But theres. Somebody else that wants to join the party, the new garmin epics, which is basically a phoenix 7 with an amoled display, but beyond. Just the new amoled display of the epics garmins also added a touch screen to both the epics as well as the phoenix 7 and that wasnt found on the phoenix 6. So this makes this an even more interesting comparison to the apple watch series 7. Now, but even so, just like my phoenix 6 vs series – 6 video that i did last year, this absolutely can be thought of as unfair comparison, where each of these watches are focused on doing a particular thing very well, with the apple watch series 7. The thing that it does extremely well is being a smart watch and a great companion device and complement to your iphone with the garmin fenix 7 and garmin epics. What these do well are being outdoor focused sport, watches with incredible battery life and durability. Personally, i like all of these watches, because i can benefit from all the features that they can provide and theres. Definitely some overlap with some of the core features, but then they do diverge quite a bit on the smartwatch end of things, as well as the sports and fitness end of things and thats. My aim in this video is to go over all those differences to help you decide which one is going to be right for you and if the information does help you out at all, dont.
Be shy by hitting that, like button down below its a small little thing that you can do that will help this video and the channel quite a bit, and i appreciate it so. The phoenix 7 comes in three different sizes: a 42 millimeter version, a 47 millimeter version and a 51 millimeter version, and then theres also three different levels in terms of features that you can get with the phoenix 7.. So theres a base level, phoenix 7 theres, a phoenix 7 solar edition, then theres a phoenix 7 sapphire solar edition. So, with the base level, phoenix 7 that comes with a stainless steel bezel on back, but it doesnt come with solar charging with the phoenix 7 solar edition. That also comes with a stainless steel bezel on the back, and it does come with solar charging, of course, and then, with the phoenix 7 sapphire solar edition that comes with a sapphire glass lens, a titanium bezel on back more internal storage and a special multi band. Satellite system mode and well talk about that multi band satellite since the mode here in just one bit. But then you have the garmin epix, which is basically exactly like a midsize phoenix 7, where it comes in one size with a 47 millimeter case. But the big difference is that it comes with an amoled display and then just like the phoenix 7. The epix comes in the stainless steel version that comes with the stainless steel bezel on back and then also comes the sapphire edition that comes with a titanium bezel.
In the back more internal storage, as well as the multiband satellite system mode, but there is no solar charging option on the epics with the apple watch series 7. Those come in two different size options: theres a 41 millimeter case and a 45 millimeter case, and you also do have the option to get it with cellular with the base model. Apple watch series 7s. Those come with aluminum case, but there are also stainless steel and titanium case options and with the higher end options you actually get a sapphire glass lens and beyond that, though, theres also going to be a lot of different options when it comes to style, where you Can choose from tons of different combination of case colors and bands and a whole bunch of other stuff, and you think theres a huge gap in terms of price and youre. Definitely right, if youre looking at the least expensive option so with the least expensive apple watch. Series 7, with an aluminum case comes at 3.99 and the least expensive phoenix 7 comes at 6.99. However, the least expensive phoenix 7 comes with a stainless steel bezel on back. If you were to upgrade to the stainless steel version of the apple watch series 7, that comes in at 6.99, which is actually the same price. And then, if you look at the titanium versions, the titanium series 7 comes in at 7.99 and the titanium version of the phoenix 7 comes in at 8.
99. The stainless steel versions of the phoenix 7 and epics use corning gorilla glass dx for the lens material and the aluminum series 7s use what they call ion x front glass. Both of these materials are fairly durable for the most part, and i think you probably should be just fine unless youre going to be doing something really silly sapphire, on the other hand, is one of the hardest materials on earth. So this is kind of just the option i choose if you want kind of like carefree durability. But beyond that, though, overall durability does go to the garmin fenix 7 and garmin epix models where these are just built for extreme durability, with a metal bezel that surrounds the entire display extra features like how the bezel extends over the lugs as well as even this New button guard to prevent accidental presses on the stop and start button apple did make improvements with the series 7 versus the series 6 with a front crystal thats supposed to be 50 thicker, so it should be more crack resistant, but apple, watches in general are a Little bit more susceptible to damage where they have that beautiful glass that curves ever so slightly nicely blending in with the case. But the downside to that is that theres really no protection here, like the bezel on the phoenix 7 and epix. But you can always get an aftermarket case for the apple watch to add a little bit more protection and then in terms of water resistance.
