440 EUR
2022 Forerunner 735 = 200 EUR
Suma summarum = 3105 EUR
This seems like such an obvious strategic miss for Garmin. Their biggest differentiator has been how much they give you in software buy purchasing the hardware. If they want to fight on the paid software side, they’re going to lose a lot to better paid software. And if there’s no software incentive to buy their hardware, they’re going to lose on the hardware side.
The only feature here that really justifies such a cost is the AI features — I get it these models cost a lot — and they chose to copy the one AI feature that landed with a massive dud over at Strava.
So what is everyone using as a “competitor” to Garmins now paid data analytics? We have training peaks, HRV4Training Pro, Intervals.ICU, etc. All of these programs provide their own data and the price of entry to this information is arguably cheaper then any Garmin option, because you can bring any hardware you want to the analytics. I like how Garmin is “all in one place” but now that I might have to pay ala carte for what I want data analytics wise, maybe I should explore the competition as a triathlete more now.
Intervals.icu free tier blows GC+ paid analytics out of the water. The only thing GC does better is map integration. Charts (1D *and* 2D), analytic depth, customizability, extensibility, searchability: it is all better on *free* intervals.icu.
And, compared to GC+ low value to high price ratio, intervals.icu 40 EUR per *year* subscription could be considered to be a donation for a great service :-)
I agree! Been using intervals.icu and HRV4Training pro for a while. The analytics seem unique to what my endurance needs are. Things like aerobic efficiency etc. The only true thing I value from Garmin is their heat adjusted VO2 max readings for cycling and or their performance condition metric. All the other fluff like endurance score and a lot of these connect + graphs seem rather useless information. I also like how my weight updates from my index 2 across devices. Apple Watch was definitely more of a productive device for me with LTE, seamless connection to my beats, Siri etc.
If you find a good paper on heat-adjusted VO2max, I have little doubt that it would be added to Intervals.ICU. I don’t know if Garmin is using Firstbeat-specific science on that or leveraging open source research.
Kudos to Garmin, they’ve managed to combine two of the most despised things in the consumer space right now into one press release.
I’m sick of companies trying to push their worthless “AI powered” whatever (consumer level AI products are still, for the most part, comically bad), and sick of them trying to bleed us to death with subscriptions.
This looks like the thin end of the wedge. The minute what I consider to be core features are subscrion only, Garmin lose me as a customer and I suspect I’m not alone.
From what I can tell and seemed to have missed in this article (?), is that connect+ also introduces pay to win mechanics to the whole gamification part of Connect.
It gives you double the points for an activity if you pay €90 per year for connect+. So it gets way easier to level up if you shell out. Apart from having exclusive connect+ badges in the first place.
Not that I care to much about the whole level up thingy but it makes for false competition I think.
Pretty much like Strava. But it is the obvious thing to do in order to expand the addressable market – the most serious (and genetically gifted) athletes will generally win sporting competitions. After all that is sports.
But turn it into a game (or social media thing) and you can sell a “Boost” or add-on to somebody who wants to get to the next level or to the top of the hill quicker than they otherwise could…
I wonder if the (generally negative) reception to this would be different if they’d differentiated a bit by watch.
They already do this – as a Forerunner 165 music user, I know there are some metrics I can’t see, even though the watch is perfectly capable of (and is?) capturing them (eg training load).
But, if I’d shelled out for a 965 or Fenix, I’d feel like these new features should be included. One of the cheaper watches? Maybe less so.
Perhaps to sweeten the appeal, they could also enable those features (eg training load) for cheaper watches. Would I pay more for access to those? Maybe, if it was still cheaper than upgrading to a 265.
> They already do this – as a Forerunner 165 music user, I know there are some metrics I can’t see, even though the watch is perfectly capable of (and is?) capturing them (eg training load).
FR165 probably doesn’t capture training load, as there’s no reason to — it’s not a feature the watch supports. And most (or all) of these FirstBeat training features are calculated on the watch itself (not in Connect).
In contrast, FR645 supports displaying 7-day training load but not the load for individual activities. In this case, it actually does capture (but not display) individual training load, as it needs the individual load numbers to calculate the 7-day load.
In the case of FR645, you can actually see training load for an individual activity by using runalyze dot com (which syncs with your Connect account) or opening the activity fit file in fitfileviewer dot com.
I bet if you open an activity FIT file from FR165, it would *not* contain training load (which would be the closest thing to “proving” that FR165 doesn’t measure or record it).
I just tried uploading an activity from my FR165 to runalyze and it does show training load
> I just tried uploading an activity from my FR165 to runalyze and it does show training load
Haha I stand corrected (although I kinda saw that coming. or should’ve). Well at least you have a workaround :/
One problem is you won’t get 7-day training load as it’s no longer a linear formula (e.g. adding up the last 7 days training) but older values are given lower weight.
(Unless someone knows what Garmin’s formula is)
Not that it matters, but I’d guess that FR165 probably uses training load internally to calculate recovery time (which is exposed as a feature to end users afaik).
But then again, I think someone mentioned that one of the Vivoactive models (maybe VA4) would record both training load and recovery time, but neither metric was exposed on the watch or in Connect.
So I guess in at least some cases, Garmin has a really lazy way of limiting software features.
> I just tried uploading an activity from my FR165 to runalyze and it does show training load
Just to double-check, when you say runalyze shows training load, do you mean TRIMP or TRIMP (from file) in the activity columns? TRIMP is runalyze’s calculated training load, while TRIMP (from file) is the Garmin training load from FIT file.
Similarly, in the runalyze activity details, TRIMP in the overview is calculated by runalyze, while TRIMP under Fit details (by file) is Garmin’s training load.
I don’t doubt what you said, since it’s happened before (with VA4) and it seems like Garmin would need training load to calculate recovery time (I guess), just wanted to double-checl.
Ah, it listed TRIMP. I don’t have a different device to compare with. But in any case there must be something there for the recovery time and DSW, but obviously I’m not exactly sure how that’s implemented.
And Garmin have the right to differentiate their products, but I’m more likely to pay for better training features than AI snippets and new badges.
So with features per cost what’s going to give the best benefits free Garmin connect and paid Strava or paid connect and free Strava
I don’t really see any overlap there. Or, marginal at best.
Ultimately, I see far more value right now in paid Strava + free GC. Paid Strava gets all the route building tools. And while Garmin’s route building tools are actually quite good for most uses, it’s the added volume of user data in Strava for heatmaps that is more useful.
That just sounds like bad news. Having been checking the Fenix range to replacing my old Fenix, and also waiting for the edge 850 with full expectation of buying it, I’m now concerned that they’ll start cutting back on features available to me (I’m not paying a subscription to use what I’ve already spent $2k on). Just the announcement is enough to make me start looking at other brands.
I am not aware of Garmin ever cutting down or reducing features of an existing device. 20+ year-old Forerunners 201/301/305 still perfectly sync with Garmin Connect and have all their functionality (unlike various Suuntomdefices wehre the online platform has been discontinued).
> I am not aware of Garmin ever cutting down or reducing features of an existing device
Sorry to nitpick, but they have actually done this recently with FR165, which had a few features at release which Garmin did not intend to include. (This was clear based on the spec sheet and DCR’s review which called out the absence of some of these features compared to other Forerunners.)
Shortly after release, they removed some features and hobbled others, and users definitely noticed.
For example, based on some reddit and garmin forum posts:
– the elevation data field was removed
– the ABC glance was removed (the watch still has an altimeter/baro and compass, just not with the same functionality as other watches)
– barometer/storm alerts were removed
I know this isn’t exactly what you meant, but it is something Garmin has done. In this specific case, it probably speaks to incompetence / neglect more than maliciousness. Although I would be pretty pissed off if I bought an FR165 and Garmin retroactively deleted features because they didn’t mean to include them in the first place.
Also in the past, Garmin has mentioned the lactate threshold guided test in the manual for a device, but when the device was actually released, the test was not present.
I know that’s also not exactly what you meant.
Yeah, Garmin has never systematically removed features that were promised or actually included in a device on a widespread basis, but there have been little hiccups here and there afaict.
And yes, Garmin has been very good about supporting old devices…perhaps until now.
A few things I’ve noticed recently:
– all the garmin forums for old devices were suddenly archived around feb 2024 (after staying up for years past their supported lifecycle)
– since the end of 2023, older (but not “very old”) devices no longer receive ciq updates (for years before that, both older devices and new devices would receive ciq updates)
– ciq store built-in monetization is only for new devices
I think some of this stuff points to a shift in culture where some decision makers decided to start focusing on newer products instead of trying to keep users of 10-year old devices happy. And that makes a lot of sense from a business perspective.
They probably won’t take any steps to stop old devices from syncing, but as we’ve seen, the new Connect+ service only works with new devices, right? The old garmin would probably have tried to support as many devices as possible. Or maybe it’s just me who thinks that.
Another recent FR165 mishap: certain graphics-related CIQ functions were removed from FR165 devices, which caused several existing CIQ apps to crash. (This was called out obliquely in the changelog for a beta CIQ SDK, so it’s clearly intentional although we will probably never know the true reasons *). To be clear, these functions apparently worked perfectly fine in the past.
