This is still the Huawei Watch Ultimate 2 rather than a new generation. We covered the original timepiece and its unusual 150-metre diving and sonar messaging features when it launched last year. The new release builds on that hardware with a much bigger focus on skiing, along with some health and AI additions.

Ski mountaineering is the big new feature

So now you get a dedicated ski mountaineering mode. That is a slightly different proposition from the fairly basic skiing profiles you still find on many sports watches, because Huawei is trying to cover both the climb and the descent.

Routes can be loaded onto the watch before heading out, with support for GPX, KML and TCX files. During the activity, the watch can show the route along with information such as remaining distance and elevation. Huawei also showed a track-back option, which makes rather more sense on a ski mountaineering watch than another collection of pretty watch faces.

The watch records speed, gradient, altitude, heart rate and blood oxygen as you move through the mountains. Afterwards, the session can be broken down further with pace, altitude ranges, heart-rate zones and other performance data.

Skiing in general has received a sizeable upgrade as well. Huawei now talks about six different snow-sport modes covering indoor and outdoor skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing and ski mountaineering.

There are also maps for more than 3,000 ski resorts around the world. These can show trail names, difficulty levels and lift locations directly on the wrist, which could be genuinely useful at an unfamiliar resort.

Outdoor skiing gets more granular data too. The Watch Ultimate 2 can record turn counts and recognise different types of turns, while Huawei has added G-Force measurements to estimate the forces generated while carving. The company also showed support for connected smart sensor accessories capable of recording more than 20 skiing posture metrics, including balance, edge angle, pressure and rotation.

That is a fairly serious set of additions. The original Ultimate 2 was already unusually capable underwater. Huawei now seems to be trying to give the watch a similarly distinctive role on snow.

Health tracking gets more ambitious too

The other interesting part of the update is health tracking. Huawei is expanding the X-TAP system, the side-mounted fingertip sensor technology that first appeared on the Watch 5 and which we looked at when Huawei introduced X-TAP on the Watch 5.

Pressing a finger against the X-TAP area can provide real-time blood oxygen readings, while Huawei’s quick health check can now pull together as many as 20 health indicators.

More unusually, Huawei is adding research-based risk assessments for coronary heart disease and hyperglycemia. The wording matters here. The watch is not suddenly measuring blood glucose, and Huawei is not presenting the coronary heart disease feature as a diagnosis. These are risk-assessment tools that use data collected by the watch to identify patterns that may warrant closer attention.

Snow White is not the only new version

The new Snow White edition gets a light-colored case with a purple-white nanocrystalline ceramic bezel and a pale nylon woven loop strap. Huawei has also created several matching snow-themed watch faces, so the whole thing looks noticeably different from the existing darker Watch Ultimate 2 variants.

There is also a new Descente x Huawei Watch Ultimate 2 version. That model goes in the opposite direction visually, using a darker finish with orange detailing and a matching woven strap. The collaboration makes more sense now that Huawei is pushing the watch much harder towards skiing and winter sports.

HarmonyOS 7 brings another part of the update. Huawei’s Xiaoyi assistant can analyse health and exercise information, answer questions about recorded metrics and provide post-workout interpretations. Satellite messaging, eSIM connectivity, golf features, 150-metre diving and the existing underwater sonar communication system remain part of the broader Ultimate 2 package.

For now, Huawei has announced the new variants as part of its China launch event. There is no confirmation yet in the material released today on whether the Snow White or Descente versions will make their way to international markets.

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And this one is a bit different. Only a couple of weeks ago, we covered another Oura patent that uses tiny electrical currents to create haptic sensations⁠. This latest idea takes a much more mechanical approach.

The inside of the ring would actually move

The filing, US 2026/0259613 A1 , describes what Oura calls “pressure-based haptic feedback”. The basic idea is to place a flexible pad on the inside of the ring, with magnets and small coils sitting underneath it.

