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Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

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Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#71

Post by Gigachad »

enlyth wrote: post #10
exabrial wrote: post #6

Just buy a Garmin if you want to do anything -useful- with your watch for sports or outdoors. Apple is 5-10 years behind their reliability or battery life. And if you’re going somewhere without a cell signal… or god forbid, you don’t have (shudder) wifi, it’ll tick right along. Not to mention they don’t sunset their products after 12 months… your watch will get updates for a long time. They’re also -very- repairable…

I just find it weird that in their reveal event they portrayed all these people doing extreme sports in the middle of nowhere, climbing some huge mountain with the watch, and then you find out it has a battery life of 36 hours at most. You're supposed to carry a power bank to your climbing expedition and charge your watch constantly? How impractical is that.

I feel like if you are going on a week long hike, carrying a power bank is not that noticeable compared to everything else you need. A power bank that fits in your pocket would power the watch for a month.

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#72

Post by Gigachad »

larsnystrom wrote: post #28
infotogivenm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on every point except sunsetting in 12 months. What are you referencing there? They just this year sunset new OS versions for the Apple Watch 3, which was released in 2017 (the 4 came out in 2018).

Not OP, but Apple has been selling Apple Watch series 3 as a new device in 2022, so people who bought it got less than a year of software updates.

This was such a confusing decision. The s3 has been pretty much unusable with how low power it is for a while now. How they kept selling it beyond its useful life is a mystery.

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#73

Post by buro9 »

I'm clearly an outlier... But a Casio for a watch, and then an old Garmin bike computer with OSM maps has proven the best for hiking.

Large screen, incredible battery life, and OSM maps when off road just beat everything except Ordnance Survey in the UK.

I do have a Fenix 5, but it's not very good TBH. I did try an older Apple watch and similarly not very good. I thought about Suunto but they seemed more watersports oriented.

The best of the outdoor devices I have has no hiking features. That's my Hammerhead bike computer. The software is great, the maps are OSM, the hardware is great. If that came with a neck collar loop and a hiking profile it would be my single device for outdoor things.

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#74

Post by xattt »

jerlam wrote: post #64
xattt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you don’t snap on the magnetic puck while the watch is still on your arm, cable dangling, while you hold a power bank in your hand?

Does the Apple Watch actually support charging in the middle of a workout? The first generations of the Garmin Fenix actually supported charging in use with a very overcomplicated charging cable: https://youtu.be/S9haDnwIuSQ

It does not. As soon as you take the puck out, you have to input your pin again.

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#75

Post by nindalf »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #51
ak217 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your weekly mileage? Are you doing something extreme to your shoes? Most runners don't spend, nor could they afford to spend $250 per pair of shoes that wear out in 6 weeks. Try $100 every 6 months instead. Events do add up but for most runners it comes out to roughly the same as the shoes or less. Running is popular because it's affordable. You might be projecting your rarefied well funded lifestyle onto the…

About 60 miles (and I weigh about 180lb). I probably do 4 or 5 marathons a year, and a couple of ultras. My mileage isn’t excessive for people who complete marathons around the same pace as I do, or better (of which there are many, many people), and every time I look around the field at an event, it’s full of $200-$300 energy return running shoes. Perhaps most of them don’t train in their race shoes, but that’s hones…

If you had to guess, what percentile of the general population are you in when it comes to fitness?

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#76

Post by [deleted] »

exabrial wrote: post #11
greggsy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they’re 5-10 years behind, but I wouldn’t underestimate Apple’s ability to create a thriving ecosystem. Any Garmin app developers worth their salt should be scrambling to port their existing apps to the Apple Watch platform. It’s currently an under-supplied market, and failing to tap into that opportunity is a bad business strategy. Totally agree re: the current state of repairability and support, but I wouldn’t…

Not at all, Garmin is not fashionware like Apple. You buy Garmin because you are an athlete that needs an actual complete product that is tested and bullet proof; where you own the hardware, and you’re not ‘renting’ it from Apple. If you want to flash how fancy you are to your coworkers and have a second iPhone, you buy the iwatch. Apple does not hold a candle to Garmin’s software for sports and training… they have e…

[deleted]

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#77

Post by AmericanChopper »

nindalf wrote: post #75
AmericanChopper wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 60 miles (and I weigh about 180lb). I probably do 4 or 5 marathons a year, and a couple of ultras. My mileage isn’t excessive for people who complete marathons around the same pace as I do, or better (of which there are many, many people), and every time I look around the field at an event, it’s full of $200-$300 energy return running shoes. Perhaps most of them don’t train in their race shoes, but that’s hones…

If you had to guess, what percentile of the general population are you in when it comes to fitness?

I’d probably rank quite well amongst the general population. But I’m talking about fitness enthusiasts here, specifically the subgroup of long distance runners. Within that group I’d probably be “not bad”…

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#78

Post by saiya-jin »

nharada wrote: post #70

Comments in this thread are fairly dismissive of the Ultra as a serious competitor for Garmin's high end sport watches, and this article seems like an example of it not stacking up. But if I was Garmin I'd be terrified of Apple coming into the space. I was at Fitbit when the first Apple watch came out, and we laughed at how inferior it was to many of our products for the first several releases. Then around series 3 w…

Yes in the future maybe Apple will eat Garmin's cake and lunch. But for now its just a shiny not-so-useful gimmick compared to Garmin's. I bought my wife same Garmin as author compares to, I have few friends who are deep into drinking Apple's cool-aid... and its uncomparable device for outdoors.

One is jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, the other possibly the best civilian gadget for map-on-wrist hiking (apart from 7 series which are way too expensive but stack up on that shininess better).

Plus lets not forget a very important point skimmed in article, where Apple fails even if rest would be comparable - miserable battery life. The topic is about going to wilderness, and gadget desperately needing recharging much more often is simply vastly inferior to one needing less. Also they seem much less rugged, which is pretty bad for outdoors where you bang watches against trees and rock frequently.

So situation for outdoors is unlike in phones segment, where on most fronts (but far from all) when you pay Apple money you get a very decent and capable phone. In watches you get just OK watches within their segment (compared to products from Xiaomi, Samsung etc.)

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#79

Post by Woeps »

nharada wrote: post #70

Comments in this thread are fairly dismissive of the Ultra as a serious competitor for Garmin's high end sport watches, and this article seems like an example of it not stacking up. But if I was Garmin I'd be terrified of Apple coming into the space. I was at Fitbit when the first Apple watch came out, and we laughed at how inferior it was to many of our products for the first several releases. Then around series 3 w…

Meh.... 18 hours vs 18 days of battery life and an ridiculous price gap. I think that's all that needs to be said.

Re: Offline map test on Apple Watch Ultra for hiking

#80

Post by simonh »

Woeps wrote: post #79
nharada wrote: post #70

Comments in this thread are fairly dismissive of the Ultra as a serious competitor for Garmin's high end sport watches, and this article seems like an example of it not stacking up. But if I was Garmin I'd be terrified of Apple coming into the space. I was at Fitbit when the first Apple watch came out, and we laughed at how inferior it was to many of our products for the first several releases. Then around series 3 w…

Meh.... 18 hours vs 18 days of battery life and an ridiculous price gap. I think that's all that needs to be said.

I hope Garmin don't think that way, or they're toast. Fortunately it looks like they have an advantage in enough areas they should be ok for now.
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