As a long-time Fenix user who has been using the Garmin Fenix line of watches for the past 6 years and knows their ins and outs, I was excited to check out the new Fenix 7 model and see how it stacks up against its predecessors.

If you want to find my overall opinion on the Garmin Fenix line of watches, check out the following overview, where I get down to the nitty-gritty of how I feel about the new Fenix 7 from ultra runners and hikers’ perspective.

Disclaimer: I have never been paid by, nor do I have any affiliation with Garmin. I have paid for all my Garmin products with my hard-earned money. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Overview

The Fenix 7 stands at the peak of the evolutionary chain of Garmin’s Fenix line of watches. The watch has always been known and loved for its rugged yet stylish design, great functionality, and long battery life, and in all these categories, the Fenix 7 line of watches has only gotten better. With 57 hours of battery life in standard GPS mode and more than 50% improved solar capabilities, the watch is here to last. The Solar Sapphire model has also gotten highly accurate multi-band GPS. There are nice additions to the navigation and mapping, such as the Up Ahead feature. Combined with the new touch display and faster chip, the navigating capabilities are vastly improved compared to the prior generations of the Fenix line.

In the health and sports department, the watch does not disappoint and offers everything you’ll probably ever need. With all-day wrist-based heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen saturation, respiration rate, advanced sleep-tracking, and more, you will get a robust insight into your health.

From the sports and training features, the Fenix 7 offers probably every conceivable sport profile, and thanks to Garmin’s Firstbeat metrics, also the best in class training features.

So far, so good.

However, not everything is sunshine and rainbows with the Fenix line. There are a few areas where I feel Garmin could have done better. Probably the biggest weakness of the Fenix line is in the software department, where I came across a few bugs and quirks, most notably with the Music player. Also, there are a few function and UI changes that I’m not a fan of, but hopefully, Garmin will address these in upcoming firmware updates. From the hardware point of view, as much as I like the durability of the new Saffire Solar lens, its high reflectivity and lower clarity make the display less readable compared to the Gorilla glass lens. Also, while it’s great to have a sunlight readable always-on display, the MIP display technology starts to show its age, especially compared to the new EPIX model with an AMOLED screen.

Despite these minor quibbles, the Fenix 7 is still my go-to recommendation for anyone looking for a robust and stylish outdoor swiss-army knife of sports watches.

The Design & Comfort of the Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar

The Garmin Fenix has always been a good-looking watch. Its design has always been sleek yet functional, with buttons that are easy to press even when you’re wearing gloves, and the new Fenix 7 models are no exception.

The Size of the 47 mm Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar:
The size/dimensions of the watch are 47 x 47 x 14.5 mm weighing 73 grams (including band). The band will fit wrist sizes with a circumference of 125-208 mm (4.92-8.19 inches). The watchband is 22 mm (0.87 inches) wide and feels comfortable on the wrist.

The Display

The always-on MIP display of the Fenix line, which started with the Fenix 3, has evolved over the years and is still very good, but somehow a bit lacking when compared to its newly released EPIX brother with an AMOLED screen.

The resolution is identical as on the prior Fenix 6, which is a bit of a letdown. Also, take note that if you decide to go for one of the Sapphire Solar models, the visibility is diminished due to the Sapphire crystal. It is super durable but unfortunately more reflective than the Gorilla Glass, which is used on the basic model, or even when compared to the glass used on the Fenix 5.

A nice addition to the display department is its touch sensitivity. Although I initially thought that the tactile feedback of the buttons on the Fenix series was all I needed, I stand corrected. I have to say that I really like the option of interacting with the watch interface with my fingers, which is way faster and more convenient when scrubbing through the menus, glances, etc. You can even set up different scenarios where you want the touch screen to be enabled or disabled. I love that.

The New Optical HR Sensor – Garmin ELEVATE V4

If you would scroll through Garmin’s forum, you would find that one of the biggest complaints about the Fenix 6 was concerning the accuracy of its optical HR sensor. The Fenix 7 now comes with the latest Garmin ELEVATE V4, which has been around for some time now on other, newer Garmin models, such as the Venu 2 or Forerunner 945 LTE. The fourth-generation Elevate sensor is claimed to be more accurate than ever before. Judging by my tests, I can confirm the improvement of the accuracy and responsiveness to the heart rate changes, especially during activity. Another good news is that there is a glass covering of the ELEVATE sensor, which should mitigate the possible issue of the sensor cracking (due to sweat), which was a widespread issue reported on the Fenix 5 Series.