After the ensuing brouhaha, Garmin decided to restore these functions to FR165 devices (this was also obliquely called out in an FR165 firmware changelog).
[*] the CIQ SDK changelog refers to removing functions for drawing radial/angled text on devices without a GPU, which includes FR165. But it doesn’t say *why*. Obviously it’s not because they didn’t work: according to devs, they worked just fine. No users of the affected apps had previously reported any problems with radial or angled text either. The fact that Garmin has decided to restore these functions is another indication that they must’ve worked fine in the first place. Could it be because using these functions on a device without a GPS has an adverse effect on battery life? If so, Garmin didn’t say anything to that effect. We can only be left to speculate that Garmin wanted to artificially limit the functionality of FR165 after the fact by removing functionality that used to work.
So Garmin has recently intentionally removed functionality from FR165, more than once. And in the latest case, they apparently decided to put it back.
I do not think that you are nitpicking at all. I was not aware of these FR165 issues. In light of that, my statement of Garmin not cutting down or reducing features of an existing device requires qualification (even though I agree that it was probably a result of sloppiness, rather than bad intent).
I think you captured it well with “Garmin has never systematically removed features that were promised or actually included in a device on a widespread basis.”
This is a simple OpEx vs. Capex question. Retail consumers will not sustain both models. Garmin either have to drop the watch price significantly (to the around 300-400USD mark) and charge a monthly subscription or leave the watch pricing where it is and kill this silly subscription idea. Honestly, I love my Garmin but everything else is in the Apple EcoSystem and if this subscription takes features away from Garmin then I’ll be back with Apple (even though I don’t love the watch).
One other interesting tidbit on the free side: amongst the newly released badges for April are a few that are obviously meant to activate social activity amongst users.
This, along with the paid tier, it looks like Garmin might be starting a concerted effort to take on Strava.
I’m really surprised and disappointed by this. As someone already posted, if the subscription offered me a more fully realised, AI-drive and personally optimised training program…maybe I’d consider it. Maybe. I suspect that the WatchOS team at Apple Park are currently rubbing their hands together and potentially pulling the release of quite a few new features forward for the Ultra range. It seems a no-brainer that Apple’s *vast* trove of Health data will eventually lead to personalise coaching on-device. For free. I think Garmin are going to rue the day they released this, even as a beta. I haven’t seen a single positive comment around it yet.
One of the main compelling reasons for a Garmin watch was that everything is included. With a premium subscription offering, I’m instantly looking elsewhere because I am concerned that any new innovation will be a paid feature. Hopefully, from the list below, it is apparent that I am invested in not only the product but also keep on buying because I read the release details every time a new product comes out -looking for the newest innovations. A recurring cost is not appealing to me at all.
Current and previous Garmin devices:
Fenix 5 sapphire
Fenix 7 SS
Enduro 3
HRM Pro
HRM Pro+
Footpod
Index s2 smart scale
Index BPM
Got my parents
Fenix 6x
Fenix 7s SS
… Another way to read this is that I am already on a subscription plan for the hardware. Consistently improve the hardware and I will remain a customer.
I’ve looked at the release of every version of the Fenix series and recorded their price. With every new watch Garmin has increased their price by 20-30%. Sometimes even more. They’ve hit a ceiling for me already. I’ll either hold into the watch longer or switch brands at this point. Sales surely have to level off when people hit their max price. Personally, mine is about $500 and then I start to question buying the next release.
I’m not the first one to say this, but it’s hilarious how Garmin wants user to pay for Connect+ when the existing “free” Connect app has so many issues: it’s clunky, outdated, missing features, and the user experience is generally bad.
There’s so many little things in Connect that suck compared to other apps like Strava or Stryd, such as:
– selecting gear (specifically running shoes)
– navigating the calendar view and/or long lists of activities
– searching for activities (oh wait that’s right, the Connect app doesn’t have a search feature for *anything* – for that you have to go the Connect website, which is clearly a 2nd class citizen, as ofc the majority of Garmin users will never use it)
Why would anyone at Garmin think that customers would expect better from Connect+? Because we’d be paying for it? Hmm, maybe that’s the idea. “Connect is so bad that customers will gladly pay for something a bit better.”
If I sign up for Connect+, will Garmin finally:
– fix the gear / shoe selection process?
– address the 10+ year old feature request to have mixed units (imperial and metric) in Connect (not just on the device)?
Of course not.
Reality is, there is no particularly good data recording/warehousing platform. Let alone a free one. Period.
Garmin Connect probably comes closest – but as you noted has some very annoying issues. And is only for Garmin devices, of course.
Strava is undoubtedly worse (although a few specific points are better than Connect).
I work with a combination of Connect (primary data collection, basic analytics), TrainingPeaks and spreadsheets (more advanced analytics, workouts and training planning – and as back-up of the data warehouse). Plus Strava only for social purposes.
Yeah, Connect has better data than Strava, but Strava has better UX. But almost nobody has UX as bad as Garmin (unless they haven’t updated their site or app in 10+ years).
I know a lot of runners who never open Connect unless they have to – they use Strava whenever possible. One comment I’ve heard more than once is that Connect is “confusing” (this is coming from a scientist in grad school.)
(sorry for the dupe comment – #173 was an accidental top-level reply
> (sorry for the dupe comment – #173 was an accidental top-level reply
Well, now it’s #174, and probably after this, it will be #175.
Maybe I should say “the comment by Will at March 27, 2025 at 11:03 pm (UTC-4) was an accidental top-level reply”
Personally I find Strava and Connect roughly equally clunky (albeit in different ways). Both have different issues, annoying inconsistencies between app and web, etc. Different people different preferences, I suppose.
What does rankle mean with Strava is the (opaque and instransparent) manipulation of the data. HR, distances, etc are often different from Connect. Most of the time only marginally in aggregate, but sometimes more significantly for individual intervals. And the GPS tracks are _very different_ for certain activities.
And the fact that HR zones can only be set on the web interface not in the app. And that there are no separate zones for running and biking…
And yes, the platform for comments on this site is very basic and limiting – threaded responses being an obvious example.
Yes, it’s fair that Strava has issues, but to elaborate on the gear/shoe selection thing (to highlight how Garmin does the smallest things in the worst possible way):
In the Connect app:
– if an activity already has gear (e.g. it’s a running activity and you have default shoes for running), then the activity’s Gear tab won’t allow you to change to gear (hmm). Instead, you have to tap 3 dots > Add and Remove Gear
– if the activity *doesn’t* have gear, then the Gear tab has a big Add Gear button. This is nice, but inconsistent to say the least
– When you tap Add or Remove Gear, the list of gear is always in a different order (this is very annoying when trying to change gear for multiple activities)
– When you tap on a new piece of gear (new shoes), the existing gear isn’t deselected, so now you have 2 pairs of selected shoes. You have to manually tap on the already selected gear to deselect it. This is ridiculous as the vast majority of people don’t want to select multiple shoes for an activity in the majority of cases, and even for the tiny minority who might want this feature, multiple shoes aren’t really handled properly in terms of mileage: the entire mileage for the activity is applied to all pairs of selected shoes, instead of allowing the user to split up mileage amongst different pairs. So not only does Garmin give people a “feature” (selecting multiple shoes) nobody wants (likely out of neglect, not intent), this “feature” isn’t really useful as implemented
All of the above leads to a very tedious experience when selecting shoes for an activity.
In the Strava app:
– The activity has a simple drop-down for shoes
– Only one pair of shoes can be selected at a time
– The list of shoes is always in the same order
– The drop-down is in on the same page as the rest of the detailed activity editing items
All of that leads to a streamlined UX for selecting shoes that requires as little tapping (and cognitive load) as people.
In the Strava app, I can change my shoes from the default in 2 taps, assuming I’m already editing the activity.
In the Connect app, it takes at least 4 taps (and I have to pay close attention to the randomly-ordered gear list to make sure I’m selecting the correct shoes).
Honestly, only Garmin could make the seemingly simple task of assigning shoes to an activity a tedious, complicated slog. I will say that Garmin lets you assign shoes to non-running/walking activities like Basketball, while Strava only lets you assign shoes to running/walking activities. So +1 for Garmin for flexibility, but -100 for UX.
Don’t get me started on the Connect app’s mobile route editor (yeah I’m aware Strava doesn’t have a route editor on *mobile*, but better to have nothing than something which is useless/broken). For some reason, waypoints/course points are only presented as a *list* in the Connect app, not the website. And if you delete the final course point in the Connect app, instead of naturally making your course shorter (which is what happens in the Strava route editor website), somehow it makes you course *longer* (by adding random points)?
Other stuff I’ll mention:
– The workout voice notes feature sounds great on paper, but in practice the notes are basically inaudible (compared to music, alerts, etc) when played through bluetooth earbuds, so feature is pointless. I was excited when I first saw it for my FR955, but now I don’t use it.
– Garmin GAP is useless. Often it will show a slower GAP than average pace for a net uphill lap or an activity with net zero elevation change (and non-zero ascent/descent), which is counter-intuitive. Strava and runalyze usually show much more reasonable numbers for GAP
– Various bugs which have been reported for *years* either stay unfixed, or are fixed but come back years later (sometimes in slightly different forms). The fact that bugs are resurrected years later tells me that Garmin never learns from their (software) mistakes.