Send current through the coils and the magnetic field moves the magnet. That movement pushes the flexible pad towards the wearer’s finger, creating a small pressure sensation. Change the way the coils are driven and the ring could produce different strengths, durations and patterns of pressure.

So instead of feeling a normal buzz, you might feel a tap, a short press or a sequence of presses against your finger.

That makes quite a lot of sense for a smart ring. Space inside these devices is extremely limited, and a traditional vibration motor takes up room that could otherwise go towards the battery, sensors or electronics. Oura’s design effectively turns part of the inner ring structure into the haptic system.

The patent goes beyond generic notifications too. Oura describes different feedback patterns being associated with different events, including successful contactless payments, battery status and physiological information. It also discusses haptic feedback being triggered when a measured health value crosses a threshold.

The same system could check how well the ring fits

There is another interesting part buried in the filing. Oura says the magnet and coil arrangement could also work in the opposite direction.

If pressure from the finger moves the flexible pad and magnet, the coil can detect the resulting electrical change. In other words, the haptic mechanism could double as a pressure sensor rather than simply pushing against the finger.

That potentially gives Oura another way of determining how tightly the ring is sitting on the finger. The company specifically discusses using pressure measurements alongside physiological data and identifying situations where changes in fit could affect those readings.

This lines up with other Oura work aimed at detecting poor ring fit and weak skin contact⁠. That earlier approach used optical techniques. Pressure sensing would give the ring another source of information about what is happening between its inner surface and your finger.

For smart rings, that is not a small detail. Optical heart rate and blood oxygen measurements depend heavily on good contact, and fingers change size throughout the day. A ring that can tell when its fit has changed could potentially judge some readings differently, warn the user or compensate for poor contact.

Oura is known for filing a lot of patents, some of which never make it into a real-world product. So don’t take this as a guarantee you will see the haptic feature built into Oura Ring 6.

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Until now, BeamO could record those sounds, but that was basically where its job ended. You could listen to them yourself or send the recordings to a doctor, but the device and app did not actually tell you what they were hearing.

The stethoscope finally does more than record

That makes StethO Sense a pretty substantial software upgrade. BeamO already combines a thermometer, ECG and digital stethoscope in one handheld device, but the stethoscope was always the part that required someone else to make sense of the data.

We have been following BeamO for a while. It started rolling out in Europe in 2025, adding another unusual health device to a Withings line-up that already includes watches, scales and blood pressure monitors. The hardware was interesting from day one, but StethO Sense starts closing the gap between simply collecting medical-style data at home and getting something immediately useful back from it.

The new feature sits inside the Withings app. You choose whether you want to analyse a heart or lung recording, BeamO guides you through the correct positions on the body, and the analysis comes back within seconds. According to Withings, heart recordings use four standard positions, while lung recordings use six positions for children under 12 and up to eight positions from age 12 upwards.

Two AI systems are doing the listening

Withings is not building all of this analysis itself. StethO Sense combines technology from eMurmur for heart sounds and StethoMe for lung sounds.

eMurmur Heart AI looks for murmurs and sorts recordings into three broad outcomes. It can identify no murmur, an innocent murmur or an abnormal murmur, while also returning heart rate and a confidence score. Withings says the system has shown roughly 90% sensitivity and specificity for detecting pathological murmurs across clinical studies, and the underlying technology has FDA clearance for use with adults and children in the US.

The lung side works a little differently. StethoMe generates a Breathing Index from 0 to 100 using breathing sounds and the overall quality and pattern of breathing. That gives you something much easier to follow than an audio recording sitting in the app with no obvious indication of what you are supposed to be listening for.

There is an important regional distinction here. In the US, StethoMe’s Breathing Index is being offered as a general wellness feature and does not have FDA clearance, while the eMurmur heart analysis does. So although both analyses live inside the same StethO Sense feature, they do not carry the same regulatory status.

