Nike watch vs Garmin

[ronpfid]

I wouldn't expect much from their apps, to be honest. I know that when it comes to apps, the AW wins out. That said, there are a lot of crummy apps for AW.

Right that's what I meant when I said,
The 'apps' you can load on the watches are kinda iffy. I tried a bunch of them, most don't do quite what you think or work quite right, or are just super basic. A few aren't too bad, but their just things like adding a stopwatch or some type of other workout.

And I'll add...
I never needed or used any of their apps, I did add a couple widgets though, those were great, and a bigger digit watch face.

 

[munichblue]

I've had a full 6 months now with a Nike edition Apple Watch and I've started looking into selling it and getting a Garmin.

The thing is that as I see it, there's no one Smart Watch that truly does it all, you've got to pick what's most important to you. The Apple Watch beats Garmin (any Garmin) in many ways but the Apple Watch is a poor watch for runners - and I'm a runner and that's what is important to me. Yeah some of you will run with one but that doesn't make it the best. There's one major problem - the touchscreen, which is unreliable if there's any moisture anywhere near it, whether that be from sweaty fingers or from rain. There's nothing quite like running for an hour and finding that a phantom press of the touchscreen ended your workout quite some time ago. Until touchscreen technology improves, sports watches need physical buttons. Garmin also have Apple beaten on battery life and being able to have the time always present on the display. I'll miss Apple Pay on the watch, I'll miss the interactive notifications, I'll miss a watch that has music playback and some other stuff, but right now, all of these things are just nice to have (for me) whereas the top-notch running stuff is essential

I'm sort of a runner, but I'm a sweater, that's for sure. After 15 minutes of running my Apple Watch is heavily moistured but I never experienced problems with the touchscreen. Neither have I missed physical buttons nor did I have any problems with the battery for the whole day.

But to each his own!

 

[ronpfid]

My AW does all kinds of things on it's own, not even when sweaty. Several times a day I find it's in theater mode, or silent mode, or usually that dang water mode. I go to press, nothing, nothing, dang it, press again, oh dang that little blue water drop icon is on top. spin the dial... boop boop boop boop boop boop BEEEP, now i can use it again. Very annoying!

I actually still haven't bothered even using it as a fitness tracker anymore. Not for exercise, HR, steps... now mine is just a watch with notifications. The interface on the watch and moreso on the phone is way too nested and annoying to dig in and look at the data. I hate those stupid little progress circles, I like numbers. I won't want to see a loop for steps, I want the step count, right there easy to see.

I like the watch 'as a watch', unless they really change things this will be my last AW when it it's old. It's a fun gadget. I hate to say but am looking more forward to Garmin getting their notifications setup better while keeping their awesome phone and webpage data so easy, then I'll switch back to Garmin and have something really cool. If Garmin had a nice screen like the AW I'd switch right now, but then their battery would only last a day.

 

[StraightlineBoy]

I like the watch 'as a watch', unless they really change things this will be my last AW when it it's old. It's a fun gadget. I hate to say but am looking more forward to Garmin getting their notifications setup better while keeping their awesome phone and webpage data so easy, then I'll switch back to Garmin and have something really cool. If Garmin had a nice screen like the AW I'd switch right now, but then their battery would only last a day.

I don't know what you mean by Garmin getting their notifications setup better; it's as good now as it's ever likely to be. I get my alerts on my Forerunner 935 and they're fine. They're never going to be interactive in any way because Apple will never make that possible for 3rd parties and that's ok. I can see enough on each alert to see if I need to reach for my phone or not.

The screen is also fine. I can tell the time without having to shake my arm like a crazy person and I need to charge maybe 1 once week if I use GPS a lot.

It all comes down to which compromises bother you the least. You'll be waiting a long time to get the best of both worlds.

 

[ronpfid]

I don't know what you mean by Garmin getting their notifications setup better; it's as good now as it's ever likely to be. I get my alerts on my Forerunner 935 and they're fine. They're never going to be interactive in any way because Apple will never make that possible for 3rd parties and that's ok. I can see enough on each alert to see if I need to reach for my phone or not.

The screen is also fine. I can tell the time without having to shake my arm like a crazy person and I need to charge maybe 1 once week if I use GPS a lot.

It all comes down to which compromises bother you the least. You'll be waiting a long time to get the best of both worlds.