TL;DR Garmin does so many things that work poorly or not at all.
> And yes, the platform for comments on this site is very basic and limiting – threaded responses being an obvious example.
Haha I really wasn’t trying to criticize this platform (although it may have come out that way) – was only genuinely trying to point to the top-level comment I accidentally made. And tbf it was totally my fault.
I do think it’s too bad that the comment numbers aren’t fixed (e.g. every time I respond to this “thread”, a bunch of comment numbers will change at the top level).
What I *should* have done is simply linked to the mistaken comment, although that may or may not put in me in the mod queue:
link to dcrainmaker.com
Hmm links to comments don’t work so great either, as the linked comment isn’t highlighted. If the linked comment is not near the bottom of the page, the page will scroll so the comment is at the top, which is good.
But if it is near the bottom of the page, it’s not possible for the page to scroll so the comment is at the top, so it’s not really possible to visually identify the comment that was linked to.
Oh well :/
> All of that leads to a streamlined UX for selecting shoes that requires as little tapping (and cognitive load) as people.
Sorry, meant to type:
“All of that leads to a streamlined UX for selecting shoes that requires as little tapping (and cognitive load) as possible”
Also, as a CIQ dev, I see even more bugs in Garmin devices than the general public is usually privy to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes, well aware of the cumbersome gear management in Connect. There is also the issue of “retired” gear showing up mixed in with the active items…
I find both route editors equally clunky. At least Garmin has the one in the app for some emergency/last minute edits. But both suck.
I _do_ like the recently introduced quick edit for activities on Strava. I also do like how easy it is to simply select any portion of a workout and see the statistics for that section, the GPS track – at least in the web interface. Shame that the data are slightly suspect…
And while I am not holding my breath, it appears that FatMap might be coming back at least in some form. Loved that app.
> Shame that the [Strava] data are slightly suspect…
Yeah it’s true. Instant pace for very short activities (like 4 x 15s strides) is completely messed up on the website. Not sure if it’s ignoring Garmin’s instant pace data and trying to recalculate its own from GPS points. Funnily enough it does look ok in the app.
Then there’s cases when you do lose GPS and Strava decides to insert a straight line into your track to fill in the gaps (often resulting in superhuman paces and/or a messed-up track), whereas Garmin would just skip over that whole missing section.
Maybe it just goes to show that it’s better to be simple and easy to use than to have “correct” data, for most users.
(to pile on strava, I could mention the useless and annoying AI insights (wow when I put “uphill strides” in my activity title, Strava’s genius-level AI helpfully informed me that my run included “uphill strides”), or the fact that they moved formerly free features behind the paywall.)
Yes, the Strava Athlete Intelligence is spectacularly bad – and anecdotally getting worse. The wisdom of telling my that my tempo interval runs on a track had less elevation gain than my 2 week cycling trip around Girona…or not recognizing warm up and cool down segments and telling me that I faded during my last interval…
(You can always link to dcrainmaker.com, and Supporters can also include links, without getting stuck in the queue. Obviously, any non-SPAM links I approve once I’m awake.)
Interesting idea on visually highlighting the link from a URL (versus what we do now and just take you straight to it, but not highlighting it).
It’s wild to me that the activities list in Gear (where I can assign gear as defaults to specific activity types) isn’t pulling from the same list as the full activities list. I can only assign a bike as default to “Cycling” in general, and not to the various subsets – I’d like to be able to set my mountain bike as the default for mountain biking, etc!
What I’d like to see is them assigning bikes to an activity depending on the sensors in the FIT file, so I don’t have to do anything. Strava allows ActivityFix to assign bikes to rides based on the sensors, and something similar in Garmin Connect would be easy for them to implement.
Yeah, Connect has better data than Strava, but Strava has better UX. But almost nobody has UX as bad as Garmin (unless they haven’t updated their site or app in 10+ years).
I know a lot of runners who never open Connect unless they have to – they use Strava whenever possible. One comment I’ve heard more than once is that Connect is “confusing” (this is coming from a scientist in grad school.)
99.99% of this is useless to me. I walk and workout, that’s it. I just want my basic data and to keep my streak going. I like the badges because it keeps me motivated and wanted to “collect” as many as I can. I’m level 8 right now, I got a lot of badges. Now they are showing me shiny new ones that I need to pay for? What a joke! I’m going to pay $69 a year so I can get a few more badges? Now I know you get “other” stuff but I don’t use ANY of that. Even if it was free I wouldn’t find it useful. *sigh* I like Garmin, this is my second watch, if they keep this crap up I’m jumping ship badges or not.
Strava started with new paid features and slowly moved more and more free features behind the paywall, until now I have few reasons to spend much time in the app except to unhide the start and end points on the map of every virtual ride I do on Zwift (why can’t Strava just make a setting to not hide start and endpoints on virtual rides?)…
Same for nearly every company that starts down the paid feature pathway. Not enough people subscribe because the value proposition isn’t there so they keep reducing free features and adding to the paid, hoping to make it painful enough that people will kick in more money (something they learned from the airlines?)
Seems like nearly every comment here is not in favor of this change and this audience probably cares more about consumption and analysis of their data than the run of the mill Garmin smartwatch users (who are also less committed to the Garmin ecosystem and would easily jump to another platform like Apple or Coros or Suunto or Amazfit), so I’m not sure who they expect to want to pay for another subscription…
They are charging for Beta testing? That is ridiculous.
Also, I have said this before: I would happily pay for an option of getting new features in to my old watch. Eg I have epix pro and I could use four CIQ slots F8 has but as the watches are basically same I don’t want to buy new watch because it is not sustainable.
Why I cannot buy the features as an upgrade? That seems like no brainer to me.
I home the money is good because they really hurt the trust we had in their brand with that move. As a 13+ year Garmin user I’m wondering for the first time if I should leave their ecosystem. Congrats Garmin!
Seems a bit dramatic. Nothing has changed for existing users: this is strictly for additional features. I do not think it is worth it and I will not be extending beyond the trial period, but in no way does thst affect the features and functionality that ainalready have.
And the shift to subscription or pay-by-use is a market phenomenon (the air conditioning and heating in my house does not even work without a monthly fee…) and frankly the writing has been on the wall for Garmin for a while.
Not much extra value here for Connect+. I live in Europe and I’m not very keen to pay anything more than absolutely necessary to an american company, given how the Trump administration has treated us lately with tariffs, even saying that Europe is a country.
Garmin should offer at least a year free (or while the watch is under warranty) for anyone who buys a new watch, especially a premium model like the Fenix. The watches are already expensive enough.
Maybe they will. At the moment, no one is paying for Connect+. I signed up yesterday, and the first payment is due late April. Apple certainly offers free Fitness+ with Apple devices; I get nagged about that all the time. But like Fitness+, Connect+ seems to be geared for structured workouts, and I only rarely do anything that could be considered a workout (occasional erg mode in Zwift). When I set up my cycling dashboard yesterday I removed any panel having to do with power, because the only time I ride with power is with my e-bike outdoors (about once a week) or my Tacx Neo 2 indoors. The other bikes I ride outdoors don’t have power meters. Unless the AI turns out to be far less stupid than Strava’s (and right now it’s fixated on “intensity minutes”), I’ll probably cancel before the first payment is due.
But if you have a year old device you will still not get the latest software features like strength programs?
So they will continue to push $1000 watches plus a subscription.
Loose – loose situation.
Garmin actually had a few low-hanging fruit to fix with AI,
like tracking activities throughout the day or correcting the faulty HR sensor data
but I guess the faulty HR sensors are a feature now that can be fixed with a subscription.
I hate it! For me and my close ones, badges were fun and motivating way to make sure that I do enough gym, walking and yoga on top of my ultra training. It also was fun to complete them and compete with my family and friends.
This badging change with pay to win, easy to get badges worth of a lot of points destroys the whole point of badges.
A) they are now relatively hard to get with a busy life we have
B) not worth A lot points
This destroys the whole joy of the system in my opinion. By paying 9€ per month I could basically double my monthly points, without any changes to my training.
F this and F Garmin. This whole Connect plus scheme makes me reconsider my choices and switch to Coros
That comment does not really make sense: The game/competition does not really change unless other people in your group subscribe and go for those “boosted” badges.
But interesting that people are actually using these social features of Connect. I suppose it illustrates the range of users that Connect has to cover from Strava-like badge collectors to TrainingPeaks type athletes who hunt PBs rather than arbitrary badges.
What I meant that previously badges were ”hard” to get and took a lot of time to level up etc. Now anyone (not me) could get levels A lot faster by paying the subscription.
In my opinion it does diminish the whole allure of the badges/point system. Yes it doesn’t really change mine and my group’s friendly competition, but in general it changes the whole motivation to get them in a way. Previously e.g. i had to go run a marathon to get 8 points, now there is like 20 points that I could get without any effort.
My point being, what is the idea of having A system where previously hard work and time consuming things were rewrded and now completely change it. I feel this new system diminishes the previous feel of accomplishment of hard work.
It’s mindblowing that they add 123 dashboard elements (which you have to pay for). But you still can’t get the average heart rate for the first 15 minutes of an activity.
Yup, as mentioned above that is a very curious omission in Connect. Obviously it can easily be done outside of Connect but it should really be included in the app/platform.