The garmin fenix, 7 and garment epics are water resistant down to 100 meters, where the apple watch series, 7, thats water resistant down to 50 meters and then one more thing. I wanted to point out here – and i wasnt exactly sure when to mention this, because its kind of a unique hardware feature is that the largest size, 51 millimeter phoenix 7x, gets a flashlight like literally an actual led flashlight, and, to be honest with you, when i First heard about this feature, i thought it was a little bit gimmicky, but let me tell you that it is much more than just a flashlight and i think its pretty darn cool and ill actually circle back to that flashlight. When you talk about the safety features of all these devices and then when it comes to interfacing, with these devices, with the series 6 versus the phoenix 6 well, its kind of a night and day difference with those devices where the phoenix 6 had all physical buttons And no touch screen where the series 6 had a touchscreen along with two physical buttons and one of those buttons also was a rotating crown dial. But this year garmin has added a touch screen to both the phoenix 7 and the epics, and this starts to blur. The lines a little bit more in terms of interfacing with the devices the touch screen on the phoenix 7 and epics are good. Theyre, predictable, taps and swipes are responsive.
It all just works well, however, i do have to give it to the series 7 touch screen where the responsiveness is just a bit better and it feels smoother and a bit more. Organic apples definitely done a good job here in this department, with all their experience with phones and it kind of shows its not like. The experience is bad by any means on the epics or phoenix, but the apple watch experience just feels a little bit more polished. Now, with the series 7, the touchscreen is required to be used in the majority of the interface. You literally would not be able to get around most of the device without it. However, with the phoenix 7 and epics, you actually have the option to disable the touchscreen entirely and just use physical buttons. If youd like you, actually dont, even need to use the touchscreen. If you choose not to the crown dial, however, on the series, 7 does add a nice little touch an additional way of interacting with the device where you can use it to zoom in and out in certain areas of the interface, and you can also use it To scroll through menus so with the displays on all of these theyre, all easy to read outdoors with the phoenix 7, probably being the easiest since thats what this display technology was optimized for, but the epics and apple watch series 7. Do a good job here too, because theyre just so bright indoors, the garment epics and the apple watch series 7.
Do look better than the phoenix 7, though, since amoled displays just have more contrast and pop to them with that type of display technology and then on the smart watch end of things when paired with an iphone. Well, the series 7 is the clear winner here, but apple does have a rather large advantage, making both the watch as well as the phone they have control over both of these devices and theyve done an amazing job, making the apple watch such a natural extension to Your phone mirroring into stuff, like notifications, text messages, calls events and even stuff, like apple mouse, where you, if youre using apple maps for navigation on your phone itll, even give you haptic alerts when theres a turn coming up and then with text and calls. These are nearly perfect integrations with your phone, where, with text you can respond to text using an on screen, keyboard, voice, dictation, emojis and then with calls. You can speak on the watch itself using a microphone and speaker and then, additionally, you can also opt for your cellular version of the series 7, where you can have all that connectivity without your phone and then with the garmin fenix 7 and garmin epics when paired To an iphone, you can receive notifications for your phone, but you wont, unfortunately, be able to reply, and this is totally an apple thing and not a garmin thing. Garmin totally wants to build your reply to text when paired with an iphone, but apple keeps that imessage functionality, kind of locked down to apple, watches but side.
Note you actually can reply to text with garmins new venue, 2 plus with voice dictation via siri, since the venue 2 plus has a microphone and speaker that you can use with a voice assistant, and i have a complete in depth. Comparison of the apple watch series 7 versus the venue 2 plus, which ill have linked down in the description below. If youre interested. In that, however, one thing that the garmin fenix 7 and the garmin epics can do that. The apple watch series 7 cant do is pair with an android phone, so you can use whatever phone that you want with your garmins and when you do pair the epics or phoenix 7 to an android phone heres, where you will be able to reply to text And calls with pre defined responses that you can set up in garma connect, and i guess now is a good time to talk about battery life, and most of you probably already know this situation here, where theres a pretty big difference. So, with a series: seven, you can get like a day to day and a half out of it with typical usage and then, if you adjust some settings like turning off the always on display as well as turning off some other settings, you may even be able To get two days out of it with the phoenix 7, even with the smallest size, phoenix 7, you can get up to 11 days out of it and then with the epix, which has more similar display technology to the series 7.
