A lot of Garmin watches are about to inherit Fenix 9 features
If you already own a Fenix 8, you can probably relax a little. Garmin is bringing most of the new Fenix 9 software features to older watches, so the gap between the two generations is going to be a lot smaller than it first looked.
The new detail comes from DC Rainmaker, who checked with Garmin on what is actually coming back to existing models. And there is a lot!
Fenix 8 owners are getting plenty
The Fenix 8 series is getting most of the good stuff. The same goes for the Enduro 3, tactix 8 and Forerunner 970, while watches such as the Fenix E, Forerunner 570 and Venu X1 will also pick up a fair bit.
Garmin Epic is one of the bigger additions. This lets you bundle several activities from the same trip into one bigger record, which makes a lot more sense if you have spent three days hiking, cycling or doing a mixture of both.
The new Stamina features are coming too. That includes Stamina Zones, Endurance Time and longer-term stamina trends, so you get a much better idea of how your endurance is changing rather than just seeing one number during a workout.
Garmin has also put quite a bit of work into rowing and rucking. Rowing gets things such as VO2 max, FTP estimates and power zones, while rucking gets better support for pack weight, calorie calculations and structured workouts.
Then there are the smaller things that probably will not sell a watch on their own, but are still nice to have. Rolling Grade Adjusted Pace and the new Field Tools are among those, and some of the additions should also make their way to the Venu 5 and Vivoactive 6.
The interesting part here is not really any one feature. It is the fact that Garmin is actually bringing so much of this stuff backwards in the first place.
When the Fenix 8 arrived, the software split with older watches was much harsher. We looked at that at the time, because quite a few Fenix 8 additions were simply not going to reach the Fenix 7 generation.
This time it is almost the opposite. Buy a Fenix 8 and, at least for now, Garmin is not making you sit there watching all the new software appear on somebody else’s wrist.
So why buy the Fenix 9?
The Fenix 9 still has things the Fenix 8 cannot get. Mapping is the obvious example, because Garmin has changed the hardware behind it rather than simply adding another software feature.
The new watch has more memory, an upgraded processor and a new mapping engine, which is why Garmin can offer faster map movement and its new perspective view. We covered the bigger Fenix 9 hardware changes here, and those are now looking more important than the software differences.
Dynamic Battery and ArcheryX also stay with the Fenix 9. But once you take those things out, the list of genuinely Fenix 9-only software is not especially long.
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