All you do is highlight the first 15 mins…and boom, average shown at right.
Sorry to contradict you dude, but selecting/highlighting a horizontal section of an activity graph in the Connect website – as you’ve shown – only zooms into the graph, it does *not* change the displayed average. The displayed average still applies to the entire activity, no matter what. If this isn’t absolutely clear from the UI, I would say that’s 100% on Garmin (and it’s 100% on-brand for Garmin, too).
Tbf the Strava app has even less features than the Connect app for graphs (you can’t even roll over graphs to get instant values). The Strava website does have the “Analysis Graph” feature which allows you to do stuff like highlight the first 15 minutes of an activity to get the average heart rate, pace, and cadence. runalyze.com (which syncs with Connect) has similar features although tbf it’s a highly technical site which is def not for the average user.
Sigh, you’re right. Figured I picked an easy commute this morning, so it wasn’t obvious (whereas had I clicked on my intervals from last night…would have been instantly obvious).
Agree, dumb (and, also dumb you can’t do it on GCM).
I do find it highly annoying that both Strava and Garmin have certain features that are exclusive either to the app or the website, meaning that if you want *all* the features of a given platform, you would have to use both the app *and* the website.
I guess they rightfully recognize that each platform’s app and website appeal to very different demographics.
Most runners I know irl primarily use the Strava app, and almost none of them use the Strava website at all. The few runners that I know who use the Connect app at all are also very unlikely to use the Connect website.
Then again, I’m always kinda surprised when I see other runners with the Strava Flyby feature since it almost certainly means they had to explicitly opt in using the Strava website (after Strava turned it off by default for privacy reasons), unless Strava somehow missed turning it off for *everyone*.
Do these runners just leave the HR zones on the default settings (since they can only be adjusted in the web interface)?
At least when registering in the browser, Strava asks you to set the zones (or at least used to), I think.
> Sigh, you’re right. Figured I picked an easy commute this morning, so it wasn’t obvious (whereas had I clicked on my intervals from last night…would have been instantly obvious).
> Agree, dumb (and, also dumb you can’t do it on GCM).
It’s all good, like I said, it’s very unclear from the way Garmin presents the average value in the UI.
Speaking of dumb, why are the majority of the big platforms allergic to displaying time and distance at the same time on activity graphs? (Obviously the x-axis can’t be *both* time and distance, but it isn’t impossible to have x-axis as as time while displaying both time and distance as you roll over the graph, for example).
When I started running ~10 years ago, a friend of mine really wanted to know how to get Connect to display time and distance simultaneously so she could easily answer questions like “how far did I go 20 minutes into my run?”
Ofc it wasn’t possible. And highlighting a period of time then switching the graph x-axis to distance doesn’t work either, since that resets the zoom. (Maybe it worked at the time, since I recall suggesting something like that? Either way, it was a clunky workaround.)
And after all these years, it still isn’t possible in Connect.
It’s not possible in the Stryd app either (as nice as it is).
Workoutdoors (apple watch) shows both time and distance as you roll over the activity graph, but it’s an indie app.
Apple Fitness also shows both time and distance as you roll over the graph. It shows pauses too (which is something Stryd shows, but Connect and Strava don’t). To me this highlights how Apple at least makes a show of caring a lot more about UX than some other companies. Fitness loses points due to very limited granularity on the graph roll over though – the minimum time between adjacent points is like 15 seconds when you’re zoomed into 15 minute mode. On-brand for Apple too: pretty good UX, but functionality sometimes falls short. I will give them credit for addressing a very common use case that many others have ignored.
This is kind of possible with the Strava website’s Analysis Graph (which for some reason is only available when open the site on a computer, not an ipad or phone): e.g. you can highlight a section by time then flip the x-axis to distance.
Runalyze shows both time and distance, but only on the power graph (?). Ofc runalyze doesn’t work properly unless you have a mouse/trackpad (which is required for any features which involve rolling over or selecting parts of graphs) :/. If you want to “ask” the question numerically (instead of visually), you can just use the custom lap feature where you can temporarily apply laps of arbitrary (and differing) distance or time to an activity. So if I wanted to answer the question “how far did I go 20 minutes into my run?”, I would just set a custom lap of 20:00 in runalyze. But that’s far from a simple solution that the majority of users will be willing or able to use.
Maybe there’s some other platform that can faciltate answering simple questions like “how far did I go 20 minutes into my run?”, but you’d think that would be supported by the Connect or Strava apps.
Come to think of it, with all the AI hype in Strava and Connect+, why *isn’t* this possible? Why can’t I just ask a natural language question like “how far did I go 20 minutes into my run?”
Nah, that would be crazy – an actual useful application of LLMs in the sports tech space. A way to answer simple questions that runners have been asking for years, without forcing them to open an overly technical site which only works if you have a literal mouse (or trackpad) and looks best on a large screen.
> Do these runners just leave the HR zones on the default settings (since they can only be adjusted in the web interface)?
Probably. It’s hard to say since I can’t see other runners’ hr zones in strava.
It might surprise you how many people are unwilling to open a website (even on their phone) to do anything unrelated to work or school. Probably because it literally feels like work to them.
People will literally ask “how do I do X [something optional that they nonetheless really want to do]?” and if you tell them they have to open a website, they just change their minds and forget about doing X in the first place.
I’ve had that convo more than once and it usually ended with “it’s 2015/2020/2025, why can’t I do this in the app?” And I don’t blame em. Websites like connect.garmin.com, strava.com, and runalyze.com are for the minority of users who are either highly technical (which is why some of the nerdier features are reserved for the web app) or are unwilling/unable to use the app (for various reasons).
Apps are also almost always highly dumbed down / easy to use compared to the equivalent website.
On a similar note, until September 2021, Strava would only allow you to add gear (like shoes) from the website (and not the app), although you could *assign* gear to activities either from the website or the app.
You might guess that I knew people who would *never* use the gear tracking function in Strava because you had to use the website to add shoes.
I understand why Strava went opt-in fully for FlyBy, but they should’ve made anything tagged as a “Race” have FlyBy enabled by default.
Not much help if you’re using a Garmin watch but in Suunto App you can easily answer “how far had I run after X minutes” just by moving along the graph and it’ll show time and distance at the selected point (plus up to three other metrics), as well as simultaneously showing where that point is on the map.
With a bit more hassle you can also answer “what was my average X over Y time period” by zooming into the time period on the graph. A bit more hassle because getting the zoom right is awkward and you can’t type the range you want. But once done, you can see avg HR, pace and power, distance covered and elevation gain and loss.
I’ve got a Garmin watch as well and I’ve never understood why you can’t get this basic info from the Connect app.
I also find the route planner much better in SA vs Connect, especially for anything off-road.
But on the other side, at least Connect groups linked metrics together in summary tables, whereas when Suunto has added new metrics they’ve just thrown them semi-randomly into one big table. Lap analysis is probably a bit better in Connect too.
In Spain, the pricing is €89.99 per year, which is nearly double of what Strava charges at €49.99.
Which brings me to my next worry:
Now that Garmin is charging for Connect, they will have the incentive to restrict API access to other services which analyse our data. This is what happened with Strava, at least to a point.
Strava also provides reasonable analytics and pretty bad AI features. Why would someone pay Garmin, if they could pay Strava half the money?
Garmin will have to close this option, and that will be through restricting the API, for example by only providing it to Connect+ users.
In the near future, Api integrations (zwift,strava, komoot etc) will be behind the paywall, for sure.
This animation in real time on the phone might be a nice feature as phone screen can be casted on larger TV screen.
But I would prefer to have other options fixed first, like possibility to mix exercises from different categories – Strength, Pilates, Yoga and of course possibility to create own workouts with animations instead today’s long route – pick existing one and edit.
And having fixed gauges where today we have short dash across colored arc which is completely not visible for people who needs glasses to read. I would like to glance on the screen and see more less where my HR is.
i am not worried for now since as you mentionned, what we have now for free will stay free, I am worried for the future of free functionalities, I am pretty sure Garmin wills top investing in developping new free features or fixing/optimizing existing free features, sadly, this is the worst decision they took, they will lose a lot specially in european countries where 9 Euros arwe bloody expensive for such thing. Yes some guys in DUbai will subscribe to get the fancy « things » biut how much they will lose everywhere else?
Thanks for the write up. None of these features appeal to me, but if I understand it correctly you pay some money so that Garmin can develop their beta product and in return you get “AI” (I really think this term doesn’t apply here) writing out very long sentences to convey some useless statistic that you can figure out by looking at your weekly progress graph, just in case you somehow unknowingly put in 450 activity minutes. I find these meaningless kudos more off putting than motivating tbh. Anyhow, I was wondering if you plan to update this article in 2 weeks or so – when you’ve found out if these messages become more useful eventually? Cheers
Yes, the key will be whether the Garmin AI will produce any insightful and meaningful comments.
The Strave Athlete Intelligence has been an unmitigated disaster for me – the comments are either so trite or so wrong that I find them actually off-putting.
Garmin should be able to do better, including because 1. it has a lot more data (sleep, continuous heart rate, steps etc) and 2. already has functionality using these data (Daily suggested work-outs, adaptive training plans).
