In this episode, we chat about all the new smartwatches and sportswatches that have come out so far this spring and summer, including new watches from Suunto, Garmin, Polar, and more.
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I recently escaped the Garmin ecosystem, now have a Suunto Race S – it does it all for me, and looks way, way better. Very happy with that decision. Contrary to what you say, I don’t want everything on the watch – I am happy to add what I want as an app/widget, and I am happy the s/w is less bloated. In fact Suunto – please let me delete the activity types I will never use (there are so many).
Assuming one has no loyalty to any particular platform, if you could get a Forerunner 955 or a Suunto Race S for the same price, which would be the best option for someone who primarily runs and swims?
I’m leaning Race S if only to have more recent hardware, knowing that I might be leaving some stability on the table.
My husband & I frequently do multi-day backpacking or ski trips where we’re out of cell service for the entire trip. I have an older watch (Garmin Vivoactive 4S), & my husband recently upgraded to a Garmin Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar.
We’ve both been frustrated over the inability to synch our daily activities with the app on our phone when we have no access to the internet, & we haven’t been able to find any information online about whether there’s a smartwatch that can synch without using cell service/internet access. I understand that synching for Garmin requires internet access to transfer via a background process to the app.
Is there a smartwatch that will synch with the app via Bluetooth without requiring internet access?
Have you heard anything about Garmin no longer honoring widely utilized discount codes distributed through their business partners (BCBS, Optimity, etc.) for the 570 and 970? From what I can tell, without fail, once a product has been released for 60 days, they become eligible for these discounts (This is even stated in the T&C’s of the discounts). It has been over 60 days since the 570/970 release and yet they are still showing as ineligible for these discount. Multiple people have reached out to Garmin and the general response so far from customer support is that they are not currently eligible and don’t know if/when they will be despite all information clearly stating it should be at the 60 day mark. Would love if you knew any more information or could follow up with your contacts at Garmin to see why they are not abiding by their terms and conditions.
Garmin has always (for more than 15 years) very strictly controlled discount codes on US retailers for products under MSRP (which, is basically all Garmin products). They would actively go after retailers that did discounting or had discount codes.
In recent years, they’ve done some corporate wellness program type discounts, allowing discounts that way, as sort of an employee benefit type thing.
Then, a few years back, for those entities they instituted the 60 day delay thing, mostly as a mechanism to ensure early stock was accessible to retail partners first. That said, I don’t know of any specific change there, but I don’t have any sort of access to the discount codes myself (I buy everything at full retail prices), so it’s honestly not something I follow too closely.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Garmin went back to the ‘no discounting’ model, because honestly, they’re kinda throwing away pretty substantial sums of money, given how big some of these programs have gotten.