Slowly but surely, we’re starting to see the benefits of Garmin’s consolidated platform take effect. I believe this is the very first time we’ve seen every device on the new platform get/start the public beta on the exact same date/time. Previously, they’ve been offset by days/weeks (even a month), but yesterday marked a notable milestone.
All of the devices below got a new public beta, of which most of those devices got near-identical sets of features. Primarily the upper-end Fenix 8, Forerunner/Venu X1 devices, with the ‘mid-range’ (in spirit, not price) getting less features (at least according to the release notes).
This is largely the result of all of these devices now sharing the exact same underlying codebase, which mostly reached full tribal-merge status back this past summer, but even those public betas were a bit scattered on release times.
In any case, this beta has a huge set of new features, including a new battery burn one that I think is super well executed. Here’s what’s new in the Fenix 8 Series devices, with many of these also being available in the Forerunner 970 series.
Added ability to show seconds when in Always on Display mode.
Added Accessibility menu.
Added Album art background for Music Controls.
Added Battery Manager.
Added confirmation page when selecting language.
Added Course Planner.
Added Cycling safety Voice Alerts.
Added Display Color Modes.
Added font scaling to Garmin Messenger.
Added Garmin Fitness Coach.
Added help text to many menus.
Added Lifestyle Logging glance.
Added missed notifications prompt after finishing an activity.
Added Mixed Session activity type.
Added more Alarm sounds options.
Added new Voice settings menu.
Added Optimal Sleep Window.
Added option to see floors climbed in Evening Report.
Added Post-Dive Activity guidance.
Added Sleep Alignment to Sleep glance.
Added Smart Notifications to the Stage Status menu.
Added Sports Scores.
Added support to launch the Health Status app with Voice Commands.
Added translated “Loading” string when switching languages.
Added Weight Tracking glance.
+ A Gazillion bug fixes per the release notes for each
Here’s the release notes for each unit series, in case you want more details. Keep in mind that if there are things missing in the 570/970, Garmin often adds more features later in the public beta cycle (which typically lasts 1-2 months). Though we haven’t quite seen them all launch on the exact same day before, so…not sure how that changes things (if at all):
Garmin Fenix 8, Fenix 8 Pro, Enduro 3, Fenix E, Quatix 8, Tactix 8 Series
Garmin Forerunner 570
Garmin Forerunner 970
Garmin Venu X1
Garmin Venu 4
Garmin Vivoactive 6
I also suspect there are features Garmin added to all of these watches, but given the ordering of each watch’s release notes is different (probably by different teams), it wouldn’t surprise me if some watches have features that aren’t listed in their release notes. For example, the Fenix team added a gazillion bug fixes to the release notes, but the Venu/Vivoactive team didn’t mention any. Obviously, those bug fixes are in there too…just not noted.
Also, keep in mind that with the Venu products, some of those features were *already* rolled out to those units back this past fall (or launched with them), effectively reducing the overall list a bit.
Inversely, I’d argue that slowly but surely, the Fenix E might almost be a viable purchase at the right price, depending on how much you value flashlight/ECG vs firmware features.
Anyway… in the video above, I walk through all these features, most notably the new battery burn menu, as well as the sports scores feature, and a number of others that were most interesting to me.
With that – thanks for reading!
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But not the Forerunner 965, which as of April 2025 was the best Forerunner you could possibly buy. And is still under warranty if you bought one then.
While Apple adds features to older models for years…
The question to ask is what value you assign to future upgrades when you buy a piece of tech. If you buy a piece of equipment at a given price on the basis of the existing functionality, you should not be disappointed. It does what you bought it for. If you are buying it in the hopes that some potential feature will be added in the future, I guess you’ll be disappointed? But that makes your purchase decision kind of odd?
Really, the only reason to be upset is if the company paywalls an existing feature.
The 965 is not built on the new architecture. That’s the reason it doesn’t get this update. It’s a terrific watch, but not new enough
It’s just a business decision by Garmin. The 965 and Fenix 7 have the same processor and very similar internal components as the Fenix 8 and 970. Other than the software, there is not much difference between a forerunner 970 and a 47mm Epix pro. It’s pretty much case design and bezel and maybe the battery size. The hardware change from the 965 to 970 is adding a flashlight and a sapphire lens.