From first glance amongst our group testing the Garmin AI, it seems better than Strava, with no complete duds (no Strava, I did not fade during the final interval, I did a cool down…) but also nothing really actionable so far.
Yeah, I call Strava’s AI “artificial banality”. Doesn’t even rise to the level of “artificial stupidity” that I find elsewhere.
Garmin doesn’t have access to all of my data because I don’t wear my Garmin watch all of the time. I wear an AW Ultra because it’s a much better smartwatch. I checked yesterday on my iPhone and Connect has write access to Health but not read access. So there’s no way that Garmin can get all of my data, and no chance that I’m going to wear my Epix in place of my Ultra. If Connect+ could get all of my data then it might be worth something, but Apple probably won’t allow that. (Health on the iPhone is next to useless.)
This is a pretty ominous direction – I don’t use the Garmin Connect features that much anyone, as through coaches I have always done analytics on TP – but for a triathlete with expensive bike computer and watch from Garmin, having them try to milk more money for something a bit crappy is, well a bit crappy!
A disappointing development. I was intending to upgrade my watch and bike computer this year if and when a 975 and 850 or 550 come out. I wasn’t even considering looking at anything other than a new Garmin.
Now I will be giving serious consideration to other options, specifically a Wahoo for my bike and an Apple Watch of some description if it fits my swim/bike/gym/ski/hike needs.
Let’s remember that we shouldn’t make ourselves slaves to a product either; we can do sport without a wearable after all.
And above all, don’t lock yourself into a single ecosystem, because then you lose the choice and freedom to change.
Connect+ is adding “fat points” Challenges.
E.g. 4 points for 8000 kcal … for the whole month of April … 2-3 days tops 🙄
Hmmm …. Nah
Today i received a replacement Fenix 8.
On my old one, i could receive spectator messages via livetrack, on the new one the option is not available anymore.
Thus, i lost a feature thangs to subscription BS.
What does that have to do with the subscription? Should be no different from before.
It was only at the same time, problem was the old Firmware version of the watch.
So you actually have _not_ “lost a feature thangs to subscription BS”?
Where is the problem? You still have all the features what you bought for and if you want additional features, you can pay for this subscription. (a no-go for me)
Regardless of any subscription I have all (hello AWU, there is for example no grade metric) metrics saved for my activity and even have a quickfit mount for my expensive Fenix 8 on my road bike (another hello AWO, there is no quickfit and display power off all the time).
The problem is that this new supsription tier essentially locks in the features Connect (free) has today, forever. It will never get any additional new features, all new features will be added only to the paid tier. That seems fine today, sure. But in 5 years, when Connect (free) still has got only what it has today, and the paid tier has like 2x as many new features that unlock the full potential of future watches with new capabilities, that will be a problem. The free tier will suck at that point, pushing everyone to have to buy the subscription if they want to use their new Fenix 9 or 10 or whatever to its fullest potential.
Never need anything more than basic features and especially no A.I. or any other intelligent trainer.
“The problem is that this new supsription tier essentially locks in the features Connect (free) has today, forever. It will never get any additional new features, all new features will be added only to the paid tier.”
There is absolutely zero evidence to indicate that.
“pushing everyone to have to buy the subscription if they want to use their new Fenix 9 or 10 or whatever to its fullest potential.”
Even if so (and I doubt it), it will be like what the Apple Watch, Coros etc are now already, ie, requiring subscription to get comprehensive functionality. Difference being that 1. those devices require subscriptions even for core functionality, 2. probably require _multiple_ subscriptions for full/comprehensive functionality (and those multiple apps are probably integrated) , and 3. the subscriptions are with 3rd party apps/platforms (because the device maker does not have comprehensive solution).
“It will never get any additional new features, all new features will be added only to the paid tier.”
People keep forgetting this is literally the first new features we’ve had on Garmin Connect in like a decade. Setting aside re-arranging the deck chairs (UI) last year, there’s been virtually no meaningful feature-specific development of Garmin Connect in far more years than I can count. And no, I don’t count adding a new chart type when they add a new data field (e.g. adding an Endurance Score chart when they added it to their watches).
I’m talking actual new features, new capabilities. Garmin simply hasn’t done that, really ever, this decade or most of last.
Thus in some ways, it’s going to be very challenging to separate out free GC features in a before/after GC+ kind of way, because the ‘before’ column was equally as empty.
Not sure I agree with that. As per my other post, Garmin Coach, Garmin Coach 2.0 (with strength training), Live Track, Group Track, events- race calendar, etc. are all recent and primarily Connect features. Daily suggested workouts also.
And segments, heatmaps, public routes, etc might also have been within the last decade.
Hmm, not sure I agree entirely.
Garmin Coach: Introduced in 2015 (no kidding), so…a decade ago.
Garmin Coach V2: This, perhaps, though it really started more as an on-device thing (with the Vivoactive series), and then slowly backported into GC. But yes, I’d give this.
Live Track: This has actually been around since 2013.
Group Track: Fun fact, this too has been around nearly a decade as well, introduced first in 2017 as part of Rider to Rider messaging, and then eventually rebranded, though, the core of it remained there.
Live Event Sharing: This is newer – 2019.
Daily Suggested Workouts: This was introduced as an on-device feature, and actually, still doesn’t have any Garmin Connect-specific functionality. Meaning, you can’t see/tweak upcoming DSW workouts.
Garmin Connect Segments: Introduced waaaaay back in 2013. :)
Heatmaps: I’m not sure exactly when they lit this up. I see references back into 2016 and 2017, though it’s a bit fuzzy on what was shown then.
So, at best, Garmin basically stopped doing stuff from 2017 to 2024. Apparnetly 2015-2016ish was a good year. :)
As far as the data analytics, I wonder what this will do to TrainingPeaks? Meaning, I don’t see a huge difference between the two on that particular facet. If Garmin can produce flashy charts in their app carrying the same data weight as TP, but unified within the Garmin ecosystem, why would a user pay for both?
I feel like Garmin should at least allow actual coaches to program workouts for athletes. I don’t know if they have a coaching platform, but, if the data dashboard could be combined with a coaching platform then I could see there being a market for Garmin connect +. Hell they could even open up the ability to buy custom plans from coaches too. But with everything being “AI coach driven” that will probably never happen.
That’s a good point. TP currently has a human element, Garmin Connect does not when it comes to coaches. So, will TP jump on the AI “coaching” band wagon? Considering the quality so far, that seems a race to the bottom.
I don’t foresee TP jumping meanifully on the AI bandwagon.
Their rallying cry for decades has been about the Coach, and the knowledge the coach has. That’s the gravy in their business model. If they switch to saying AI is the future, they undercut not just the core of their business – but argueably the entire business. Eventually, in some future world, they’ll have to navigate that shift, but as of today, AI isn’t quite there yet (namely for more complex training scenarios, or just simply taking athlete feedback into account).
I definitely agree. It’s just not the same as a real coach yet. Garmin seems to hate polarized training in terms of its algorithms that focus on trying to keep you “productive”. I like to analyze power @ heart rate Zone 2 for endurance/ tracking how my base is building. That’s the bread and butter of Zone 2 training, increasing power over time. Garmin doesn’t have easy tools to show that and it certainly doesn’t prescribe workouts to encourage those types of adaptations. It over prescribes threshold training, even when inputting that my race course demand is 80+ miles. I think it’s the same reason a has a EPOC training load of like 50 lol.
Garmin has a system for a coach to Programm workouts for his/hers whole team. But I can’t remember how it was called.
I’m a huge Garmin fan, but I’m not sure I like what this indicates about their future direction. Garmin is a hardware company. I don’t want to be hooked up to yet another subscription software model.
What sets Garmin apart from other companies in the space has been their business model. You pay more up front, but you get what you pay for – no less, and oftentimes more because they support their watches for a few years after each release. This, along with their excellent customer support, has been what made the high price of Garmin devices palatable to me.
There’s also the fact that Garmin devices interface with absolutely every service out there. You can use Garmin hardware to record every datapoint imaginable (and accurately) and then look at that data in GC, or send it off to a coach in TrainingPeaks or another platform. Once again, Garmin is the hardware and not the software.
Locking features behind a paywall like Google or Apple just doesn’t seem right for Garmin with all this in mind. They make the most expensive devices, but there was always a good reason. This move takes away from that. A product offering is a value proposition, and I don’t see how this adds any value to Garmin’s value proposition but I can see several ways that it detracts.
It’s probably too late for them to roll this back given how much investment it must have taken to develop. I can only hope they are smart enough to do it in a way that doesn’t hurt them. I’m not planning to buy a watch in the near future, but I’ll be watching this closely to see how it’s handled.
Now it works… at 8.99 United States thallers per month or 89.99 per year, I suppose it is because of some tariff
I’m curious, what watches benefit from this subscription. For example, would a Fenix 6 support all of these new features?
This is gonna be a hard no- I don’t need more AI slop in my life, especially slop that I’m paying for… As it stands, Garmin can’t even fix existing bugs in their various devices (this has been a problem since I got my first Edge 810), very rarely add new features to the previous generation of devices (“what you see is what you get and that’s all you’ll ever get” seems like Garmins overriding belief system) and now they want more money on top some extremely expensive devices for features that add very little to the experience.