There is a subscription catch

StethO Sense will not simply appear as a free BeamO software update. It is part of Withings+, so using the analysis features will require a subscription once any free trial period ends.

Existing BeamO owners who bought the device before October 1 will get a free month of Withings+ when StethO Sense launches. New BeamO buyers will also get a one-month trial. BeamO itself remains priced at around $250 in the US, so anyone buying it specifically for the new AI analysis will need to factor the subscription into the longer-term cost.

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It gives you a value, not just a score

According to Actxa’s launch announcement⁠, the one-minute AI Glucose Snapshot produces an estimated glucose range and an indicative value within that range. You can take a quick reading whenever you want or use Meal Snapshots before and after eating to see how the estimate changes.

This is not continuous monitoring, so the band is not quietly tracking glucose throughout the day like a CGM. Actxa also makes it clear that the feature is intended for general wellness and should not be used to diagnose, monitor or manage diabetes.

That is important to note. As we covered when the FDA warned about wearables claiming to measure glucose⁠, no smartwatch or smart ring had been authorised by the agency to measure blood glucose without piercing the skin.

Spark Band uses Actxa’s BGEM technology, which analyses optical PPG signals with an AI model. The company already offers a similar feature through its Core Smart Ring, but it has not published accuracy figures specifically for the new wrist-worn band.

If the Actxa name means nothing to you, that is understandable. The Singapore company is not widely known internationally, although it says it has supplied more than 1.9 million trackers for Singapore’s government-backed National Steps Challenge since 2015.

The rest looks more familiar

Away from glucose, this is a fairly conventional screenless health tracker. It records sleep stages, sleep score, overnight signals, activity, Intensity Minutes, VO2 max and Fitness Age, while its daily recovery reading compares sleep HRV against the wearer’s own baseline.

There is no display, but LEDs and vibrations provide target heart-rate-zone guidance during exercise. The same cues can also handle movement reminders and wake-up alarms without turning the band into another source of wrist notifications.

The tracker weighs around 22 grams and combines a zinc-alloy casing with a braided nylon strap. It carries an IP68 rating, stores up to seven days of data and takes up to 90 minutes to charge.

Actxa claims up to 14 days of battery life and does not require a subscription. That combination places Spark Band in an interesting position alongside the established options in our screenless fitness tracker comparison⁠, especially since none of those devices currently provides a glucose estimate.

Pricing and availability

Spark Band will cost $149 or SGD 199, with pre-orders opening on September 24. Actxa expects to begin fulfilment on November 18 across selected markets in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, although it has not named the individual countries.

There is enough here to make Spark Band interesting, but the glucose feature needs independent testing before anyone should put much faith in the number it produces. If Actxa can show that its estimates reliably follow real changes around meals, the band could offer something genuinely different from Fitbit Air, Garmin CIRQA and Whoop.

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This is more like it. Firmware 2.50 arrived in August with the wonderfully vague note “improvements to OHR”. Then some CIRQA owners started reporting that Bluetooth heart-rate broadcasting was failing completely or repeatedly dropping its connection. Zwift, Rouvy and TrainerRoad were among the apps affected, while ANT+ continued to work normally. 

Bluetooth broadcasting gets some attention

The line that immediately jumps out in firmware 3.20 is a change to BLE heart-rate broadcasting. Garmin has added support for putting CIRQA into pairing mode while it is broadcasting heart rate, allowing a Bluetooth connection to be established.

There is also a new broadcast prompt for device control. Taken together, those changes look very relevant to the Bluetooth problems that appeared after firmware 2.50, particularly reports where CIRQA simply would not establish a connection with another device or app. 

We would stop short of saying Garmin has definitely fixed the whole problem, though. The changelog does not specifically say that Bluetooth heart-rate dropouts have been fixed. Pairing failures and a connection dropping after it has already paired are not necessarily the same issue, so we will need to see what CIRQA owners experience with 3.20.

