So Long and Farewell Garmin: Beyond the Battery

Garmin watches are hugely popular amongst the fitness crowd. Look around at any race and you’ll see them everywhere, often outnumbering Apple Watches or any other competitor. Garmin has earned that reputation with incredible battery life, free detailed fitness stats, and GPS accuracy that’s hard to beat. So why in the world would I, a dedicated user, choose to replace my Garmin?

The truth is, I’m like a raccoon. Call me Rocket if that helps. I like shiny things. When a new piece of tech drops, I have to drool over it for a few days, weigh the pros and cons, convince myself it won’t really make my life better, and then—because I’m thrifty, too—try to buy it used later. That’s just how I operate. But this time, the curiosity was driven not just by the gleam of new tech, but by a fundamental need to hack the rest of my day, not just my workout.

Garminesque Thoughts: From Dashboards to Deep Woods

Garmin started life as a GPS company. They made those little self-contained GPS units for turn-by-turn directions in cars or handheld models for navigating the wilderness. I sold plenty of them back in my Staples days. But as dedicated GPS units gave way to all-encompassing “phones”—which, let’s be honest, we should probably rename since nobody really uses them for phone calls anymore—Garmin had to pivot. They leaned hard into fitness trackers with excellent GPS. Or maybe they’re GPS units with fitness tracking bolted on. Either way, it was a smart move out of a dying market.

Today, Garmin makes a wide variety of fitness-tracking smartwatch-ish devices. They even specialize for running, swimming, golfing, flying—yes, flying is an option—and more. What they’re also known for is clunky, rugged, drab-screened watches that look more at home in a war zone than a marathon. To their credit, Garmin has been trying to improve their image and compete with Apple, Google-Fitbit, and Samsung by offering bright colorful AMOLED displays and more smartwatch-like features. But the company’s core philosophy remains unchanged: Fitness First, Smartwatch Second. And that’s the philosophical wall I finally hit.

In a Smartwatch 5K, Garmin is 2K Away

With the Venu series, Garmin finally offers the kind of displays their competitors have had for years. They’ve even stepped up with Google Assistant on the Venu 2+. Yet, the critical deficiency lies in apps and ecosystem. Garmin’s Connect IQ store technically lets you install “apps,” but most of what you’ll find are watch faces, specialized data fields, and simple utilities. You are still living inside a heavily fortified, closed ecosystem.

Don’t get me wrong—Garmin is a powerhouse when it comes to the pure, data-dense requirements of fitness tracking. They offer accurate heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, GPS, endless sports modes, that legendary battery life, stress tracking, and deep, free data analysis via Garmin Connect. If your life revolves purely around structured training and data logging, Garmin is hard to beat. But for me, the watch needed to be more than a training log. It needed to be a genuinely smart extension of my phone, capable of handling small, vital tasks that save me time and mental effort throughout my day. Without that, Garmin feels like it’s still running a couple of miles behind the true smartwatch market.

Get Smart: The True Smartwatch Hack

Does anyone remember the old show Get Smart? The one with the spy who had backwards gadgets, like guns that were cameras and cameras that were guns? Smartwatches are a little like that. At face value, they tell time, but they do so much more. They do a lot of non-watch things. I can make phone calls, answer messages, check emails… Wait a second, that’s basically a smartphone strapped to my wrist.

Honestly, I don’t use the apps all that much. What I do use are the communication and contextual features. I answer calls when I don’t want to pull out or hold my phone. I check messages quickly to triage importance. And yes, I still track fitness. But the fundamental difference is that a true smartwatch seamlessly integrates into my daily life in ways Garmin never quite managed because it lacked the open operating system to truly connect with banking, transit, and mapping apps. The watch was a notification hub and a fitness tracker; I needed a computing extension.

Why I Switched: The OnePlus Watch 2

That’s where the OnePlus Watch 2 comes in. I wanted something that could bridge the chasm between dedicated fitness tracker and true, full-featured smartwatch. Garmin nails the fitness side, but when it comes to communication, app access, and integration with the rest of my digital life, they’re behind. The OnePlus Watch 2, running Wear OS, gives me what I was missing.

The ability to use AllTrails directly on my wrist when I’m hiking, with real map interactivity, is a huge win for the ‘hacking the hike’ philosophy. I can answer calls and respond to messages with a full keyboard without fumbling for my phone. I can check emails and notifications without being glued to a screen. The smooth, colorful AMOLED display makes everything look sharp and modern, too—a bonus for a raccoon like me. It’s a complete package that understands I am a person who moves and communicates.

The Great Compromise: Battery vs. Brains

Switching from Garmin wasn’t easy, and it forced one massive, painful compromise: The Battery.

Moving from a watch that charges once every 10–14 days to one that charges every 2–4 days is a mental and logistical shift. On a longer backpacking trip, this is a literal anti-hack: I now must carry an extra battery pack specifically to keep my watch alive. I am adding weight just for my watch, a cardinal sin in the pursuit of efficiency.

So why accept it? Because the benefit of Smart Functionality now outweighs the cost of Battery Anxiety. When I look at my life, the vast majority of my time is spent not hiking or running. It’s spent driving, parenting, teaching, and handling small domestic errands. The added utility of the apps, the perfect NFC payment system, and the seamless communication features every single day provides more overall life optimization than the extra week of battery life provides on the few weekends I’m truly off-grid. The decision is a calculation of Daily Utility X 365 versus Multi-Day Trip Convenience X 10. For me, the math finally tipped toward the utility of the powerful, modern Wear OS platform.

Tech as Lifestyle Gear

Here’s the thing: tech isn’t just about specs. It’s about lifestyle. Garmin is perfect if your life revolves solely around training, racing, and squeezing every ounce of data out of your workouts. But my life right now is about balancing teaching, family logistics, hiking, and staying connected. I don’t need a watch that can survive a Navy SEAL mission. I need one that can help me juggle calls, keep track of hikes, and remind me of emails without pulling out my phone every five minutes.

The OnePlus Watch 2 fits that role perfectly. It’s not perfect—no piece of tech is—but it’s the right tool for my hike.

Looking Ahead

Will I miss Garmin? Absolutely. There’s a certain confidence in strapping on a Garmin before a long run or hike. You know it won’t die on you. You know the GPS will be accurate. You know the stats will be detailed. But I’m excited about where smartwatches are headed. As apps like AllTrails, Strava, and messaging platforms become more deeply integrated, the line between fitness tracker and smartwatch will blur even more. Maybe someday Garmin will catch up by opening up their ecosystem. Or maybe companies like OnePlus will continue to lead the way by offering fantastic battery life on a truly smart platform. Either way, I’ll keep being Rocket the raccoon, chasing shiny new tech, weighing the pros and cons, and finding the gear that fits my life best.

Final Thought: Choosing Your Watch is Choosing Your Trail

Just like choosing a Linux distro—yes, I went there—choosing a smartwatch is about choosing the trail that fits you. Garmin is the rugged mountain path: reliable, tough, data-rich, but closed. The OnePlus Watch 2 is the connected city trail: convenient, app-friendly, and open. Neither is definitively “better.” It’s about what you need for your hack. For me, right now, the OnePlus Watch 2 is the right trail.

Which watch do you use on the trail?