I had an FR 235 and a Vivoactive HR, when the notifications worked, they worked great. Sometimes they would just 'not work' for a whole day, or it wouldn't alert me when my phone was ringing. I expect it to be more 'solid' as the updates occur over time.

Now my AW, I don't shake my arm 'like a crazy person', I just tip my wrist and it lights up. The Vivoactive HR screen is really dim in the house. I know, I know, it's a compromise, bright screen means short battery life, thus my apple watch needs charged every 48 hours rather than a week like the Garmin watches.

The garmin connect (web and phone app) though, completely blow away the AW's fitness data. I don't even bother looking at it with my AW, for me, it's just a smart watch. Bright screen, looks cool, comfortable, great interaction, fun gadget type stuff.

 

[StraightlineBoy]

I had an FR 235 and a Vivoactive HR, when the notifications worked, they worked great. Sometimes they would just 'not work' for a whole day, or it wouldn't alert me when my phone was ringing. I expect it to be more 'solid' as the updates occur over time.

Now my AW, I don't shake my arm 'like a crazy person', I just tip my wrist and it lights up. The Vivoactive HR screen is really dim in the house. I know, I know, it's a compromise, bright screen means short battery life, thus my apple watch needs charged every 48 hours rather than a week like the Garmin watches.

The garmin connect (web and phone app) though, completely blow away the AW's fitness data. I don't even bother looking at it with my AW, for me, it's just a smart watch. Bright screen, looks cool, comfortable, great interaction, fun gadget type stuff.

The Garmin Connect app is the hub for Garmin on iPhone. So as well as showing all of the detailed fitness info, it serves as the link to the watch for all of the apps and widgets. I think it generally runs in the background on the phone and perhaps there's the odd crash where you notice the watch widgets have stopped updating but Garmin are actively developing it and it's getting a lot better.

I generally find that my Garmin has the info I need on it's widgets. I have ones configured for my current HR, my training status, my running & cycling stats for the week, step count, upcoming calendar items, weather, (basic) iphone music controls and a control for my Philips Hue lights (via IFTTT) ... not bad for a watch whose smart functions are a secondary feature.

Yeah the screen is quite dim in poor light although I have found that switching the display to be black details on a white background is more visible than the other way around.

 

[ronpfid]

I agree, I thought/hoped the AW would be the 'do it all' answer, till I seen the horrid way the fitness info is accessed on the phone and watch. I detest those stupid circles, I want to see real numbers for steps and activity. I want to see my HR during a workout with a graph, not have to dig into 4 layer deep nested menus to see HR at each little time point. Whoever set up the AW like that was not being smart. Even if things don't change much, in the future I will ditch AW and go back to Garmin, now that I've had both, I'd prefer the dimmer screen and less 'flashiness' of the Garmin over the AW just so I could actually access my data. Garmin's sleep analysis is built in and works great too. Aw you have to buy an app then I imagine the data is annoying also.

 

[StraightlineBoy]

Sleep analysis is an interesting one to me. Both the app that I had for AW and the Garmin tell me that I move about a lot in the night. Most night's I think I go to sleep and then wake up 6-8 hours later. Makes me want to put an infra-red camera in my bedroom to see what's going on - or perhaps I'm better off not knowing!!!

 

[tcuprof]

My Forerunner 220 went in the drawer when I got my Apple Watch. I love the Apple Watch for tracking my runs. I do still use ConnectStats by inputting every run into my Garmin data base. I definitely wish the Activity App had better run stats, but the I am very satisfied by the workout app on the watch.

 

[ronpfid]

Sleep analysis is an interesting one to me. Both the app that I had for AW and the Garmin tell me that I move about a lot in the night. Most night's I think I go to sleep and then wake up 6-8 hours later. Makes me want to put an infra-red camera in my bedroom to see what's going on - or perhaps I'm better off not knowing!!!

LOL too funny!

 

[ItnStln]

Does anyone know if there’s a way to sync the data in Apple Health to Garmin Connect?

 

[ronpfid]

That would be awesome!

 

[Tartarus]

Does anyone know if there’s a way to sync the data in Apple Health to Garmin Connect?

IFTTT should have a way to do that.
https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/ifttt/id660944635?l=en&mt=8&at=10l3Vy

 

[ItnStln]

IFTTT should have a way to do that.
https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/ifttt/id660944635?l=en&mt=8&at=10l3Vy

Thanks! I didn’t see a way to sync from apple health to Garmin Connect. I know apple health will pull data from Garmin Connect but I want the reverse to work as well.