You can get up to 16 days out of it and then, even if you enable the always on display which will take more battery life, you can still get up to six days out of the epics and then, when it comes to gps battery life, recording and Outdoor activities with the series, seven, you can get like six to seven hours out of it with a full charge and then with the epics. You can get like 32 to 42 hours depending on your gps settings and then, with the smallest size, phoenix 7. That can get anywhere from like 26 to 37 hours again, depending on your gps settings, either way a pretty big difference in terms of battery life between these now, one thing that has made the series sevens battery life a little bit easier to deal with versus the Series six is that it now has faster charging where it can charge from empty to full in about an hour, and i do have to say that this does make a big difference, especially when you know youll likely need to place your apple watch on a charger. At least once a day, and then all of these have music storage and playback, where youll be able to download tracks to the watch itself. So with the series seven, i think you can do that with apple music spotify as well as pandora, and then with the garmins. You can do it with spotify deezer, as well as amazon, music.
Maybe one more too, however, with the series: seven, you can actually stream music through apple music, if youre connected through wi fi or if you have a cellular connection and then on the health and wellness side of things. All of these watches have good heart rate sensors and they also all have good spo2 sensors for measuring blood oxygen saturation levels, and, although all of these have good heart rate sensors – and i would rely on any of these, i would have to give a slight edge To the series 7 in terms of accuracy, however, one thing to consider, though, is that, with the series 7, it doesnt necessarily track your heart rate of true 24 hours a day like every second, like the garmins do so with the series 7 itll kind of track. Your heart rate, periodically so itll primarily take measurements when youre sitting still itll periodically take measurements when youre walking around, and then it will continuously track your heart rate, when youre working out, however, with the garmin, those just track, your heart rate, all the time, the spl2 Sensors for tracking blood oxygen saturation levels on all of these are pretty accurate from what i can tell where they all pretty much always line up about a point or two off a fingertip blood oxygen sensor, but the apple watch series 7 does, however, have the ability To take an ecg or electrocardiogram so thats, something to consider if youre looking for that sort of feature, and then both of these also do have sleep tracking.
But the sleep tracking on the garmins is going to be a little bit more advanced where it can actually track your sleep stages and also give you a sleep score with this series. 7. It does track your sleep, but its more just about like how much time youre actually sleeping, as well as your sleep schedule, but you can extend the functionality of the series 7 sleep tracking with some third party apps and then on the safety end of things. All these watches, i have quite a bit to offer too so with the series: seven. They have something called fall detection and with the garmin fenix, seven, the epics. They have something called instant detection and then they also have an sos feature. I think its actually literally called sos on the series seven and then with the garmins, its called assistance, and then the phoenix 7 and the epics also get a feature called live track. Where youll be able to send a link to your contacts of your choice, allowing them to pull up a map and see where youre at in real time, but with the safety and assistance features on the garments, you will have to have your phone with you because Theres, no cellular option that you can get with the garmins and the same thing can be said for the gps non cellular versions of the series seven. But there is that cellular version of the series seven and with that cellular version, you also get another feature called international emergency.
Calling oh and then one more feature on the safety end of things with the series 7 is that they also have a noise monitoring feature that can alert you of sound levels that may get too high. But there is one rather unique feature that i talked about earlier with the largest 51 millimeter phoenix 7x models, where these get a flashlight, and the reason im talking about this during the safety features is that this is much more than just a flashlight, so sure it Can work just like a flashlight on your phone when you need to find something in the dark, but theyve also used this flashlight as a safety feature at night. So you can actually use this as youre running out and about, and you can alert others of your presence. I feel much safer at night running when i have this on. Okay, so now onto the sports and fitness features of these devices. So all of these will be able to track your outdoor workouts using gps, and then all of them can also leverage all five major satellite systems and then, with these sapphire editions of the phoenix 7 as well as the epics, they also get that multi band side License and mode which is able to use two concurrent satellite frequencies at one time and then for gps accuracy. All of these will do a fine job. If this was like a year or two ago, i would easily give it to the garmins, but apples done some recent updates to the series – seven, as well as some older apple watches, that have really increased the gps track accuracy.
