I spent the last week scientifically checking the accuracy of the health metrics that the garmin fenix 7 provides because if i spend 700 on a smartwatch, i want to make sure it accurately keeps track of my health. I tested the heart rate, monitor the sleep tracking, the spo2 measurements and the gps, and i must say, after all of that testing i have mixed feelings about this watch. I do think theres a group of people for which it could make sense to spend 700 on the phoenix 7.. However, i also think that for the majority of people there are probably cheaper alternatives, both from garmin and from other brands that probably provide more value. Therefore, i will also briefly compare the phoenix 7 to the garmin venue: 2 garmin vivomove sport and apple watch. Series. 7.. Ok lets dive into the test results and see if the phoenix 7 is for you and lets start with the sleep trackings in some uniquely positioned to test the sleep stage tracking. Like most new garmin watches, the phoenix 7 has advanced sleep monitoring which tracks your sleep stages, oxygen, saturation of the blood and breathing rate to check. If the phoenix 7 can correctly detect my sleep stages, ill, compare it to an eeg device called the dream. 2. That can actually measure my brain waves here i show an overview of the sleep tracking accuracy on top. Are the sleep stages, as recorded by the eeg device and on the left? Are the sleep stages as recorded by the phenix 7.
? I wore both the eeg device and the phoenix 7 to bed for 4 nights and ill see how close the predictions of the phoenix 7 are to those of the eeg device. Now each column here sums to 100, meaning that we can see what percentage of each of the actual sleep stages was predicted as each sleep stage by the phoenix 7.. If they perfectly agree, all values on the diagonal should be 100. However, as you can see, this is far from true. First of all, we see that only 24 of what was deep. Sleep was also correctly detected as deep sleep by the phoenix 7. most of what was deep sleep. Around 72 percent was actually detected as being light. Sleep we can see that even better by looking at the individual knights like in this example. Right here on top, are the sleep stages, as recorded by the dream to eeg headband, with the clock time along the horizontal axis and the sleep stages on the vertical axis. On the bottom, we have a similar plot, but now for the phoenix 7 ive highlighted all the deep sleep here in purple and as you can see, i had some deep sleep in the beginning of the night and only part of that was detected by the phoenix 7., the phoenix 7 also detected a bit of extra deep sleep and for the second example knight right here, we see something similar with only part of the deep sleep detected and also some extra deep sleep detected.
Light sleep detection, on the other hand, was better with about 2 3 of the light sleep correctly detected as being light sleep. If the light sleep was tracked incorrectly, it was mostly mistaken for ram sleep, but it was also sometimes confused with the wake time. Rem, sleep detection is again not very good. With only about a third of the rem sleep correctly detected, most rem, sleep is actually detected as light sleep by the phoenix 7. looking at the individual knights. It becomes clear why it is now in red here i mark my real rem, sleep and, as you can see on the bottom, the phoenix 7 only detected a small fraction of the ram sleep correctly now. This second example knight right here, is the best knight when it comes to ram sleep tracking for the phoenix 7. However, still only 3 out of 5 ram sleep segments are correctly detected. This also means we cannot really see the sleep cycles. You go through roughly 4 to 6 sleep cycles, each night, each one, starting with light sleep and deep sleep which is marked in blue and each one ending in rem, sleep, marketing, red. As you can see, i had one two. Three four complete sleep cycles this night. However, based on just the data from the phoenix 7, you would not be able to see this at all. Awake detection is actually pretty good. With about 72 percent of awake moments correctly detected. If awake moments were incorrectly detected, they were mostly confused with light sleep.
