1 Week With The Apple Watch Ultra (Versus The Garmin Epix 2)

All right. A nice beautiful overcast day here in Southern California. I wanted to do a little video today showing some of the differences on the Apple Watch Ultra and the Garmin Epics. So sillily. Is that a word? Sillily enough. I have both on my wrists here. Just gonna go for a like a 5k walk, was that like 3.2 miles. And just talk to you about some of my thoughts. You know, having owned at least the Epic since launch, which was what it's back in like January of this year, and the Ultra since the launch end of September. So I'm gonna take a little walk, use both of them, kind of see and share my thoughts with you. So one of the most interesting things about the Apple Watch Ultra, which kind of look at them both here we get them side by side. It's a big watch for sure. But if you're used to Garmin watches or used to watches that you know are larger, whether that's, I don't know, I see people wear Rolexes still, I guess that's still a thing. And bigger watches, you know, it's not a big deal, right? I think a lot has been made about the 49 millimeter case size, but yeah, it's a big watch, but I don't think it's gonna break you in half. And I also don't think that the epix and the fenix 7 line and the enduro, even the 7x, that line is very big. Now if you have a small wrist, every watch is gonna be big, right? And then you're kind of looking at the Apple Watch Series 8, 42 millimeter whatever as your biggest watch if you have a small Wrist or Fenix 7s if you're looking at the Garmin side of things. So problem is when you have a bigger wrist like myself believe my wrist is 175 millimeters. So larger size wrist. Yeah, I mean you've got more to think about when you got a bigger wrist. So you know, one of the things I think you have to decide if you're going, going for either watches connectivity and much has been made about this on the Internet, obviously. But look, I mean the Garmin is not a smartwatch, it is a fitness watch. And if you're someone who hikes, you're someone who runs, you won't like, you know, a smart watch that just does smart features like the Pixel watches just came out. It's a smart watch, it's got fitness features, but it doesn't do fitness very well. Let's talk about that Do I want a fitness watch or do I want a smartwatch? That's the question you should be asking yourself. If you just want a smartwatch and you're on Android, get a Pixel Watch, get a Galaxy Watch Active or Galaxy Watch 4 or 5, whatever they are. Now get one of those. You know, there's some feature differences between those, but get what's best for you if you want to do fitness. Regardless of what platform you have, Garmin is the best watch out there, hands down. Whether it's a Phoenix EPIX doesn't matter. It even beats the Apple Watch Ultra. I think the Apple Watch Ultra is an amazing watch, right? It's big. The battery life is the best on any Apple Watch. It has some cool fitness features, it's got some cool kind of features suited for someone who's outdoors, E But it lacks something that differentiates it from the base Apple Watch. And what I mean by that is they're giving you an extra day and a half, two days of battery life, however you want to look at it, but they're not doing enough to extend that battery life long term. And what I mean by that also is, look, Garmin's running their processor at a much slower clock speed. Yes, the Apple Watch is incredibly powerful, right? Massive processor, it's running so fast. One of the worst parts about it is that it's running so fast, Right. You don't really need that. If you've used the Garmin EPIX like I have here, if you've used any Garmin watches, they're very responsive. Are they as responsive, as fluid as the Apple Watch? No way. No way. But do you need that fluidity? I don't know. I believe wholeheartedly, again, not an engineer, but I believe wholeheartedly that if we reduce the clock speed on the Apple Watch Ultra, if we focus more on longevity in the long term, you could probably get more battery life up to five days if they hit that five to seven day mark, you know, as a smartwatch mode. Fantastic, right? And I think that's the struggle. So Apple Watch Fitness, the Ultra's got better battery life, a couple, you know, unique features, but the Garmin just still, you know, is a fitness watch first has smart features that aren't really great, but they're there if you absolutely need them. But the Apple Watch Ultra, just the battery life and the longevity just isn't there, sadly. Now, display wise, yeah, yes, the Ultra destroys the Epix. Although I don't know why I can't keep my Ultra screen on at all times. We always default to this time mode, getting battery savings. I don't know, but the Epic screen will dim. But I can still at a glance, not very well with this light, but I can still at a glance see everything. Sorry for the noise. We're rolling across the 405 here in Irvine, California. Now, despite all that, I'm not saying that the EPIX or the Fenix series or the Enduro or the Tactics or the Mark Garmin has taken their seven generation platform and kind of extended it everywhere. I'm not saying that these watches are better than the Apple Watch Ultra. No, actually I'm saying the opposite. Believe it or not, I think the Apple Watch is a better watch overall. If you're thinking, you know, I want to ride every single day, I want to walk every single day, but I also want to be connected again, connectivity, it's just better on the Apple Watch. For me personally, as someone who really enjoys long battery life, I love it. I have battery anxiety. I don't know about you, but I love the Epyx. I had the Fenix 7, Sapphire Solar. Love that watch. Man, talk about three weeks on battery life, it's crazy. But one thing about the Apple Watch Ultra that just does it better. And Garmin isn't trying to compete with right now on their Fenix setup. It's connectivity, right? Phone calls, messages, calendar events, right? It's there on the epix and to be honest, it's a much better experience on the EPIX screen versus the Fenix screen. But when we're comparing the Ultra and the Epix, it's just a better experience on the Ultra and it's so, so much better that in the future when they come out with an Epix Gen 3, with the Venue 2 Plus features of Smart Assistant PH calls, etc. Even then it'll be closer. But the messages experience isn't there and that's by design, right? There's so many experiences that aren't quite there yet. So what's the