So all of these will really do fine at that department, and then all of these also do have altimeters, so youll be able to track your floors climb throughout the day and then youll also be able to see your altitude in real time during your outdoor workouts. Now one thing that the phoenix 7 and epics have that isnt found in the series 7, at least out of the box, are full blown topo maps where these maps are incredibly useful for outdoor adventures, where these not only have street names but also trail names. When youre out and about in the woods, not only that they have garmins new ski view, ski maps, which have super detailed information like actual ski runs, with labels for green runs, blue runs, black runs and even cross country ski trail information and then for sport profiles Or the types of activities that you can track with these, they all have all the common activity profiles that youd expect like running both indoors and outdoors cycling, both indoors and outdoors as well. Plenty of gym profiles like the elliptical and stairmill theres weight, training pool swimming as well as open water, swimming theres, really tons to choose from with all of these. The big difference, though here, is that the sport profiles in the series 7 are in general, mostly just different sport profile names. They may have specific algorithms to calculate calorie burn more accurately for that type of activity, but in general, if its an outdoor activity, its just tracking your speed, distance, heart rate and calories if its an indoor, workout its tracking, your heart rate and calories, but with the Phoenix 7 and epics a lot of these sport profiles are collecting specific pieces of data exactly for that type of activity, so, for instance, garmin strength, training, activity profile.
It can track your reps and sets and also attempts to identify the exercise that youre doing with their high intensity interval profile. It has specific timers that you can use for different types of high intensity or interval workouts like tabata and every minute on a minute, and then with your garmin, skiing and snowboarding profiles. It can automatically track your ski runs and then, on top of that, the phoenix 7 and epics do have some profiles that the series 7 doesnt have like a triathlon mode, their specific profile for surfing kiteboarding, as well as even skydiving, and that does bring up a Good point here is that there are a ton of apps that you can download to the series 7 to extend the functionality, whether those be workout apps. That can give you more in context. Data like the slopes app for skiing theres. Also, the work outdoors app, which is one of the more full featured apps to extend apple watch, workout functionality and then theres, even productivity, apps and a whole bunch more to extend the smartwatch functionality and its really cool that you can extend the functionality of the series. 7 with those third party apps, but what you may want to consider is that you may be managing multiple apps for different types of workouts, where, with the phoenix 7 and the epics youre, basically just going to have all that stuff built in and youll, be just Accessing all that data in one app, the garmin, connect smartphone app and then with this app you can see all your health data, sleep data, workout data watch, settings all that good stuff, all in one place and then with the series seven without even talking about third Party apps, you actually have three apps that youll be using to interact with your watch.
So the watch app to manage your watch settings and associated apps the fitness app for your workout information. Then the health app for your health information and then, if youre using other another app for workout functionality, then youll have those apps as well. Garmin also does have an app store sort of thing that they call connect iq where you can download apps watch faces and widgets for your watch and theres a lot to choose from here. But these arent going to be quite as robust of apps as what you can find on the apple watch series 7.. However, one thing that is a big difference here with the garmins is that there are a ton, and i mean a ton of third party watch faces that independent developers have created that you can use to customize the look and feel of your garmin with the series. 7, they have some great watch faces. I mean like really good stock watch faces, but they dont allow third party watch faces. There are a couple apps where you can lightly customize some watch faces, but its not quite what youll find on garmin connect iq. Lastly, i also wanted to talk about external sensors that you can pair with each of these watches. So with the series seven, you can pair external bluetooth, heart rate sensors, which can be useful for stuff like weight training where in general, most wrist based heart rate, sensors dont do all that.
Well and then you can also pair up foot pods like the stride. Foot pod, however, with the phoenix 7 and the epix you can pair both bluetooth as well as amp plus external sensors, and these could be heart rate, sensors foot, pods, speed and cadence sensors for cycling power meters for cycling, temperature, sensors, electronic shifting for cycling, garmin, vario Radar and lights golf club sensors, i mean basically anything so on a high level. The series 7 versus the phoenix 7 epics is about the same as the series 6 versus the phoenix 6 but theres a couple new things to consider such as the fact that garmins added a touch screen to the phoenix 7 as well as the epics and the Epics has an amoled display, which is more similar to display technology to the series 7.. The difference in terms of smart watch features versus sport watch features is still huge between these, where the series 7 still is clearly a better smart watch when paired with an iphone. However, with the garmins you at least can pair these to either an android phone or an iphone, so theres a little bit more flexibility with these, and then the health and fitness side of things. All of these have good heart rate sensors. All of these have good sp2 sensors, but the apple watch series seven does have the ecg feature and then, on the sport side of things, while garmins just clearly come with more out of the box, you can extend some of the functionality with the series.
Seven with some of those third party apps, but its not quite what youre going to get with the garmins plus youll, have the issue of managing multiple apps at one time and i dont think theres a best watch out there. But i think there is a best watch for you and i hope the information this video helped.wPg_2OAhuEg