Of course, this makes some sense since light sleep is the closest sleep stage to being awake. Looking at the individual nights, we can indeed confirm this. Basically, all three awake moments were correctly detected here by the garmin fenix 7. However, it does appear to be quite sensitive. Detecting my awake moments as being longer and also detecting extra awake moments for those of you that watched last weeks, video on the newly released garmin van youtube, plus this overview of the sleep tracking might have looked somewhat familiar here. Are those results side by side on the left? Are the results for the phoenix 7 and on the right? The results for the venue? 2 plus, as you can see, the performance for both is very similar. Both are pretty okay at detecting awake moments, however, detecting the actual sleep stages is less good and, as you might also remember, from last weeks, video another recently released garmin watch performed much better at sleep staging, namely the much cheaper, garmin vivomove sport i wore the vivo Move sport on my right arm, whilst wearing the phoenix 7 on my left arm. Here i showed the first night of sleep tracking again but now, including both the phoenix 7 and the viva move. Sport, on top is the eeg headband in the middle of phoenix 7 and on the bottom. The viva moves. Port in purple is the deep sleep according to the eeg device and, as you can see, the vivomoo sport correctly detected deep sleep.
However, the phoenix 7 only detected part of it, and we see the same for this second knight the fifa move. Sport is almost spot on when it comes to deep sleep detection and the phoenix 7 well its not for a ram sleep market in red. We see mostly the same thing for this knight. The phoenix 7 in the middle here is just bad at ram sleep tracking, whereas the viva move sport detected all four segments correctly, though the length of those segments is a bit off now for this knight, the phoenix 7 performed a bit better, as you can see. In the middle here, however, still the vivomove sport was a lot better than the phoenix 7, as you can see on the bottom right here. What the fenix 7 did perform better at was awake time detection. It appears to be more sensitive at detecting awake moments and it more or less correctly detected my awake moments, though it did detect him as being too long. The vivomove sport actually only detected one of my awake moments, so why is there such a difference between these two garmin devices? Well, honestly, im not sure i would expect them to use the same algorithm and the v move. Sport actually has an older generation of sensors. I went through these settings for both watches and they appear to be basically the same and they also had a similar sleep schedule programmed in for the first night with the phoenix 7.
I did have the continuous pill. Socks turned off, but i turned that on and it didnt change anything. I also switched the viewmove sport from wearing it from my left arm last week to my right arm this week and again it kept performing equally well. Garmin also recommends wearing watches at least 2 hours before bed and a few nights this week, i did not manage to wear the watches continuously 2 hours before bed. However, i always put the vivomove sport and phoenix 7 on and off at the same time. So this cannot explain the difference. There might still be some difference in the settings that im, not aware of so if you know that, let us know in the comments below and ill personally also keep digging now, what might be even more important than comparing the phoenix 7 to other garmin devices is Comparing it to all the other brands on the market, so how does the phoenix 7 compare to some of the best and worst sleep trackers? This graph shows that overview on the horizontal axis. We have the average accuracy over the four individual sleep stages and on the vertical axis we have the accuracy of the worst sleep stage, the better a device the more to the top right. It is, and, as you can see, the best devices include different fitbits, in this case the sense inspire 2 in charge 5 and also the whoop strap 3.0 4.0 and within sleep analyzer.
The phoenix 7 here on the bottom left is not amongst the better sleep trackers. Comparing that to 3 other garment watches, we see it performs very similarly to the garmin venue, 2 plus and the garmin venue 2. However, as we saw before the garmin vivomoo, sport is a lot better and much closer to the performance of the best watches. One other thing i noticed is that the phoenix 7 similar to the venue 2 plus consistently detected me as falling asleep about 15 minutes too late each night, which is something you should be aware of now before moving on to the heart rate accuracy, i should mention That i tested the standard fenix 7 in this video. There are many more models like the 7s7x and sapphire versions, which are all very similar to the standard phoenix 7.. However, the slightly different form factors could still have small effects that i cannot really account for. In my testing, unfortunately, since im not yet as established as the more famous reviewers that have been on the youtube platform longer garmin has not lent me any watches to review. So, in order to review them, i need to buy all the watches myself. If you want to help the channel get noticed by garmin a sub to the channel and pressing like on this, video would really go a long way. That will also help me get these reviews out faster. Moving on, we can conclude that the sleep tracking is underwhelming on the phoenix 7.