Hahaha, no. Depending on what they’re doing in 6-7 years when my F7x Pro battery wears out, it may be my last Garmin wearable.
Wow. Agree with most of the comments. This just angers me. The whole business model is based on hardware price points. It is generally understood that in order to get more sport profiles and advanced metrics like LT, you need to buy the more expensive hardware. With the exception of a few things that require sensors, the features are literally turned off in the software of lower tier devices. This subscription model feels like a betrayal and is slap in the face to the community.
It was more or less a no-brainer that I would be getting the pending FR975 to replace my FR955. That is looking a lot less likely now. Bravo, Garmin.
Just terrible. Their AI will be mediocre since they lack expertise, and they will also invest less effort in non-paid version that is already buggy.
I am trying the free trial and the live tracking doesn’t seem to work with the Virtual Run activity which is disappointing.
Do you mean Live Activity? Live Tracking does not really make sense for Virtual Running…
Who is asking for this AI slop?
No, garmin has serious problems with water resistance of watches and hrms
I have been to the Garmin Forum today and see that they have been actively moderating the various negative posts there. It is only one post there that is still open on Connect+ comments.
link to forums.garmin.com
There has been a number of others with various points of view that has been locked and removed from the “most recent” search filter, amongst other one of my posts that was locked down and doesn’t show up unless you know what to search for.
Links still work, so thay can still hide behind the “we only delete spam” or merge posts. Havent seen much of the merging, and seems like they are hiding a lot of the negativity by only allowing one post on this topic.
My current Garmin looks like it may be my last. I hope it fails so miserably they don’t try to pull this again. Rarely have I seen a press release like this get only negative reactions.
One thing that I and others have long asked for is “Year to Date” summaries/totals vs just the default 7D, 4W and rolling 1Y. I’m curious whether the information behind the paywall will include that info? I guess I’ll just keep downloading my data so I can categorize it manually in a spreadsheet.
Like others who have commented, I don’t see much value in what Garmin is offering here. I’ve long found many of Garmin’s analytics to be inaccurate or not very useful. So is AI going dramatically improve those insights? It does not sound like it will.
I’ve been faithful to Garmin for almost 30 years (except for a brief dalliance with the Apple Watch that I found unfulfilling). But putting features increasingly behind paywalls may cause my eyes to start glancing elsewhere.
You may be aware of this, but in the Connect website, Reports > Progress Summary has the option of showing year to date totals. (You can also specify a custom date range on that page.) Not sure if that page has all the data you’re looking for though.
If you really want to see the regular Reports pages for the current calendar year, one workaround would be to temporarily change your computer’s clock to Dec 30. Probably not much point in doing so though, as those pages don’t provide yearly totals anyway.
Also, runalyze.com syncs with your Connect account and provides a lot of different ways to look at your data, including grouping and comparing your totals/averages year-over-year (based on the *calendar* year).
It also shows certain data that’s recorded by devices but not exposed in Connect, like VO2Max to 2 decimal places.
I’m fairly ambivalent about this depending on how this is implemented. The first problem I see is that if I’m buying a premium device, I should be getting these services included. Even mid-range Forerunners are expensive. They should get 2 years of this stuff included. The Fenix line should get 3.
But I really don’t use the insights on this very much already. And if they start locking away the good stuff, well, there’s other options out there. I pay for training peaks because I have a coach. I don’t need or want AI insights.
so essentially you are selling your personal data to train Garmin’s AI model.. Oh yeah and they charge your $7/month for the privilege. i don’t believe for a second they aren’t finding a way to share it or aggragate the data. It makes you wonder what other data from its users it has sucked into the model.
Still using my Fenix 6. Pretty solid. Do not think I will get another Garmin when it dies. I think their software is getting worse. They are releasing new hardware while previous watch have still bugs. I am not complaining about the 6. If there are a few bugs left, I am not affected. This new AI stuff should be free for high end watches. I bet users will buy cheaper watch and get connect plus. No
Poor guys, they need to save money for the next time they are victims of a ransomware attack their IT doesn’t know how to prevent or recover from
Garmin watches are already overpriced, but one of their strengths has been the Garmin connect platform, both the website and the app. The problem here is that going forward new features will probably now only be available to paid subscribers. If, however, you do want some free advanced analytical insights into your training I find https://runalyze.com to be excellent. Not the prettiest interface, but there is wealth of information there.
Let’s think of it as a “paid subscription service” for the moment. A similar paid subscription as Training Peaks. Or Strava premium (add Sauce). Or intervals.icu.
All other services:
– let you record activities on any devices you want
– let you sync the activities into their aggregator automatically
– do not discriminate between activities recorded on Garmin, Coros, Mobile phone with Strava, FORM goggles, the list goes on. Data is data. Which means that they..
– include ALL activities in ALL metrics they provide (if you record a run on a mobile phone, it will still contribute to TP’s Form, Fatigue, etc. for example).
Garmin’s paid service (correct me if I’m wrong):
– does not sync any activities recorded on any other devices but Garmin.
– it you want automatic sync, forces you to buy their device for 500-1000 monies.
– if you push FIT files from other devices manually, they will not contribute to many important metrics (like training readiness or acute load) “because Garmin thinks they are not worthy”
– activities recorded on lower-tier or simply older Garmin devices (like Edge 530), albeit automatically synced, will not contribute to many metrics either.
Seriously Garmin…
Erm, that is the whole point of Garmin Connect – it is the companion app for Garmin devices. I agree it would be desirable to have some of those features (chiefly, incorporating manual entries and activities from other devices into metrics like training load) but the syncing solely with Garmin devices is pretty inherent to the concept.
And Connect has the fairly unique angle of picking up all the general health metrics (steps, sleep, HRV, etc.).
And thinking of it as “paid subscription service” is just not accurate. The overwhelming majority of the Connect functionality is _free_ (with a Garmin device, of course) and none of that has been taken away or reduced through the introduction of Connect+.
Some minor corrections:
“– does not sync any activities recorded on any other devices but Garmin.”
There are a few ‘chosen one’ services here, including Zwift, TrainerRoad, and Rouvy, which can contribute training metrics into the platform.
“– it you want automatic sync, forces you to buy their device for 500-1000 monies.”
Not sure I understand this, but there are plenty of sub-$200 Garmin devices.
“– activities recorded on lower-tier or simply older Garmin devices (like Edge 530), albeit automatically synced, will not contribute to many metrics either.”
These actually do contribute, at least if you have a newer device on the account. So, you can use a Edge 500 if you wanted to, and it’ll contribute into your training status/etc bucket, as long as your account has a newer device on it (and listed as the primary training device). However, if that older Edge device is listed as the primary training device, then it won’t.
It’s one of the quirks of Garmin’s UTS – in that people (mostly cyclists) will often put what they mentally think of as their primary training device, their Edge, when in reality they should be putting their much newer watch there. As it’ll properly do the calculations.
The problem here is that these new features just don’t offer enough value for the money, relative to other paid platforms that cost similar amounts of cash. There’s plenty Garmin can do to improve that offering, so hopefully they’re listening to the feedback.
I’ve always liked Garmin insights and analytics. I would have paid subscription when I used Karoo to get that loaded and analyzed in Garmin. Alas, they are still a hardware company at heart…
Ray, to be fair Connect has added plenty of new features as hardware and sensors improved. HRV, improved sleep tracking, blood oxygen (ok that is a useless one), animated workouts. It is just that all their improvements were hardware focused, so rarely applied to older devices.
So far there is no indication that core functionality is removed from free. This is early, so hard to tell, but if the right development is there it could become valuable. Maybe the competition from apple will push them to offer 6 months free every time you buy a Fenix and 3 months for a Forerunner.
(Sorry, working my way through comments, and just saw this one after I just replied to another nothing new comment).
Indeed, they have added data fields as watches added new data types (like you noted, HRV, etc…). But in terms of actual new features beyond that, it’s been a blank slate. Like you said, nothing focused on the blanket service of GC that would apply to older devices equally.
The one exception to that I could think about is Physio TrueUp v2 (aka Unifieid Training Status), which did apply to older devices. But it’s hard to say that’s a “GC” feature, from a consumer standpoint, as it is more of a backend platform feature. It’s just doing a much better job of merging data than it used to. But even that, had different tears of how it would sync data. For example an older Fenix 6 wasn’t a true UTS-level device, whereas a Fenix 7 was. Thus, it’s kinda hard to use that as a blanket GC-wide update (as nice as it is).
Ultimately, as I said before, I don’t have a problem with Garmin offering a GC+ tier, as long as that tier is compelling value for my money. Right now, this is very not compelling.
Thanks for being a DCR Supporter!
Erm. Garmin Coach? Garmin Coach 2.0 (with strength training)? Live Track? Group Track? Events (with link to databases of races, etc.)? Segments? Heatmaps? Public routes? Jet lag advisor? Sleep coach? Arguably even Training Readiness.
I get that it is often difficult with Garmin to distinguish between on-device features and Connect functionality (exactly because Garmin presents it as an integrated offering to users). But reality is that many these features really should be primarily in Connect/in the cloud (drawing on large data sets, machine learning – and yes, maybe even on AI), maybe with simplified calculations/estimates for when there is no internet connection.
A company that made a record braking $3.6 Billion in 2024 now want’s its costumers pay a lot of money for their fitness gadgets and on top of that pay a subscription?