The biggest benefit of the wrist-based heart rate for me as a runner is tracking my resting heart rate and stress score, which I use as one of the ways to track my training adaptation and recovery. In this department, I didn’t find any noticeable difference compared to my old Fenix watch, which is not a bad thing. It shows that the data is consistent, and I can use them in my training.

Generally, I can say I’m very pleased with the accuracy of the optical HR sensor so far. However, there was one situation during the testing where one of the green flashing LEDs on the HR sensor started to flash dimmer, which had a negative effect on the accuracy of the heart rate readings. Fortunately, I was able to fix this issue by restarting the watch. This happened only once, and I wasn’t able to reproduce this issue again.

Health and Sports Software Features

The Fenix 6 has been already jam-packed with health and sports features, so it’s not a surprise that from the software side of things, there are no groundbreaking changes. Instead, the watch has become even more polished and has gotten a couple of nice features making the watch an even more complete tool to track your athletic performance and health metrics. Instead of going over every minor feature upgrade, I’ll mention in greater detail only those that I find most significant.

Health Features

Garmin has built a robust set of health features into its Fenix line over the years. Features such as 24/7 wrist-based heart rate monitoring, stress tracking, body battery, blood oxygen saturation, advanced sleep-tracking, respiration rate, and more will give you a solid insight into your health. This year, Garmin added a new health snapshot feature that builds on many already existing metrics.

However, there is a strange quirk with the watch in Sleep Mode. When I have display time out turned on, the watch goes blank after a couple of seconds even though I’m interacting with the screen. I don’t know if this is intentional or a bug, but it’s something that I hope Garmin will consider changing/fixing in a future firmware update.

Sport Features

In the sports arena, Garmin has provided mostly a few minor improvements, such as new sports profiles, enhanced mapping capabilities, new graphs and data fields, etc. When it comes to major updates, this year’s most significant feature is the new Real-Time Stamina, which I will discuss in greater detail in the following few paragraphs.

REAL-TIME STAMINA – is a feature that helps you gauge your effort throughout your cycling or running activity to help you avoid overexerting yourself too soon. This can be a great tool to help you gauge your effort while racing your local 10K but even better when running a 100K ultramarathon trail race since running pace is not exactly a helpful metric when dealing with 18 000 feet of climbing. I can imagine this metric could help me prevent a couple of blowups in the past.

Wondering what the Real-Time Stamina feature can show you?

Battery Life + Solar Capability

The battery life of the Fenix line has always been one of my favorite features, and it’s probably the number one reason to choose the Fenix 7 over the newly released Epix. Yes, you can find sports watches such as the Garmin Enduro or the COROS VERTIX 2 with even better battery life than the Fenix 7, but if you don’t want to give up on any of the great training or mapping features, then the Fenix model is the clear winner.

The battery life on the Fenix watches has been improving steadily over the years, and with the Fenix 7, it’s the best yet! While the chart below can give you an idea of how long you can expect your Fenix to last, your mileage may vary, depending on how heavy user of the watch you are.

One of the best things about the battery is the improved battery life for the GPS-only mode. In my experience, it’s plenty accurate for most of my runs, and you can squeeze out approximately 57 hours of GPS activity on a single charge and even more with solar.

CHARGING
Is the battery of your Fenix 7 about to die? Fear not, the watch charges pretty quickly too. Plugin your Fenix for literally 2 minutes, and you will have enough power to run over an hour in GPS mode. Also, the battery can be charged from 0 to 100 % in 2,5 hours.

SOLAR CAPABILITY
The solar capability on the Fenix 7 has been significantly improved. The solar surface is now over 50% larger compared to prior models and can provide a lot more charging power.

Since it is wintertime now where I live, I haven’t been able to test the solar charging capabilities of the Fenix 7 extensively. However, in my short test, I found that on a sunny winter (mostly clear) day, I was able to gather 145 000 lux hours in just 2 hours. This is quite impressive given that Garmin states you only need 150 000 lux hours (3 hours of 50 000 lux a day) to gain the extra battery life they advertise. Also, it was surprising to see that even with the winter sun, which is not as strong as in the summer months, I was able to gather this many lux hours in such a short period of time.

GPS Accuracy

If you have ever visited Garmins forums in past years, then you have likely come across the hotly debated topic of GPS accuracy. While I have never complained about running on the other side of the road than my Fenix actually recorded, I do believe it is important to have accurate GPS data for training purposes and especially for racing.