. However, i expect that what is more important to most people buying this watch is the hardware tracking. This is something that the garmin venue 2, which has the same sensor, was quite good at. However, as we saw last week strangely enough, the garmin venue, 2, plus also with the same sensor, was not quite as good. So what about the phoenix 7? Is that any good, at heart rate tracking lets, take a look at the results during spinning cycling and weight lifting in the next set of tests ill? Compare the heart rate measurements of the phoenix 7 against the polar h10 ecg chest strap, which can record my heart rate very accurately, well start by looking at the easiest type of exercise for a watch to track cycling indoors. Now this involves very little movement and will therefore produce less noise. Here we see an overview of that accuracy. Each dot here has a single heart rate measurement with long the horizontal axis, the value according to the polar h10 ecg chest strap and on the vertical axis. The value according to the phoenix 7., the blue line indicates perfect agreement, so any measurement along this line at roughly the same value for the polo h10 and the phoenix 7., the more measurements there are in a certain area, the darker blacker, color and, as you can See theres a pretty good agreement between the ecg chest strap and the phoenix 7, as most points are along the blue line.
However, we also see that there are some points right here above the blue line, similar to what we saw last week for the venue 2 plus. This indicates that, while my heart rate was low, the phoenix 7 detected the 2 high heart rate. We can see why that is by looking at the individual rides along the horizontal axis. Here we have the time and my heart rate is along the vertical axis. In blue, i plotted my heart rate. According to the polar h10 chest, strap and in red my heart rate, according to the phoenix 7., as you can see for most of the ride, the two lines overlap almost perfectly and you can basically not see the red line of the phoenix 7 at all. However, it seems that, quite often when i take a break and my heart rate goes down, the phoenix 7 shows some delay in picking up on that decreased heart rate. You can see the most clear case right here, but theres. Also more subtle. Moments like right here. Right here and right here – and we see the same thing for the second spinning session and probably even more clearly during this first short break right here – did not detect my decreased heart rate at all, and we also see a delay in the next three breaks right Here, right here and right here, all in all, this is still not bad compared to many other devices. However, there are definitely better devices out there.
Next lets take a look at cycling outside, for which the overview is displayed here generally. This is more difficult for watches since theres much more movement and bumpiness. Surprisingly, this actually looks a bit better than cycling indoors, theres, a pretty good agreement between the chest, strap and the phoenix 7. looking at the individual rides. This becomes even clearer, as you can see, right here – theres, mostly a pretty good agreement, sometimes theres a slight delay in the heart rate detection of the phoenix 7, especially in picking up an increased heart rate. However, this still looks pretty good compared to most devices, and we see the same thing for most rides like this one right here, and also this one right here where the overall agreement is quite good. There was only one out of six rides where the phoenix 7 struggled, as you can see right here for the first half of my ride. It did not correctly detect my heart rate now lets take a look at the most difficult type of exercise. Weightlifting each time i do a set. You can see in blue that my heart rate increases now during the first half of this weightlifting session. The watch was more or less able to keep track of my heart rate. Pretty accurately now i was doing flies during the first half of the training. However, the moment i started doing dips, which was the second half of the training the watch started to struggle during the second weightlifting session.
Where i worked on my biceps and back, the phoenix 7 was basically not able to keep track of my heart rate, as you can see right here, where it misses all of the peaks in my heart rate, except for this one right here. So the phoenix 7 appears to be good enough during different cardio workouts, in this case. Cycling indoors, and outdoors, however, did not do great during weight lifting interestingly. For some reason, it did not perform quite as well as the garment venue 2 with the same sensor. At least on me to show that here are the results for the phoenix 7 for spinning we were just looking at and if we switch to the garmin venue 2, we get these results, even though both are good. The results for the venue 2 are definitely better. Now i made the points more transparent here, because i have many more measurements and otherwise you wouldnt be able to see where most of the points are now. These are the cycling results for the phoenix 7, and here the venue 2 appears to perform more or less. Similarly, next looking at weight lifting for the phoenix 7, we do see that the venue 2 appears to perform a bit better. Finally, i do really very briefly need to mention the performance of the apple watch series 7. When it comes to heart rate tracking. Here you can see the performance of the apple h7 during spinning and, as you can see its almost perfect, we see something similar right here for cycling outside the deviations are just slightly larger, but all in all its almost spot on, and we see the same thing For weightlifting right here, which is again amazing for a watch now, i should know that during weightlifting the apple watch sometimes loses the heart rate signal briefly, when im doing a set and misses part of the peak.
