Fenix 5. Great watch but a little annoying that despite Garmin still selling it, over the past year they only seem to add new features to the Fenix 6 and not the 5 even though it is fully capable of supporting them. I understand it’s Garmin’s “business model” but kind of shady to stop feature updates so quickly. Usually with a cell phone you get at least 3 years worth and sometimes more.
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@hmaceachran are you familiar with phone app HRV4 training (there’s also free option)?
I have heard (recent Podcast was with @Mikael_Eriksson , that triathlon show talking about tech) that measuring HRV 24/7 is not really of a lot of value but I am certainly no expert.
I had a Garmin forerunner 35, it was cheap and did what it did well but it broke (due to contact with the ground) and I didn’t feel a great need to replace it. I probably would get a Whoop if they weren’t subscription-based. So for now I will be passively looking for a watch with decent HR and sleep tracking that doesn’t break the bank.
Ahhh these aren’t Amazon’s, they’re a made by Xiaomi in China I believe.
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Garmin Fenix 5 Sapphire which Amazon just had on sale for $299…
Things I like:
Looks good
Customize the face to the data fields/elements that are desirable to you
Battery life is long enough I don’t really ever worry about it (2 weeks?)
Cadence for running is a nice feature along with the running dynamics info
Easy to look at texts/alerts without needing your phone in your hand
Lots of others, I like it overall
Things I don’t like:
Every time I crush a workout or win a race it asks me if I would like to LOWER my FTP. I swear there is a little guy in my watch that waits for me to have a life changing workout/event and then he puts up the message just to get under my skin! 
VO2 Max data is worthless. My FTP is 80 watts higher and my weight is down over the past year but my VO2 Max has gone from over 60 to 52 on the watch. I gave up trying to understand why.
The physio true up is the reason I bought a Garmin 530 head unit for my bike. I don’t find that the two devices are ever in sync with respect to the training impact of rides. The workouts pass between devices but not much else seems to “true up” IMO.
If I had a redo I would buy the watch again and go with a different brand of head unit or just stick with the old Wahoo.
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I deleted my first response where I realized I misread your post (much like half the responses) that you DON’T need all the fitness tracking features on the watch.
I had a Fenix 5 plus that I recently sold opting to use my Edge to track all my cycling workouts.
The first thing I did was pick up the Vivoactive 4 on Amazon Prime Day for $200. It’s actually a great little watch, the only thing I didn’t like, and it was the same with the Fenix, music is terrible. I’m not a fan of spotify, and even if I were, transferring is agonizing slow and buggy if you’re doing it wirelessly. For that reason i switched to the Apple watch, blasphemy i know. So I guess it depends on what you need the watch for outside of the reasons mentioned in the original post. I assume you have an android phone if you’re not interested in the apple watch, the plus of that is that opens up some more of the “smart” features of the garmin watches that aren’t compatible with iphones.
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Slightly OT, but I can’t figure this out on the garmin website. It seems that multiple of their watches have a downhill skiing function but only the very high end have ski resort maps. Is it possible to add that on to a lower end model (that already has some sort of mapping)?
Suunto Spartan Trainer Wrist HR. It is a full triathlon capable watch, fairly basic, and served me well for several years. It does not have Ant+ or a vibrate only alarm, though. Not sure if it’s successor, the Suunto 5, does. The Suunto 5 costs about 230USD, maybe less if on sale, so about 1/3 the cost of a Garmin 945.
DCRainMaker listed the SpartanTrainer as the best value triathalon watch a few years ago when I got mine. He recently bumped the Coros up due to Suunto’s website and app transition, but the watch works great. Recommend staying away from the Suunto 7 since it uses WearOS and battery life is poor.
Do not get a Vivoactive 4. (The 3 is probably fine as it can be heavily discounted) Touchscreen can be a problem if sweaty - never mention in the pool. No bike power support. It’s missing the advanced running features from FR245, it’s missing courses, there’s more battery life issues and it’s been treated like the red headed stepchild from a firmware updates point of view. As an example of the latter, the FR245 got an update to broadcast HR over Bluetooth which the Vivoactive didn’t get (Zwift anyone?). It’s also randomly gimped for running such as not being able to turn off autocalibration, not being able to take distance from a footpod if the GPS is on, etc. Things are also terribly buggy (like music sync) but that’s just par for the course with Garmin if I go by other people’s experience.
It’s a quick attempt from Garmin to steal some audience away from Apple and Fitbit and that’s how they treated it.
Unfortunately most of these kind of issues aren’t covered in DCRainmaker reviews.
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Garmin Fenix 5X
Links nicely to Vector pedals, 820 head unit and the Connect app.
I hate having multiple apps and differing products linking together.
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Just gonna leave this here
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