answer? Well, what's most important to you? Ironically on these watches it doesn't come down to sports. In fact, it doesn't come down to battery life, it comes down to connectivity. Would you rather be connected with messages and phone calls and just feel like it is a smartwatch on your wrist or are you not as concerned with that? I don't really think that these watches, the sport features are really what sets them apart. It's a connectivity for, I think both of these watches. You're gonna see the better screen on the Ultra. I mean Bar none, some reflections going on right now, but even at full brightness, the Ultra, it's just better. So then you're like, okay, connectivity, but what about screens? Yeah, the Ultra's got the better screen, right? It's got the better experience. However, next to each other, the Ultra is only better next to the epix. And I think if you didn't have them all side by side, I think one of the most important things is that you would be happy with the EPIX experience. Using the Apple Watch Ultra. It feels like an Apple watch. It feels good. But ultimately the EPIX is an amazing experience. And here's where I think the problem lies, right? I think at the end of the day, you're gonna go back and forth between both watches if you own both. I bought the Apple Watch Ultra as a way of saying, okay, connectivity, to me, it is more important, right? I like to think of myself as a fitness enthusiast. I enjoy fitness. I enjoy walking, running, cycling are my three big ones. But my most favorite sport is hiking and I think I don't do hiking enough to really obviously make sense of the cost of both of these watches. What I do more is I work. I work two different jobs. Being connected to me is really important. However, at that point you may say, okay, well, if you like both, why don't you do the Apple Watch during the week and the EPIX on the weekends? Well, the problem is right there, right? The Apple Watch is best when you're sharing metrics, when you're competing against friends, when you're doing these things that are really amazing, right? And the EPIX is best when body battery is going, when your stress score is explaining a lot, these health metrics, wearing it to sleep, building, these sort of recovery metrics. That is when these watches are at their best. Now, the unfortunate part is you got to wear it all the time to get that. However, can you do both? Maybe I'm kind of in between right now. I don't have an answer for you. I'm not going to sit here and say the Apple Watch Ultra is the watch to get. I'm not going to sit here and say Garmin has a watch that you must have. It certainly isn't the Epics because of the price and it certainly isn't the Phoenix line or the 4Runner. I mean, there's so many options. I think that's the best part about all of this. Being a consumer, you can choose what you want. The downside of this is getting on YouTube and watching videos like this one where you're Like I don't have an answer. What should I get at the end of the day? Get what's right for you. I think one of the questions that I'm posing in this video is this idea of connectivity, is that most important to you or is battery life most important to your fitness? I mean, you know the answer to that question, but it's connectivity most important to you because I think that's where the Apple Watch Ultra excels. Some of my biggest annoyances with the Apple Watch Ultra are well documented. There's no ability to restart a workout after ending it. There's no ability to pause it with a button other than a two button press, which I end up hitting a three button press. Taking screenshots. It's a mess. The Garmin has so many annoyances. Right. Music on it is awful. The Bluetooth connection, no matter what pair of headphones you're wearing, is pretty bad. The EPIX has some battery life issues. If you're using it 247 with an always on display, I'm getting anywhere from like four to six days out of it depending on the amount of activities I do. However, the maps on the EPIX are amazing. The maps on the Apple Watch are non existent and to be honest, I don't know why they still refuse to add maps natively to the world out. Okay, having said all that, what do you think? What should you do? Well, if you're me, you're playing with Bose still you're not sure. But it comes down to connectivity and I think that's something you should really think about. So having said all that, here's both watches. We're paused in the middle of a run again. I hate how the Apple Watch platform always hits you back to that screen. If I want to stay here, I can't. It's going to kick me back here to the time. I know I can extend that time in the Settings app, but it just doesn't make sense. Dim the screen like everyone else does. In terms of coatings, you can kind of see here in the Garmin on the DLC Sapphire display I've lost a little bit of that diamond like coating on the top. The titanium on the Apple Watch is actually still in good shape. I've had this obviously for less time, but I've been wearing it more. In terms of bands, I really love the, this $20 nylon band I got on Amazon. I'll link that below. And the, what do you call that, the woven sort of loop that you can get on the Apple Watch. I like that A again, you know the Apple Watch, you can just tell the screen refresh rate's a lot better than the epix. But at the end of the day I think you're going to be hard pressed to not like either of these watches again. What's the downside? The downside is if you choose one of the options and you say well I don't really like it and I kind of want to do the other one, then you're going to be thinking quite a bit about hey what if? So don't do that. Be happy with the purchase. Know that they're great. Now there's a $200 price delta between the two. If you go for something like the Fenix 7 without solar, you know, it's a different experience. Right. It's not really comparable in my opinion because it's not an AMOLED display. So keep that in mind. So yeah, that's the Apple Watch Ultra and the Epix Gen 2. There will be a Gen 3 I'm sure next year or the year after and it will include some smart features but ultimately the connectivity to is going not going to be there. So what do you do today? I don't know. For me I'm still deciding. Still have a week left on this Apple watch to see if I want to keep it. I do like it but man, I love my epics. But is the Apple Watch a better watch? I don't know. Right. Have a good one. Thanks for watching. Take care.