However, overall, its still the number one risk warning heart rate tracker now, the phoenix 7 is a decent heart rate tracker, its just not quite as good as the apple watch. The main downside of the apple watch is, of course, its poor battery life, and this is something that phoenix 7 is a complete b stat with more than 2 weeks of battery life, whereas heart rate is generally measured with green light. Red and infrared light are used to measure oxygen saturation over the last week i measured my oxygen saturation at ground level in the morning and evening using the fenix 7.. At the same time, i also recorded my oxygen saturation using a dedicated fingerprint exhibitor now at ground level. My oxygen saturation should be within my normal range, which is generally between 97 and 100 percent. The phoenix 7 should not detect any low values during this test. On the left are 24 measurements taken with the phoenix 7 and on the right are matched measurements taken with the fingerprint exhibitor. As you can see, the phoenix 7 is mostly in the same range as the fingerprints exhibitor. However, still sometimes it does detect it too low. Spo2 value overall, this is not bad. However, i would recommend it when you do get a low measurement with the fenix 7. You reposition the watch on your wrist and take a few more measurements. That way, you can ensure that the low measurement was not a fluke.
What about gps tracking i tested it while cycling to and from work? I wanted to test two things: one: how long does it take for the watch to get a gps signal and two how about the gps signals overlap when cycling the same route multiple times? That is displayed here for three times a cycle to work. I started the activity the moment i was ready to leave and i did not provide the watch with any extra time to acquire the signal. The green marker indicates the moment that it connected the gps signal and, as you can see, it almost always acquired the signal almost instantly, which is really good now, one time it needed a few seconds to get a more accurate location. But overall, this is good. If we now look at the consistency between the routes, this looks amazing for most of the route. The lines overlap very well, sometimes theres a bit more deviation. However, overall, this is looking very good. As you can see, the lines overlap very well and im pretty impressed with the gps accuracy of the phoenix 7.. We can look at the same thing when i cycled back from work and again it acquired the signal really quickly and the lines overlapped super well. Overall, i would say that out of all the devices ive tested so far, this is looking the best when it comes to gps tracking. This looks really good, but i should know that the normal version of the phoenix 7 that i tested here does not even have the multi band gps that the sapphire line of the phoenix 7 has so the sapphire versions of the phoenix 7 could be even better.
However, as other reviewers like ray from dc rainmaker, have noted, this might not be that big of an improvement over the standard, gps tracking, as i mentioned before, i have mixed feelings about the phoenix 7. taking into account all features. The health tracking of the fenix 7 has both positives and negatives. The gps tracking seems great, and the heart rate tracking is pretty good. The oxygen saturation measurements are only so so, and the sleeve stage tracking is not very good from the sleep stage tracking. I would only trust the total time of sleep looking at it from just this limited scope. All of these things combined do not warrant a 700 price tag. However, in addition to these health features, the phoenix 7 has a number of other features, one of the most important ones being built in maps. This could be extremely valuable for people that go hiking or skiing a lot, and this also means that theres, definitely a group of people out there, for which this watch the phoenix 7 might be the best choice. It might be that you just need. Ok, health features and that the additional features like the maps and incredible battery life are the most important things. However, i do think that for many of you that are just looking to track your general health and daily workouts, the phoenix 7 is a bit overkill and are better or cheaper devices out there, for you take, for instance, the garmin venue 2.
. This has good heart rate, tracking and many of the same health features, and you can likely find it for half of the price of the phoenix 7. ill link. A video reviewing that watch up here now as a smart watch and a heart rate tracker. The apple watch is definitely much better than the phoenix 7, but keep in mind that the battery life is not very good and check out those videos right here. The huawei watch gt3 also has a great heart rate, monitor and is about a third of the price of the phoenix 7.. So whilst theres definitely a market for the phoenix 7 id really recommend you consider if you need more advanced features, it provides now. I hope this video provided you with some value.Ka9LXKQy-fQ