Garmin made the business decision that the Fenix 8 platform is a cutoff for this new operating system.
Up until recently the 965 and Epix and Fenix 7 had much more stable and debugged software. The Fenix 8 generation software is totally rearranged and there are some marginal new features (plus the dive stuff).
As an embedded software engineer with 30+ years of experience, this is hogwash.
The only reason is not support the previous models is:
a) Reduce team size and support burden
b) Push customers to the new and much more expensive hardware.
It is not like Fenix 7/FR965 are on a 16 bit architecture and the new ones are on a 32 bit architecture.
Apple adds features for years, but you have to throw it in the recycle bin years before a Garmin watch becomes unusable (assuming hardware doesn’t fail).
How many people do still use their Apple watch 1 compared to the number of people using a Garmin released around the same time. There won’t be many with the Apple watch because it has become unusable for almost everybody.
Updates: sure, but it is much more important that the watch is perfectly usable until the hardware fails..
As an embedded software engineer, you should realize there’s more to software support than the number of bits in the instruction set. Is it possible that Garmin is intentionally deciding to limit forward support to save on budget or drive sales? Sure, but it’s also possible that the SDK they licensed from the chipset manufacturers doesn’t include an API call they need to support some new feature. We’re all speculating why one device is in the “gets new features” group and another isn’t, including you.
Wow……. Finally a weight tracking glance! I can’t believe you didn’t demo that in your video.
That was indeed a weird omission, so I developed it myself already a while ago, still useful for older watches: link to apps.garmin.com
Thank you! I was wondering what heck “Battery Manager” was.
Wonder if they fixed bug when doing structured swim workout watch randomly skips intervals or rests
And finally fix this bug? That should also be fixed for other watches.
link to forums.garmin.com
Just at the point I had convinced myself not to move from the AWU2 to the Fenix 8 this post has me back looking at the features. I keep ping ponging between Apple and Garmin and do wonder if I am more fitness focused wearing a Garmin than I am with the Ultra 2… even with the array of fitness apps I use along side it.
As a person with high blood pressure and afib. Apple Watch offers much more health features for me. I ended up with AWU3 and also have an Enduro 2 for outdoor activities. AWU3 is my daily driver. I am grateful for Strava syncing to Apple Health and subscribe for that reason to pay them back.
The setting for “Watch face seconds: always” does nothing with any of the stock analog watch faces or CIQ analog watch faces. I expected the later but not the former.
It also doesn’t work or at least seems to do nothing with default iron grit watch face. I have not found a scenario where it does anything.
> The setting for “Watch face seconds: always” does nothing with any of the stock analog watch faces or CIQ analog watch faces. I expected the later but not the former.
Speaking as a hobbyist Connect IQ dev (I’m a non-CIQ dev in my day job), I would expect the opposite: I would expect existing CIQ watchfaces *not* to be affected by this change, but I would only expect native watchfaces to be affected.
TL;DR support for always-on seconds in CIQ watchfaces doesn’t come “for free”, not even in the existing MIP use case. Therefore it is very unlikely (and impossible in many cases) that existing CIQ watchfaces would automatically take advantage of this new feature, even if the corresponding CIQ functionality on the device has already been added.
—
There’s additional code that needs to be written for CIQ watchfaces to display seconds all the time for MIP watches, and in the case of CIQ watchfaces on AMOLED watches.
– this code is not trivial, and it does not “come for free” when you write a CIQ watchface (for either MIP or AMOLED). See details below
– the code may have never been written in the first place (e.g. if the watchface never supported MIP devices, or if it does support MIP devices but the dev chose not to support always-on seconds).
– the code may have been written but not included in the app builds for AMOLED watches, in order to save memory and/or because it makes no sense.
