Garmin fenix 6S Pro, Ultimate Multisport GPS Watch, Smaller-Sized, Features Mapping, Music, Grade-Adjusted Pace Monitoring and Pulse Ox Sensors, Black with Black Band

Product Information

The Fenix 6S comes with a 42mm case size, as opposed to the 47mm of the standard Fenix 6, and 51mm for the Fenix 6X Sapphire. The Garmin LT detection and and VO2Max detection based on FirstBeat algorithms “work” but are simplistic. They have a lot of assumptions and significant error bars. (I mean their published literature says something around +-10% when using a chest strap if I recall and that comes out to +- a few points of VO2Max — which is a lot.) One thing I love is having easy access to widgets so you can see tons of data — like race time predictions, training status, heart rate, and more — without ever having to open the Garmin Connect app. Battery life Speaking of that watch face, you’ll notice that there’s a little sun atop the default watch face. That sun is actually showing you the current intensity level. Around the edge of the little sun are 10 pieces, each indicating 10% of full intensity. So if you look at the below picture you’ll see the sun is coming in at 0% intensity as I’m in the shade: Another metric in that same category is 24×7 heart rate. This is automatically enabled and monitoring every second, all part of recording and ultimately plotting your data. You can have certain watch faces display your HR constantly as well. If you tap into the heart rate widget you’ll get a graph of the last 4 hours – and then again down to the resting HR for the last 7 days.

It’s pretty intuitive, though I did have to do some Googling when I couldn’t figure out how to access certain features and settings. Different watches in the Fenix 6 and 7 lines carry different price tags, with the basic models costing less than those with Sapphire crystal or Power Glass. However, all new Fenix 7 watches are more expensive than their older counterparts.I wanted to ask you about the GPS accuracy, and if your thinking of it has changed since your initial review? I’ve had a Fenix 6 Pro now since the end of December and I just can’t shake the issues I get with GPS. Regardless of the type of run I do, I never “feel” it’s that accurate, and whenever I look at the results post-run, the lines are rarely smooth and often zig-zag on what should be straight lines while also cutting corners often. I’ve taken to wearing my old FR235 for comparison, and the difference is stark in how accurate those results are. On a 10km run, it’s not uncommon for there to be a 0.5km difference between the two. When you are ready to run, you can load this PacePro data and use it to monitor your pace in real-time. The display will show your target split pace, your current split pace, and how far off you are from your overall goal. You also can see the distance remaining on the current split. PacePro was immensely useful during my runs, keeping me focused on a single lap at a time instead of the total length of my run. It also helped me slow down on steep mountain runs allowing me to conserve energy on the inclines and make up time on the downhills. For mountain runners who want to take the guess work out of pacing, this feature is a godsend. I did some digging in online forums and found that other users reported similar results. I also had my wife test the watch and her results were pretty similar, saying she’d only gotten about 10 minutes of deep sleep. Steps

When you start your run, the watch will give you a suggested workout (time and speed), based on how it thinks you’re doing with your training load for the week. Ok, so in my testing, I simply use the watch throughout my usual workouts. Those workouts include a wide variety of intensities and conditions, making them great for accuracy testing. I’ve got steady runs, interval workouts on both bike and running, as well as tempo runs and rides, and so on. Within the Fenix 6 series Garmin has introduced the concept of ‘Map Themes’, which allow you to change the styling of the map in real-time. For example you can go from the default styling to a night styling. Or to a high contrast styling. Or even a marine-focused one. To do so, you’ll go into the sport mode settings (for whichever sport you want) and then under map, go to ‘Map Themes’. To say this feature is buried would be the understatement of the review. Connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and you’ll be all set to listen to music during your activity without having to bring your phone along. The other thing that this release does is close the gap between the release cycles of the high-end Garmin Forerunner series (FR945) and the high-end Fenix series. Previously that timeframe was upwards of a year or more. Now we’re down to about 4-5 months. It behooves Garmin to get these as close as possible so that people are making decisions not so much on features (which would mostly be the same), but on material and styling choices. Rather than have someone buy a FR945 and then realized they could have gotten a swankier Fenix 6 just a few months later.

The Fenix 6 Pro can help you train harder and race smarter, and has useful smart features to back up its sports tracking

According to Garmin, the stress level is calculated based on your heart rate variability in a given day. I was a little skeptical at first, but looking through the data changed my mind. I found that on days that had felt particularly harried, my stress score was higher. And on days that felt pretty low-key, I ended up with a low stress score.

While I could see this feature being useful if you were trying to work on more even splits, I actually found it kind of annoying when I tested it out. I usually base my runs off of a distance goal rather than time goal, and I don’t pay a ton of attention to my speed, so it was kind of obnoxious to have the watch alert me every time I was going faster or slower than it wanted me to. Frankly, this may be one of my favorite features of the Fenix 6 series. Which sounds silly until you realize I hated scrolling endlessly through widgets trying to find the data I wanted. Now, I can scroll three times less (or faster). It’s brilliant. Here’s a small gallery of widgets currently on my watch. Note the solar widget is only applicable to the Fenix 6X Solar unit. All the other widgets are across all Fenix 6 units.One of the big differences between the Garmin Fenix 6 over the Fenix 5 is power management, and this has been streamlined. The Fenix 6 series is a slate of more than a dozen different watch variants, with battery life extending upwards of 120 days. Yes, days. And GPS-on time for ultra-type scenarios at nearly 150 hours. Or in full expedition mode GPS-on time at 56 days. Yes, again, days. Obviously, there are some caveats to those numbers – but we’ll get to those. Oh, and did I mention there’s now solar charging of the unit? No, it’s not the panacea that your own solar farm might be – but it’s a start and hint at where Garmin is going. And the new PacePro feature will automatically create a course-elevation optimized race plan for your specific goal time. The Stress Score and Body Battery have also proved useful in assessing readiness for training – and in some quite hectic periods of training sessions have proved fairly accurate in highlighting fatigue.