When it comes to GPS settings, Fenix 7 now offers 4 different levels of GPS accuracy:

1. GPS only
2. All Systems (GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BeiDou, and QZSS) – not all systems have to be active simultaneously. Instead, Garmin automatically chooses the best for your location.
3. All Systems + Multi-band – uses a combination of the prior and the multi-band GPS chip, which should offer the best accuracy, but at a significant cost to the battery life.
4. UltraTrack – gives the least accurate GPS tracks but significantly improves the battery life.

After two weeks of testing all 3 different GPS modes (except UltraTrack mode, which I rarely use), I found the accuracy to be very good. For most of my runs in the city, I use GPS only since I find the accuracy to be plenty accurate for my everyday runs, and it’s hugely improved compared to my old Fenix 5. It’s hard to quantify the accuracy of the GPS, but if I were to give my general accuracy estimates, it would look as follows:

Settings for both devices: GPS recording – every second

• Fenix 5 (GPS+GLONASS) – deviations* from the actual route 10-20 m (32 – 64 feet)
• Fenix 7 – GPS only – deviations* from the actual route 5-10 m (16 – 32 feet)
• Fenix 7 – All systems – deviations* from the actual route 4-7 m (14- 22 feet)
• Fenix 7 – All Systems + Multi-band – deviations* from the actual route 1-3 m (10 feet)

*Deviation here means the degree to which the device incorrectly determined my location. This does not mean that the device constantly states my position incorrectly. On the contrary, most of the time, all devices show the position within a few meters to the actual one.

When it comes to comparison strictly within different settings of the Fenix 7, the GPS-only deviations may seem significantly worse than All Systems + Multi-band settings at first glance. However, keep in mind that the deviations represent only extreme values, and generally, the tracks were very comparable in all three GPS settings. Of course, whenever you are running in a dense urban area with tall buildings or under tree cover, the Multi-band mode will yield a slightly better GPS track at certain places. The question you have to ask yourself is whether the improvement of accuracy is worth the significant battery life penalty.

Also, the current pace on my older Fenix 5 was always jumping up and down, making it almost impossible to use. I’m glad to see that this metric is now, thanks to its improved GPS chip, significantly more stable.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the GPS accuracy of the Fenix 7, and I hope it will finally put a nail in the coffin of the Garmin GPS accuracy debate.

Music

The ability to play music straight from the Fenix has been around since Fenix 5 plus. Nowadays, you can either download your music and podcast directly to the watch via Garmin Express or install a 3rd party app via Garmin IQ Store, such as Deezer or Spotify and sync up your music that way. Wondering how well it works?

While I was able to get all my music onto the watch (although not without hiccups, more on that later), I found that the sound quality of the tracks was significantly worse than when I would play the music from my phone using my AirPods.

When I checked out what people were saying on the Garmin forums, I found that I’m not the only one experiencing this issue. I’m currently running the latest firmware version 7.20, and it seems like Garmin is aware of this problem and is working on a fix, so let’s hope they will resolve it in a future firmware update (the audio quality problem has been improved/fixed in a 7.35 firmware update).

Also, while transferring music to the watch, the Garmin Express app on my Mac would crash multiple times, and my uploaded playlists wouldn’t appear in the playlist section on the watch even though the songs were transferred correctly. So more hiccups there.

While I can listen to music on my Fenix 7, the experience has not been great so far. I guess that is the price for being an early adopter. Hopefully, Garmin will work out all the kinks in the near future.

What is the Difference Between Epix (gen 2) and Fenix 7? Which One to Choose?

The Garmin Epix is a 47 mm case size only and offers a nicer AMOLED screen compared to the transflective MIP display of the Fenix 7, but at a significant cost to the battery life. Also, the Epix watch is $100 more expensive.

What is the Difference Between Fenix 6 and Fenix 7? Which One to Choose?

The biggest difference between Fenix 6 and Fenix 7 is improved solar capabilities and battery life, as well as the addition of the touch screen. From the sensor side of things, we now have the addition of highly accurate Multi-band GPS (Sapphire Solar models only) and improved wrist-based heart rate sensor Elevate 4. There are also a couple of nice design updates, such as lug protection and a start/stop button guard against accidental presses. In terms of software, the Fenix 7 has seen a few minor updates, including new sports profiles, activity charts, and stats, as well as some UI changes. There are also bigger updates, such as the Real-Time Stamina feature for running and biking and the Up-Ahead feature for improved navigation. A unique addition to the 7X model is the built-in LED flashlight.