Keeping this in mind, if and when Garmin officially announces support for always-on seconds in *CIQ* watchfaces for AMOLED devices, I would expect:
– there to be an official announcement by the CIQ team, as well an updated SDK reflecting this change. (There would need to be a change in the API so that a certain “always-on” seconds-related function call is available on AMOLED devices)
– most (if not all) devs of CIQ AMOLED watchfaces would need to at the very least rebuild their apps, and at most add code to their apps, in order to take advantage of the new always on seconds functionality
—
Details:
By default, CIQ watchfaces only update the display in two scenarios:
– once per minute (for 1 second)
– when the user turns their wrist (or presses a button) (for several seconds)
These two scenarios are collectively as “high power mode” and are handled the same way in the CIQ watchface’s code.
At all other times, the watchface is said to be in “low power mode”.
In order to display seconds all the time for MIP watches, CIQ watchfaces need to implement specific code that follows certain guidelines which updates the display in “low power mode”. This is very much a non-trivial opt-in process. The dev has to write the code, and the code isn’t trivial: it isn’t the same as the code which updates the screen in high-power mode, because low power mode adds the constraint that the screen can only be partially updated in low power mode (as opposed to high power mode, where the watchface is allowed to update the entire screen.)
Because of this partial update restriction:
– only small parts of the screen can be updated in low power mode, which is why small pieces of information like seconds and maybe live heart rate are updated in this scenario. Anything like a full-screen is animation is reserved for high power mode
– always on seconds are much easier to implement for digital watchfaces compared to analog watchfaces (because seconds take up a smaller part of the screen in the former case)
@will that’s exactly what I said. You have misunderstood and reversed by framing of former and later.
I expected AOD always on seconds not to work for CIQ unless there is a corresponding new API state for always on seconds in AOD that developers can adopt.
I expected the setting to work for native watch faces — it doesn’t for any that I tried.
“does nothing with any of the stock analog watch faces”
Hmm, it does for me, per what I showed in the video.
Specifically, I tried the stock Fenix 8 watchface called ‘Rock’, which shows the seconds in the lower right in dimmed state. It does not however, show the second hand once dimmed. I also tried it with ‘Furnace’, another stock watch face, and it worked fine, showin seconds in dimmed state.
I’m guessing so, but did you validate you enabled the setting for it? It’s located in: Settings > Display/Brightness > Watch Face Seconds > Always.
@Brian Reiter
Sorry, my mistake!
“The setting for “Watch face seconds: always” does nothing with any of the stock analog watch faces or CIQ analog watch faces. I expected the later but not the former. ”
I think I mentally inserted a couple of words in the 2nd sentence, and interpreted it like “I expected the latter *to work* but not the former. “
> I also tried it with ‘Furnace’, another stock watch face, and it worked fine, showin seconds in dimmed state.
That’s pretty cool, thank you for confirming this! It would be great if Garmin eventually adds this functionality (always on seconds for watchfaces on AMOLED devices) to Connect IQ.
Seems like this closes one of the gaps between AMOLED and MIP (for those who still care about MIP anyway). I’ve seen a few discussions online where AMOLED owners complain that they can’t see seconds *all the time*, and this has been something that Garmin MIP watches have always been capable of [*].
[*] Well, at least they’ve been able to do this for CIQ watchfaces (assuming the dev writes the code), ever since around 2017. Native watchfaces have been a mixed bag:
– In my experience, all native watchfaces (both analog and digital) have had always on seconds in MIP Forerunner watches, at least since the 2010s when I jumped on the Garmin ecosystem
– From what I’ve heard, Instinct watchfaces don’t have always on seconds (maybe this is a battery life concern)
– From what I’ve heard, on MIP Fenix watches, digital watchfaces have always on seconds, but not analog watchfaces.
I know this is kind of a moot point since outside of Instinct and Enduro, MIP is dead at Garmin.
> I tried the stock Fenix 8 watchface called ‘Rock’, which shows the seconds in the lower right in dimmed state. It does not however, show the second hand once dimmed.
This makes sense to me, as updating a big analog seconds hand is more expensive (in terms of CPU and battery life) compared to updating a digital seconds display, since the former involves changing more pixels than the latter.
It could also be why even MIP Fenix watches have had always on seconds for digital watchfaces but not analog watchfaces.
Speaking of Connect IQ, it’s also easier to implement MIP always on seconds for digital watchfaces compared to analog watchfaces (devs are constrained in the amount of pixels they are allowed to change when the user isn’t actively looking at the watch).
