Last week the Garmin Forerunner 570 and Forerunner 970 were released, and with that a slate of ‘new to Garmin’ features. The majority of those new features appeared only on the Forerunner 970, however, a handful (such as the new Evening Report feature) also appeared on the Forerunner 570.
After a bit of poking, I’ve finally got clarification on which existing watches will get these new features, and which ones won’t. To clarify, here’s the specific list of features we’re talking about:
– Running Tolerance feature
– Impact Load Factor
– ‘Autolap by timing gates’ feature
– Suggested Finish line feature
– Projected race time predictor feature
– Step Speed loss feature (requires HRM 600)
– Running Economy feature (requires HRM 600)
– Garmin triathlon coach feature
– Multisport Structured Workouts (from Garmin Connect to watch)
– Improved Ovulation cycle predictions using skim temp
There are a handful of other things already in the existing watch firmware update hopper, such as the Breathing Variations feature, seen on recent Garmin Fenix 8 betas (and going live today), as well as other recent beta features like the Rucking activity profile (been around since February or so). For example, Breathing Variations is going to an absolute ton of devices, including all Fenix 7 & Epic series (Pro & Non-Pro), Vivoactive’s, Venu’s, and more. I’m not including those in this list, since those are already trickling down to watches in a fairly predictable pattern. Instead, it’s all about the bits above, which are totally new to Garmin.
In any case, looking at that list, the long and the short of it is that existing Fenix 8, Enduro 3, and Tactix 8 variants will get those features at some point in the future. With ‘will get’ being more of a soft promise than a hard and fast guarantee. Specifically:
“The current plan is to roll the “new to Garmin” software features that announced with Forerunner 570 and 970 into the Fenix 8 series, Enduro 3 and Tactix 8 in future software releases. We cannot comment on the exact timing or guarantee that all features will make it into these updates.”
Said differently (and confirmed), there are no plans for any of these newly listed features to trickle down into the Forerunner 265, 965, Fenix 7 Pro, or Epix Pro series. Also clearly noted, as with all software development, things can and do change. Generally speaking, when Garmin says a feature is coming to other watches, 95% of the time it comes true. There are certainly contrary examples over the last decade, but frankly, they’re few and far between.
This is actually relatively similar to what we’ve seen in the past, at least in terms of timing. With the Garmin quarterly firmware release having started to trickle out in the last few days, that typically means the next cycle of public Fenix 8 betas is usually 2-4 weeks away (which would then culminate sometime in likely early-mid August with a production release, or slightly later if need be for a variety of reasons). As usual, the initial public beta may not include all the features that might end up in the final production version later (and vice versa, features could disappear).
In this case, with the Forerunner 970 clearly sharing most of the same new user interface base as the Fenix 8, it’s going to make that process much faster than it might otherwise have been.
Still, this will no doubt upset Fenix 7/Epix Pro users, or even Forerunner 965 users. From 2020-2023, Garmin actually got really good about updating existing devices (especially on the watch side, setting aside Venu of course). The Edge team still continues to do a very good job at porting features back as well. But with the release of the Fenix 8, it’s clear things have changed. Not just in terms of pricing upwards, but Garmin’s thinking around updating older watches. They’ve seemingly returned to the ‘old Garmin’ of the 2010’s, that forced new watches if you wanted new features.
On one hand, you’ve got companies like Apple offering watch updates for many years back, but that’s also not everyone. Polar for example is pretty heavily limiting things to current-gen watches. Suunto & COROS split the difference a bit, with Suunto updating everything in the current family of devices, while COROS will tend to extend one generation back, depending on hardware constraints. Google (with albeit rather limited history to look at) is mostly updating older devices too. And Samsung splits the difference, with updating some older watches with new WearOS features, but not necessarily new Samsung features.
Either way, of the bigger companies, Garmin is definitely becoming the most strict in terms of those software feature updates. At the same time, they’re also adding *far* more features in their updates than any of the companies I just noted (heck, probably adding more software update features than all of those companies combined). Apple for example, does one big update each year in September. COROS used to do more frequent updates than most, but in the last 1-2 years, the update cadence and depth have dramatically decreased from the 2022ish era. That’s common as companies mature.
Anyways, the reason all this might matter is the current Fenix 8 sales, which bring the price of the Fenix 8 down to $799, versus the $749 of the Forerunner 970. In that scenario, assuming form factor/style/size isn’t a factor, it’s a no-brainer to go with the more full-featured Fenix 8, especially assuming it’ll get the features listed above.
Of those features listed above, having used them on the Forerunner 970, I’d say the two most real-world useful ones are the Running Tolerance/Impact Load Feature (kinda a combo-dish), and the Evening Report feature. Some of the others are still interesting, especially the dynamic triathlon plans for triathletes. But beyond that, I find most are either a bit too geeky, or a bit too complicated to setup/use, for most people.
Anyways, hope this helps folks trying to figure out whether to pickup one of the Fenix 8 units on sale, or, the Forerunner 970. Or, just giving up and still using your Forerunner 305 that continues to work just fine, now 19 years later.
With that – thanks for reading!
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