No thank you Garmin.
I didnt understand the subscription comparison Strava vs Garmin.
Strava became popular because of the segment leaderboards and social sharing features.
Gamin had historically also from beginning the segments and leaderboards and became never ever popular because of stupid development.
Most people lose sight of the importance of not getting locked into an ecosystem. It doesn’t matter whether it is a vendor for watch/sensor/bike computer devices, online training services, eBook readers, or mobile phone OS.
I happen to use a variety of tools for my training – intervals.icu, HRV4-Training, Ruanalyze. That sort of diversity gives me the flexibility to switch between using my Enduro 3, Fenix 7X, Polar V3, Suunto Race, AWU2, Karoo 3, Edge 1040 Solar, and so on.
Besides, Garmin Connect is allergic to my Polarized Training / working with coaches via TP with custom training programme. So I always leave training effect paused anyway. I don’t need no stinking badges and especially not the pay to win variety. :-)
Is a watch included in the expensive subscription?
👎
Signed up to the trial and canceled the next day. Where’s the hook?
Thank you for your post, Ray!
To be honest, I believe I have more than enough free data and feedback on my watch (Tactix 8). If I need AI feedback, I can ask an AI tool for feedback after I provide some input. I don’t need Garmin to do that because I’m not training for the Olympics. I purchased the watch for its model because I’m also interested in aviation and sports. I’m disappointed to see that Garmin didn’t even consider offering a 6-month free trial for their 1000+ Euros buyers.
In Denmark the price is 699 dkr for Garmin and 499 dkr for strava… Insane..
Was just about to upgrade my fenix6x to a Enduro3 – this is not gonna happen. I has been looking toward polar and suunto for som time – I dont like been tied into any ecosystem, so it is always a good thing to change now and then, and i think Garmin is pushing it big time with their prices – and this is just to much. I will go towards Suunto Vertical instead of Garmin Enduro… The existing Vertical caost half as much as the Enduro3 in my country. So i will wait and see if they will come with a upgrade soon.. My fenix6xc works fine for now – just not great battery life anymore.
Now that Garmin has opened to gates to subscription hell, there will be now way back. I even if they state right now that everything we have is going to stay free, it is just a matter of time until they will start to revamp and renew some of their feature in order to put them behind a paywall. This will probably be a slow process and over time, all the good features will disappear and won’t be supported anymore. You will get a free subscription with a new device und unless you don’t upgrade, you will have to either pay for the subscription to continue or see a bunch of your data disappear behind a paywall. I just hope this process is so slow, that I can get out of the Garmin ecosystem with too much of a loss. Since the disappointing launch of the F8, I stopped buying the newest device on day one and I will continue to do so. I will definitely NOT pay for a subscription or buy any device that needs a subscription to unlock its full potential unless the price tag for the device reflects that.
In the meantime I enjoy my one year old Tactix 7 Pro that I got on eBay for less than 500$.
Trying my least negative read of this: they dabbled in some “real AI” (as in running meaningfully big personalized ML datasets, vs the bad joke that is feeding LLM with a few key results from conventional analysis as done by Strava) and realized that the could bills per user were simply too high to give it out to millions of device owners as a freebie. That would be a perfectly fine excuse for setting up a subscription.
Only with the caveat that the reputation cost, the uncertainty and disappointment imposed on the existing customer base would most likely outweigh the money made from the subscription by several orders of magnitude. A mistake, but an *understandable* mistake (see first paragraph). Garmin has been a little tone deaf before, no surprise there.
The other “perhaps not quite as bad” part is looking back at their attempts to take over the Strava market. They introduced their own segments, built their own social media feed into connect complete with pictures, commenting and whatever they call their kudos, basically the full feature set of Strava art the time. For a few months it looked as if they might try to force it to success, but when their Strava reimplementation did not really pick up users they quickly put it in maintenance mode, it exists for the few people that actively use it, but the company has made peace with the idea that they won’t displace Strava, there have been absolutely zero misguided attempts at popularizing that thing in the last, I don’t know, better part of a decade? So there might be hope that something similar will happen with connect+
Buy a severely overpriced $1000 Fenix and have to pay for a subscription???
Who does Garmin think they are? Apple!?
For those interested, I added a few more galleries to the post of the last two days worth of AI insights, including last night where it told me that before I feel asleep I could spend my extra Body Battery on “activities before bedtime”.
If an AI recommndation ever deserved a thumbs up, this must be it LOL
No activities during bedtime? 🤣
@Ray – this change has also been timed with changes to the data shown on the web version of connect
Previously you got ground contact time and balance as separate graphs. Now they are squashed down to ‘either or’ on a toggle.
Same for vertical oscillation (cm/ratio). Now this may be a ‘tidying’ but literally after a run then the GCT and GCT balance was the only data I looked at. Perhaps I was an outlier, but I wonder if this is a sign of slight tweaks to make it harder to self identify some trends and therefore show more ‘value’ in the + subscription.
Also, another one suffering from Garmin’s dodgy currency conversion for non USD locations.
It really pisses me off to see companies going in this direction. Paying over $1000 for a premium watch and then also pay for additional services. Sure right now it might seem Garmin is only charging additionally for premium features, but it is a slippery slope.
As a long time customer I really opt for Garmin to reconsider this route!
The problem I have is that I have a Garmin watch and a Karoo computer. None of my cycling activities make it into Connect. So, this means that, unless I double record every ride, most of my exercise is ignored. This would only work if it was possible to upload activities from other sources besides Garmin products. Which will probably never happen. And I don’t care enough about data analysis to pay for it or to switch to a computer (Garmin) that I don’t like.
Can’t you manually import the Karoo data? You’d still have the non-premium analysis.
I have the most expensive fenix 6 and expect to buy the most expensive fenix 8 (1300 Euros) end of this year and would need a paid subscription to get all new future features for connect.
Ridiculous
Well CNN tried offering a subscription service called CNN+ and 30 days later shut it down.
Hopefully the same will happen with Garmin Connect+.
I have an ageing original Instinct and Karoo 2, I was thinking of replacing them with an Instinct 3 or Enduro 3 and an Edge 840. One of the reasons was to have everything in Connect.
I will wait and see what happens. It is clear from all the comments here and on YT that they will not get many subscribers and their 2 most likely solutions will be to ditch it altogether or to make the non-fee-paying version worse. If they do the former they might keep me, if they go with the latter I am going elsewhere.
It could be good, though given Ray’s insight- you’ve not reached your number of steps today, not so sure. If it was able to adjust its recommendations based you as an athlete and your goals using Reinforcement Learning techniques rather than the generic GenAI. It would then add specific plans into your calendar, adapting based on fitness readiness, HRV, … then you might have a product. At the moment as many have commented seems rather banal. colin
Really? I basically stopped going to CNN after they introduced CNN+. Good to know it’s gone already!
Garmin Connect had heatmaps and an athlete search option based on activity, which was the equivalent of Strava’s View Flybys. It was turned off within the Classic version of Connect…
When it comes to data analysis, you must have good and reliable data, otherwise, the outcome will be false. No matter how sophisticated system will process it.
I am aware of those data errors, and I am able to correct them in Excel, but obviously, Garmin doesn’t care and it is not bothering users…
Here are a few:
Recovery HR – all wrong
Swimming data – the worst amongst all activities. Frequent false turning detection and style detection.
Sleeping data – there is a shift of +1 day. Sleeping data are being assigned to the date when you wake up, not to the date when you went sleeping…
For me the worse part is the exclusive badges. Your user base is already fragmented and not very active and you are going to make it even worse by artificially segmenting it even more.
indeed, this will be harmful for Garmin’s business.
Personally I try to minimize the number of subscriptions. Garmin’s watches are (very) expensive and considered to deliver for their money, part of it are their (software) features and long period of updates. I’m afraid, despite they try to make us believe otherwise, that existing and new features will be available only behind the pay-wall. The price of their watches follow an increasing trend.
Time to review the competition.
Imagine bootlicking a company that looks down on their end users with contempt like Garmin.
All these tech sites cleaning off the bottom of Garmin’s boots with these blog posts show that you can’t trust any of them.
Good you came to Ray’s site, since he is obviously someone who speaks up and points out what is wrong and so is Des and many others. In fact, I haven’t seen one site yet that is not openly criticizing Garmin. But maybe you have different facts to can offer
to an extent. Garmin drives his traffic. Apple drives his traffic. he knows it. he’s never going to trash garmin for too long. People think a few criticism make him fair. there is a lot more that goes into it. What is not said by Ray is often more important than what is said. he is human, he’s not infallible. he has biases – not sure why everything thinks differently.
This is the first time after several years with Garmin that I’m considering changing brands. It was an impossible idea before. They’ve just given me a reason to change. But well, not right now, you know, because I still paid €1000 for my watch. I’m going to use it for several years anyway.
It’s important to note that if you do not subscribe and want none of your very sensitive health data anywhere near being used to train a for-profit AI that will output stuff in unpredictable ways, you’ve apparently got to make sure you set off in settings>profile and privacy>data. I hope off is the default but going tech companies horrors with opting you in by default, not sure I’d trust it to stay that way.