With all these added features, are there any metric monitoring benefits one would get from a WHOOP MG that aren’t in a Fenix 8?. Obviously, the battery is longer with WHOOP since it isn’t doing the connection & satellite gymnastics of a smartwatch.
About the only one would be background Afib detection, which Garmin doesn’t do (they do manually triggered ECG/Afib detection).
Technically speaking there’s also the blood pressure bits, but those aren’t medically certified on Whoop, and require another blood pressure device anyway, so…kinda pointless.
Of course on the non-feature end and more hardware, there is the battery bits, and to Whoop’s credit, that 14 day battery life on MG is very legit. Kudos there.
But beyond that, I’d struggle to think of any metric on Whoop that doesn’t have an equivalent on Garmin. Unless you have a really old watch, or, a very inexpensive one (e.g. FR165), then I don’t see any benefit to a Whoop if you already have a Garmin watch, except passive Afib (for those that may have a condition that benefits from having passive Afib). With your Fenix 8, that’s really the only feature you’d be missing.
Cheers!
Hi Ray,
Happy New Year!
New DCR supporter here, thanks for all of the content.
Thanks for doing this breakdown and comparing the Fenix 8 to the Whoop MG.
Curious, could you do a similar breakdown like you just did for this vs Oura Ring 4?
Are you still wearing it alongside your Garmin?
Best,
Cody
I have a fenix 8 51mm Amoled.
I tried “Deep Sea” and “Sand Dunes” analog faces and it didn’t change anything. I tried “iron grit” and it didn’t change anything.
I tried “Rock” as you suggested. The sweep hand disappears but small incrementing digital seconds do continue. I don’t have a stock watch face called “Furnace”.
The always on seconds feature seems half-baked at best. Maybe it will improve.
The previous firmware generation — I think 20.x —did fix timeouts for CIQ watch faces so that the 15s timeout went to 15s rather than 10s.
“Curious, could you do a similar breakdown like you just did for this vs Oura Ring 4?
Are you still wearing it alongside your Garmin?”
Yup, still wear the Oura as well (for similiar reasons to Whoop).
When it comes to Oura, there’s zero reason I can think of these days to have that as overlap with Garmin. Unlike Whoop, they don’t do any added medically certified bits (like ECG/Afib detection/etc…). And aspects like workouts are much less automated/integrated than in Whoop.
While in the past (many years ago) people argued that Oura did better sleep than Garmin, for my weeks where I’ll actually write-down when I went to sleep and woke up, I don’t see any meaningful accuracy difference between Oura vs Garmin. Sometimes they’re all right, sometimes one is wrong, etc… And I’m usually doing it with numerous devices (3-5). I’ve seen plenty of cases where Oura definitely misses the boat.
I also find that with Whoop’s very legit 14-day battery life, versus Oura’s maybe 5-day battery life, there’s cases where Oura’s battery runs out and I miss the recharging notice.
Which isn’t to say Oura doesn’t have its purpose, but I just don’t see any reason for a Garmin watch user to have it. I think Oura is best if you simply don’t want a wrist-based wearable, but want general health tracking. Just keep in mind that Oura skews very heavily towards health/wellness, versus sport. Sure, there are a handful of (mostly manual) sport features, but…after adding them a few years back, they’ve literally done nothing with it. The manual workout recording for example is literally just a timer (like, nothing else, just a simple counting timer and a stop button, doesn’t even show HR on th screen).
Added Course Planner
What does this mean? Where do I find it?
I’m wondering how is the display color mode on the Fenix 8 solar edition. how will it look.
Do you foresee them releasing control over smart treadmills like the do over smart trainers? I would love to have a Garmin workout that can control my kickr run. What is the best way you’ve found to create workouts that can be used to control the Kickr Run?
Not until they properly support BT FTMS on anything (for control).
Right now, on the trainer side, they support ANT+ FE-C, but most treadmills don’t support ANT+ FE-C these days, but instead BT FTMS.
Historically speaking, that didn’t honestly matter much, because every trainer (first) support FE-C, and then added FTMS, and thus, had both. But slowly but surely as ANT+ is no longer (from a programatic/certification standpoint), we’re seeing trainer transition to BT only (primarily at the low-end). So that’ll eventually drive Garmin to likely switch over/add FTMS on their watches/bike computers.
