Garmin fēnix 7S Solar Multisport GPS Watch, Slate Grey with Black Band

Product Information

The charging cable is identical to virtually every other Garmin Fenix, Forerunner, and Vivo/Venu series device made in the last number of years: As such, I’ve tested all three Fenix 7 series sizes in my workouts. These workouts include a wide variety of intensities and conditions, making them great for accuracy testing. Swims, bikes, runs, hikes, indoor workouts, and more. 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. Increased overall Fenix 7 Solar battery life by 33% (7S vs 6S) to upwards of 68% (7X vs 6X) – full chart below First though, on the Fenix 7 and Epix series, Garmin has revamped the GPS selection process. There’s two places you can change satellite things:

And that’s the exact same way the FDA certifies blood oxygen medical-grade devices: Sitting still. If you swagger around, you’ll either not get good devices, or, Garmin these days won’t even give a reading. They (and others) have gotten smarter with just giving you a warning that there’s too much movement for a valid result. Starting on the music front, you’ve got a couple of different ways you can access music. In my case, I primarily use Spotify, so it only took a few seconds to link up my Spotify account. A Spotify Premium account is required though for doing offline music to your watch (thus, no phone required). Once connected though, you can choose which playlists you want to sync.

Maps for New Regions

I’ve had a very different experience with my Fenix 7X. Got mine a 4 weeks ago, and battery has been a consistent disappointment, so much so, I started to log the battery drain. All watches in the Fenix 6 and Fenix 7 lines have color memory-in-pixel (MIP) displays. These aren't as bright as the AMOLED screens used by devices like the Garmin Venu 2 and Garmin Epix, but they use significantly less power. This results in longer battery life, which is a big advantage for watches built with extensive GPS use in mind.

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: Now as I mentioned, there’s the new Health Snapshot feature. Well, new to the Fenix 7 series that is. This was introduced on the Venu 2 last year, and it takes five core metrics and distills them down into a single 2-minute measurement period. All you need to do is sit down and relax. Yes, I seriously managed to turn down the road to my hotel with 0% remaining, and 1% potential. Here’s what the watch said: The Fenix 7 series significantly increases the solar capabilities over the Fenix 6. It accomplishes this in three basic ways: Whereas the middle-left one is your Potential, which is your long-term potential. How long can you maintain this interval workout for, or, in an endurance event – how much gas is in the tank for the entire day. This will steadily decrease over the course of the workout.Then the next night, I threw the same pairing on her again. This time for her indoor bike workout, also then followed by another lift. Here’s the indoor bike:

In fact, even during the strength training (lifting) – it was largely better than I expected. Where you see it differ from the Polar H10 chest strap she was wearing was in the recovery from each set, in which case the chest strap recovered far faster than the optical HR sensors did. That’s not surprising, though, it was a bit laggier than I usually see. However, I also suspect those drops in the middle may not be accurate for the Polar H10 – they’re just too fast up and down for most humans (even her) to do. However, you’ve also got two additional data fields you can add: Distance and Time till empty. These two fields look at your current intensity and then figure out when you’re going to collapse. You’ll see a few minutes into my casual warm-up, it projects that at that pace, I can do 22KM or 1 hour and 45 minutes. Both short and long term are currently equal, cause things haven’t got crazy yet. The Garmin Fenix 7X has a flashlight that shines out of the top of the watch case. It contains both red and white LEDs, and can be used to help you see in dark conditions, or to make you more visible to others when you're running at night. Smaller Fenix 7 watches don't have a light. Display While the thin rim around the Fenix 6 wasn’t as obvious, the much wider rim on the Fenix 7 is clearly visible. Though, I guess I’ve just gotten so used to the look that it doesn’t bother me any. Here’s that identified:So, here’s that data set, and at a high level, things look pretty similar. All Fenix 7/Epix/Vertix 2 units were set for multiband GPS, and the FR745 was set for GPS+GLONASS. All the units had no problems in the openness sections: The thin stripe around the edge of the display can collect 100% of the sun’s rays. Well, technically it’s of course less than that, but in terms of simple relativity here, we’ll go with that being 100% from a Garmin spec standpoint. Meanwhile, the portion under the glass can only receive 7% – but the surface area of course is massive. Note that the 7% figure is down from a 10% claim on the Fenix 6, which Garmin explains is because Sapphire is normally less clear than regular glass, so by reducing the solar layer, it increases overall clarity (compared to keeping it at 10%). And of course, the under the glass portion (officially called Power Sapphire, now) is the entire display surface. All of these workouts are also then transmitted to any 3rd party apps you’ve configured/authorized, including Strava, TrainingPeaks, and other platforms. These modes include blink, pulse, beacon, blitz, and cadence (which is for walking/running). Further, there are options for speed including slow, medium, and fast. And finally, you can choose the color (white or red) for each one. The total spread in ascent between all those units is 27m (out of 1,341m), which is a max spread of 2%. The COROS Vertix 2 seems to start off however about 20-25m higher than the other units, but over the course of five hours, drifts closer to the other units. Given there was no absolute known good reference point along the trail to compare against, it’s hard to say exactly who was perfect. But I think it’s fair to say that any unit would have been more than sufficient in this scenario.

All Systems: This confusingly named option is dealers choice between GLONASS and GALILEO, and Garmin is the dealer. As a user you can’t choose which one to use, but instead, Garmin is now switching between GPS< GLONASS, GALILEO, BeiDou, and QZSS based on the quality of the satellites from each, determining “which to prioritize” We’ll start off with something relatively basic to get warmed up, in this case an indoor 45-minute treadmill workout, compared to a Polar H10 and the Fenix 7. As you can see, it’s virtually identical. The only bobble actually comes from the Polar H10 in the first 30-40 seconds, with what appears to be an incorrect half-hearted spike ahead of the warm-up, and then it corrects. Here’s that data:

Speaking of structured workouts, each day the watch will offer up structured running or cycling workouts, as a suggested workout, based on your current training and recovery. It looks at your recent load and training focus areas, and figures out what the next logical workout should be to slightly increase your fitness. Then, it suggests that daily workout: 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):