Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar - Carbon Grey DLC Titanium

Product Information

To access it, you’ll go into the sports menu (I know, it’s technically the apps menu, but honesty, this doesn’t make much sense for it – it should probably be in the widgets area). Once opened it will load up some recommended apps. Five at the moment, plus showing the two music apps I already have installed (allowing me to uninstall those): The box for the Fenix 7 series mirrors that of not just the Fenix 6 series, but basically every other Garmin watch in the last half a decade or so. It’s grey and simplistic. While all the box contents for all four units I tested were identical (Fenix 7S/7/7X/Epix), keep in mind that some higher-end fancy-strap editions do have secondary straps in them. I didn’t have any fancy-strap editions. Thus, rather than repeat a series of unboxings, here’s just one sampling:

Garmin is hardly the first company here in this space. While Garmin did roll-out multi-band GPS to some of their hand-held devices a year ago, the Fenix 7 & Epix are the first wearables to have it (despite rumors to the contrary, Garmin says the Tactix Delta nor any other wearable from them had multiband prior to this). In any case, the first endurance sports watch to add it was the COROS Vertix 2 this past summer, and then more recently Huawei has touted it in their GT 3. In my testing of the COROS Vertix 2, I didn’t see holy-grail-like results. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the promised land either. Of course, the tech is new, and thus we’re likely to see (and have seen) firmware updates rapidly that’ll improve that. More on that in a minute. In the case of COROS, they’re using the MediaTek/Airoha chipset ( AG3335M), and Garmin confirmed they are also using Airoha as their supplier. Prior to confirmation from Garmin, this made sense in my testing, as in almost every scenario over the last 6-7 weeks, the Vertix 2 and Epix/Fenix 7 units made the exact same errors in virtually identical ways (and inversely, did things correctly in near-identical ways). Garmin also confirmed that both Sapphire and Non-Sapphire units across all Fenix 7 and Epix units are using the same chipset supplier (Airoha). All Fenix 7 units now have music, WiFi, and Garmin Pay support (previously base Fenix 6 Series did not have this or maps)

Large Adventure Smartwatch with Solar Module

Also, for fun, here’s a side-by-side example of the visibility differences between equally configured Epix & Fenix 7 units, the AMOLED Epix is at left, with the Fenix 7 Sapphire at right. Sleep monitoring is also impressive, accurately detecting changes between sleep and wakefulness that sports watches often fail to differentiate. Each morning you’ll receive a sleep score, together with some tips on how to get a better night’s rest, but this data will also be factored into stats such as your body battery, which shows how you're balancing work and recovery. Switched to glass-covered optical HR sensor (versus plastic with a coating), which increases durability

But as good as the Fenix 7 may be, it’s not what I’d buy for myself. I’d buy Epix: Any day, every day. Now that’s the basic flashlight mode. However, in all sport profiles you can then assign a specific always-on or blinking pattern instead, which can be configured to be either always-on in the sport mode, or only after sunset: Next, we’ve got the crazy pricing chart. You’ll probably need to use a magnifying glass. Or, a tissue to wipe those wallet tears away. After ten runs totalling 81km, the difference in the average heart-rate reading was a mere 1.36%, and for all but two of the runs it was below 1%, which is the best result I’ve seen for an optical heart-rate sensor versus a chest belt. Here is a screen-cap of walking in the Highlands of Scotland yesterday. The straight line is where the 6X stopped recording to the .GPX file when going up a steep boggy slope up to a ridge line and our summit for the day.Undoubtedly, Garmin will eventually come out with an LTE Fenix/Epix series. Where that’s just an Epix LTE, an Epix Plus LTE, or down the road in a Fenix 8 or Epix V3 (or whatever they call it). I don’t know, but as you’ll see – what’s here today is undeniably cool. But it’s also hard to reconcile this missing bit with one’s purchasing considerations. Again, zero issues. I don’t quite know why the 7S struggled for me on the interval workout while the 7X did perfectly fine. I’m reasonably certain there was no light leakage coming in, as it was plenty snug. As with any testing, with so many models and so many potential workout scenarios (indoors, outdoors, differing sports, night vs daylight, etc…), you can go in circles trying to figure out which scenarios might be gaps.

Long-running solar powered multisport GPS watch with scratch-resistant Power Sapphire™ lens and always-on 1.4” display uses the sun’s energy to extend battery life; a built-in LED flashlight keeps you going after darkWith its long-lasting battery this Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar Carbon Grey DLC Titanium Smartwatch can sustain even the most athletic lifestyles. Designed to last every day of the week, no matter how many challenges you face. Within the Connect IQ app store app, in addition to the 3rd party free watch faces, you can also create your own watch face, such as with photos or the like: Open-Water Swim Metrics: Distance, pace, stroke count/rate, stroke distance, swim efficiency (SWOLF), calories That sensor does 24×7 monitoring of your heart rate, as well as workout heart rate, and even pulse oximetry (blood oxygen levels). The green light is for regular heart rate readings, whereas the red light is used for Pulse Ox. By default, virtually all sport profiles have touch disabled, and then you enable it on a per-profile basis. You can also tweak whether or not touch is enabled/disabled during your sleeping time periods, through a new Sleep Mode manager interface:

Battery performance: up to 28 days of battery life while indoors or up to 37 days when solar charging in smartwatch mode; in GPS mode, up to 96 hours no solar charging or up to 135 hours when solar charging This is where you’ll see two sections. The first is the TopoActive Maps, which are the main maps that you want for sports/adventure navigation. However, there’s also entries below it for SkiView and CourseView (golf), plus a vert basic worldwide base map (it’s useless). The SkiView and CourseView maps are preloaded on all units, because they’re relatively small (23MB for SkiView, and roughly 200-500MB for each continent’s golf courses). Now again, I’ve also gone years without this functionality, but it seems time to at least have the option for arrows. After all, Garmin has approximately 9,238 other routing-related options. In any event, that largely self-owned failure aside, I’ve had no issues with navigation across a wide variety of hikes, runs, and bikes over the last 6-7 weeks. One exclusive feature you get on the 7X that you won’t find on the other new Fenix models is an LED flashlight. It can switch between red and white LED lights with the latter offered in a range of brightness settings. I have been using a fenix 6 Sapphire for about 2 years and had 2 units both with problems measuring elevation. They would calibrate before an activity correctly but the activity would report 20-60% increased elevation. Garmin replaced the first one unit after my reporting of this issue, but the second unit they sent me had the same issue.

Garmin Fenix 7X Pro

I saw a lot of images on reddit and garmin forum where people were complaining about the glare on the sapphire screen. I’d like to know if the difference between sapphire/non sapphire is huge in term of readability. Did you find any cases in daily usage or during running/cycling were you couldn’t read anything at all (or hardly) ? Or was it solved every time by twisting your arm a little bit ?