Once they do that, then eventually, maybe, we’ll see them open it up to the treadmill side.
Unfortunately the fitness coach did not come with this update. I was really hoping to see it here.
Does that mean the VENU 3 has been left behind/is obsolete??
It’s 2 years old and they still sell it on their own http://www…. I really hope someone in the EU is looking at a #RightToUpdates law…
I get that it’s a wearable, so … it wears. But besides the band, my V3 is still like new (knock on wood) and no way I’m paying for a very marginal upgrade (downgrade wrt buttons) for a venu 4. But I would probably pay 50-70 usd to get the latest software on it.
I assume the V3 and V4 use the same flavour of ARM cortex with enough RAM, so no technical reason Garmin couldn’t build the new shared code/OS for the Venu 3 too. It sure smells like politics, trying to make the venu 4 for sellable….
Maybe we can’t blame them. Apple and others do these same political limitations. But not for 2 year old product, that is still in sale….
No, you are all good. While the Venu 4 has surpassed the Venu 3 in the Garmin line-up as you noted, the Venu 3 is remains current and is still fully supported.
But I would not expect any major new feature going ahead. Garmin’s approach basically continues to be of of maintaining and updating the software for several years but of generally only having ~1-2 (varies by device and situation) rounds of feature additions/upgrades, irrespective of hardware limitations/capabilities.
Any idea why, with the addition of loads of random sports, para sports have been left out?
I don’t say this as some form of crusade but they offered ‘wheelchair’ mode on some of the basic Venu/Vivo active watches years ago but they never made it onto the high end watches.
As a para triathlete having ‘wheelchair racing’ in place of run would make life a lot easier (with the ability to use a speed sensor for speed)
In every report about fitness coach, it ends after Select “Improve Fitness”. For me, there doesn’t start a questionnaire but I have to select if I want a Run Coach, a cycling coach or a triathlon coach. Nothing of it seems to fit the „26 sports“ approach.
I am for sure on Beta 21.12.
Can you explain how to enable it? Ideally with a screenshot of how to go after the one every one is using from the press data Garmin provided earlier.
I do not have the answer to your question, but I am facing the same issue (i.e., Fitness Coach does not show) on my Garmin Forerunner 970. The watch is also on the latest beta (16.11) which should support the Fitness Plan.
It is now showing up for me on iOS. You might want to give it another try!
Do you know if the Fenix 7 Pro eventually get the sports score widget?
No plans there that I’d expect.
As other users I keep experiencing Venu 4 crashes when I run using a music stream via bluetooth; (from the Garmin to the headphones); I want to send to developers attention this HUGE problem, since the product has been sold with this BUG (very easy to reproduce), as other users have already written in the forum.
I’m sittin on 15.33 firmware: I saw that the beta doesn’t actually solve this bug and I’d love to get some updates about it.
Enrico
PS
I’m trying to enter to the forums.garmin.com to post some help requests, but after inserting user name + password, and after receiving the passcode by eMail, I do not really enter the forum and it asks me to login again…. and the problem loops.
I tried cleaning the cache, changing browsers, but nothing seems to work: I read that other users have the same problem.
WHAT can I do?
You guys are talking about not receiving updates
I just realized there’s 0 chance I find a replacement for my current watch ( .. polar m430 .. yeah, I know)
Finally got fixed on Garmin 255 (several reasons). All I can find (they are becoming quite rare) are grey ones. It should at least be black (ok, tbh my polar is .. white) it not black and S
Well, I’ll just go bake watch as uou are complaining for not receiving updates 😭
What do “Added Album art background for Music Controls.”? I tried see any Album art but it’s only blue one. And what is “Added Course Planner”?
I really hope they add the “Always on show seconds” feature to the Forerunner 970 public branch soon.
Lack of this feature is kinda a deal-breaker as a healthcare worker.
My Forerunner 935 was no longer syncing(after almost a decade of service) so I decided to upgrade to the FR970. sounds like I should have gone over to the Fenix side.
Might be returning the FR970 and just paying to have my 935 refurbished or going with one of the Fenix options