Garmin Fenix 8 vs Apple Watch Extremely 3 – here is which one I would purchase on Black Friday

The Garmin Fenix 8 and Apple Watch Extremely 3 are, respectively, Garmin and Apple’s premium journey watches. They’re each packing correct GPS and highly effective navigation options to make sure you do not get misplaced on the path, superior exercise monitoring capabilities which ship a load of helpful metrics, and funky way of life options.

• Black Friday Garmin offers

• Black Friday Apple Watch offers

I’ve examined each of those units, together with dozens of different health wearables, and might verify each watches are on the high of their sport. I gave the Garmin Fenix 8 5 stars and the Apple Watch Extremely 3 four-point-five stars, however half a star does not inform the entire story.

Under, I’ve damaged down my decision-making course of, together with which options are most necessary to me, to find out which one I would purchase on Black Friday. Let’s begin by trying on the specs:

Garmin Fenix 8 vs Apple Watch Extremely 3: Specs in contrast

Immediately, you may see there are some clear benefits the Fenix has over the Apple Watch Extremely 3. For one factor, it really works with iPhone and Android units: it solely wants the Garmin Join app to work, and you may set up that on any smartphone. The Apple Watch Extremely 3 requires an iPhone.

Battery life is one other huge one. The most important, strongest Fenix watches last as long as 48 days, whereas the Apple Watch Extremely 3 operates for round 42 hours on common. That is an enormous benefit for the Fenix: runners can full battery-sucking GPS exercises and hikers can go on multi-stage journeys off-grid for days, and by no means run out of juice. Fenix customers merely do not want to consider charging fairly often.

Nevertheless, that is discounting the unbelievable energy of watchOS 26, Apple’s working system, which is miles forward of Garmin’s personal OS. It is buttery-smooth and might even be operated remotely because of gesture controls and a raise-to-speak connection to Siri, Apple’s voice assistant. It additionally has LTE capabilities, permitting you so as to add it to your telephone’s knowledge plan.

The Apple Watch Extremely 3 is seamless and intuitive to make use of with an iPhone, with loads of AI smarts and a smorgasbord of third-party apps out there. Its show is brighter and clearer than Garmin’s, too.

There’s additionally an argument to be made for accuracy: on testing Garmin’s Elevate V5 coronary heart price sensor towards the sensor within the Apple Watch Extremely 3, utilizing a correct chest-mounted coronary heart price monitor as a baseline, Apple’s was a shade extra correct.

Nevertheless, Garmin has too many quality-of-life options over the Apple Watch Extremely 3 for me to disregard. I am not often somebody who does multi-day off-grid tenting journeys, however I do dislike charging my watch each different day, and it is a load off my thoughts not to consider it.