To add, in Australia it says 120 AUD/year or 12 AUD/month. Which is rediculuosly high LOL.
I suspect Garmin are paying (on the customer’s behalf) a secondary service provider. I subscribe to an app (ReciMe) that takes webpages of recipes which strips out all the guff and presents them as Ingredients and then Methods – super helpful. I suspect this small app developer has not developed a food LLM by themself. They will license ChatGPT enquiries (or another LLM provider) and send it the webpage with a request of “tell me the ingredients” and “summarise the recipe method” and the LLM will return the results – the app packages the results and voila it looks like the developer is a genius. I guess Garmin (and Strava) does the same – “hey [insert LLM provider] here is a month of run data, now here is the latest run, please summarise the new run compared to the average”. So I believe the suscription is very much like inReach – pay us some extra money and you can use Iridium or pay us some extra money and you can use this LLM to summarise your data. Maybe a big company like Garmin charging for a £1000 watch should include it free with a new device activation but what if I’ve bought a FR55 second hand for £50?
As always, great review! I have one question: Do you think this new functionality of garmin connect+ might be because Garmin is planning to launch a Whoop alternative and wants to charge a fee for users who acquire this type of wearable?
After many years of using various Garmin products, I now feel the need to express my frustration — and I’m not alone in this. Several friends and training partners share exactly the same opinion.
First, the ELV4 heart rate sensor has been delivering completely inaccurate data during workouts without a chest strap for over a year now. For a company focused on precise sport and health metrics, this is simply unacceptable. The fact that this issue has been known for such a long time and remains unresolved is, quite frankly, a disgrace.
Furthermore, the Garmin Connect app has significantly deteriorated with version 5. The previous version was intuitive and well-structured. The current version feels cluttered and less user-friendly — a view echoed by numerous reviews on the Play Store and in online communities. Yet Garmin seems determined to push this update through, despite all the negative feedback.
What ultimately led me to the decision to move away from Garmin is the introduction of the Premium subscription. Charging €8.99 for features that were previously included in the device purchase is, in my opinion, outrageous — especially for long-time users who have already heavily invested in the Garmin ecosystem (Edge 1030 Plus, Forerunner 945 and 955, Edge 1040, several HR straps, Venue 3s, etc.).
Garmin is increasingly losing touch with its customers, and as a result, we are seriously considering switching to alternative solutions in the near future.
I am very dissapointed.
One irksome aspect of the connect Plus is the addition of premium badges and points opportunities. I’ve enjoyed gamifying my fitness goals by collecting those Garmin badges and points, sure in the knowledge that those I was competing against were on an even playing field. That’s no longer the case, with subscription customers having additional badges and point accumulation opportunities unavailable to the Great unwashed. That will probably reduce my incentive to participate in points and badge accumulation.
I am surprised that so many Garmin haters have left comments. Most of my riding friends love Garmin and especially its phone product support. When you have a device that is out of warranty, they still help out in a big way. Also they either take your call quickly or offer to call you back. Nevertheless, I do not plan to ever enroll in Garmin Connect +.
> Garmin haters
By the same logic, ppl who vocally love Garmin are fanboys, amirite?
I think it’s kinda ridiculous how whenever people have differing opinions about anything at all (Garmin, Apple, video game consoles, sport teams, Taylor Swift, rap beefs, fashion, etc.) the discussion quickly becomes about the people who have the opinions, as opposed to the thing that’s supposedly under discussion.
As if ppl make their preference for some consumer product into a cornerstone of their identity, so when others criticize that product, they take it as a personal attack. Marketers have definitely tapped into this tribalistic behaviour for a long time. See: Red Sox vs. Yankees, Playstation vs. Xbox, Apple vs. PC. People argue about this stuff with fervour that you’d think would be reserved for politics and religion.
Yeah, you may not have been thinking about any of that stuff when you used the word “hater”, but that kinda what it implies.
It’s not necessarily happening here, but in other places, I’ve seen arguments about Garmin quickly devolve into personal attacks and name calling.
Consider the difference between these 2 sentences:
“I am surprised that so many Garmin haters have left comments”
“I am surprised that so many people have left comments describing negative experiences with Garmin”
One of them implies there’s something wrong the people leaving the comments (“hater” has always been an insult) and the other implies there might be something wrong with *Garmin*.
I like Garmin running watches because they fill a certain niche that Apple and Samsung don’t. In my personal experience, only my running friends use Garmin, and a few of the more casual ones switched to Apple Watch years ago. Exactly 0 of my non-running friends (aka normal people) use Garmin, and I don’t bother trying to explain why I don’t wear an Apple Watch (although I’ve heard that question for years).
See it’s possible for me to like something, yet also criticize it. As a matter of fact, the only reason I criticize Garmin is because I want their products to improve. A true hater wouldn’t even use Garmin products, they would just sit from the sidelines and gleefully troll the Garmin fanboys. Except ofc, what fun would that actually be, since Garmin isn’t popular enough to warrant the attacks? Apple doesn’t need to launch “Apple Watch vs Garmin” ads, because Apple isn’t worried about competition from Garmin. Similarly, I don’t see a large movement of Garmin fans who troll COROS users either.
Afaict, the big difference between Garmin “hate”/”fanboyism” and something like Playstation vs. Xbox or Apple vs. Windows is that the Garmin conflict is entirely internal: pretty much everyone who has anything strongly positive or negative to say about Garmin is actually a Garmin user. I’ve never met an Apple Watch user who had an opinion about Garmin other than they didn’t understand why some runners use Garmin.
Garmin isn’t a cool brand (outside of very niche circles), so the fierce brand loyalty is even more mystifying to me. Well maybe not – when something is super niche, then it’s extra cool to ppl within that niche group. It’s like being a super fan of some obscure indie band or underground rapper that only 5 of your friends have heard of. Except Garmin isn’t really cool in that sense, either.
I’m a loyal Garmin user and decided to try the free trial. After a few days, I immediately canceled to make sure I don’t get charged. I just don’t see the benefit of insights that tell me what I already know: “Hey, it looks like you’re tired!”
No shit!
I’m either not the target audience for this premium subscription or it sucks. And I think it’s the latter.
What bothers me even more is that there’s SO MUCH POTENTIAL for something like this but the execution is so terrible. What about tying menstrual cycle patterns with training data to provide some much-needed insight there?
I sometimes truly wonder who the heck is working in these product departments.
The comments I was referring are not of those describing negative experiences. The comments I was referring to say things like, “Screw you Garmin”.
@Andy haha that’s fair. I’d say that kind of comment still reflects the passion for Garmin that can only come from using Garmin products. Kind of a love/hate relationship I guess
I’m not getting from this write up whether he thinks it’s worth the price or not.
Thanks, Ray, for the write up. Very helpful.
Interestingly, the launch of this was not something I was aware was coming, and if I received marketing emails from Garmin on this, I certainly did not process what it was from those.
I don’t have any issues with Garmin charging for new services. The amount is not a lot – if the value is there for me. I do think that new watch purchases should come with 6 months of free service (and that includes current users who buy a new watch, which I do every 3-4 years). Sort of like Apple used to do with AppleTVs and AppleTV+, or as mentioned in the article, the 6 months of Apple Fitness+ with Apple Watches.
The AI features are “whatever” to me. Ironically, this might be the main reason they are charging since running the servers and processing data is probably the most expensive part. I suspect that Garmin is not operating their own servers, so, like the Iridium service, Garmin does have a 3rd party to pay.
The Run/Cycle coaching is not interesting to me at this stage of my running life. I just do what I do.
However, I love the Live Activity feature. As someone who wants to do more strength and related training than I have done, being able to edit the reps, weight and activity during my rests between sets is great. This just removes a barrier to working out for me. Silly that I need this sort of motivation, but if I do, I’ll pay for it. We’ll see if on Day 29 I feel the same or if I will cancel.
I do use live tracking and having texting is nice. Right now, I lean on Garmin->Strava Beacon to alert my wife, so the dedicated page and the 2nd text path is great. Plus occasionally Garmin and Strava don’t connect right. This is also worth the price of admission.
So, on day 2, I am content. Yes, the AI insights are useless other than just being funny to read how inane they are. For example, just looking at my phone at 9:23 pm, Garmin AI tells me that I met my step goal for the day. I am then told that a “consistent activity… contributes to long-term physical and mental well-being.” The AI then indicates that maintaining a 115 day streak is an example of dedication to improving my health, showing that I clearly know this.
The insight I took away? – what happened 116 days ago? Why did I miss my goal! (I’m on 500+ running days in a row.)
Hopefully Garmin adds more features, more videos and gets the AI to be something useful. I am surprised, as Ray wrote, how many new features rolled out on the same day, even with the price tag.
For me, the only real reason to buy garmin is the training calendar. I can view and compare months and years. I still copy totals out into a spreadsheet, as their software is pretty terribly. On the web training calendar, I get different summary data for Indoor bike, than I get for running or weights – I can’t change this in config, so I’m forced to click into the exercise to view the info I want. The mobile app is terrible, the designers obviously don’t use this app. I will never pay for extra for even more badly written software.
Having had several Garmin watches, there would have been no reason for me to look elsewhere whenever I next decide to change device. But this new subscription scheme has given me that reason, I might end up sticking with Garmin but jury’s out at this stage.