Still, this is the first update since those complaints appeared that directly changes how BLE HR broadcasting works. If you use CIRQA with Zwift, TrainerRoad, Rouvy or another Bluetooth device, this is probably the part of the update worth watching most closely.

The button gets more useful

There are some decent quality-of-life changes elsewhere. CIRQA’s physical button can now be configured so either a single press or a press-and-hold starts an activity.

That sounds small, but on a screenless tracker the button carries more weight than it would on a normal Garmin watch. Being able to choose how it behaves should also make accidental activity starts a little easier to avoid.

Garmin has also added treadmill recalibration when users manually enter a distance after covering at least 1.5 km or one mile. Rep counting has been disabled when CIRQA is being used in Upper Arm mode, while rep counts can now be edited afterwards in Garmin Connect Mobile. 

Auto Start LiveTrack gets a change as well. GPS will now be forced on when that feature kicks in, while Garmin has fixed an Android issue that could prevent an adaptive coaching workout from starting.

Alarms and battery behaviour get cleaned up

Garmin has done quite a bit of tidying around alarms. Firmware 3.20 fixes incorrect timing for bedtime approaching notifications and unexpected vibrations from the Smart Wake alarm. CIRQA will also explain how to snooze or dismiss an alarm when alarm settings are saved for the first time.

Battery behaviour has changed too. The low-battery threshold is now 10%, with the critical warning arriving at 5%. Garmin has also fixed the missing low-battery notifications that could occur during an activity and moved Battery Manager into the System menu. 

The remaining changes are mostly cleanup. Garmin has removed unused unit settings, adjusted the default Auto Lap distance when units are changed, fixed a crash involving the lap option during a rowing activity, updated the battery interface in Garmin Connect Mobile and made smaller changes to the app interface and CIRQA’s LED behaviour.

Firmware 3.20 was only at a 20% rollout when Garmin announced it. So it may take a while to reach all users.

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Huawei has made this comparison more awkward than it probably intended. The Watch 6 is supposed to be the more complete smartwatch, yet the GT 7 Pro costs less, uses nicer materials and absolutely destroys it on battery life.

There is a reason for that. Watch 6 puts more emphasis on health, connectivity and everyday smartwatch features, while GT 7 Pro is built much more like a long-lasting sports watch. So despite sitting fairly close together in Huawei’s 2026 range, these two actually suit rather different people.

You can view both of these devices on Huawei’s website.

Huawei Watch 6 vs GT 7 Pro tech specs

There is more overlap here than the different product names suggest. Both have sapphire glass, ECG, dual-band GNSS, maps, Bluetooth calling, skin temperature tracking and serious sports features, but the way Huawei has packaged all of that is quite different.

You can also dig through our full Huawei Watch 6 vs GT 7 Pro specs comparison if you want every field side by side. The table below concentrates on some of the main differences between them.

Watch 6 gives you more choice on size, GT 7 Pro gets the nicer case

The design decision is not as simple as one watch being better. Watch 6 comes in two sizes, and the 42 mm version is particularly interesting if you want something genuinely light. At 38g without the strap, it is much easier to forget about than the 55.5g GT 7 Pro.

Move up to the 46 mm Watch 6, though, and things flip around. It weighs about 60g, so GT 7 Pro is actually slightly lighter despite using titanium and ceramic instead of stainless steel and a polymer-composite rear. Both get sapphire glass, but GT 7 Pro clearly feels like the more expensive piece of hardware on paper. 

Watch 6 does get the more flexible display choice. There is a 1.38-inch screen on the 42 mm model and a 1.5-inch display on the 46 mm version, compared with 1.47 inches on GT 7 Pro. Huawei’s Watch 6 spec sheet also lists peak brightness at up to 3,500 nits, against 3,000 nits on GT 7 Pro. 

Battery life is not remotely close

Battery life is where GT 7 Pro lands its biggest punch. Huawei rates it for up to 21 days with light use, 12 days under its typical-use test and seven days with the always-on display enabled. It can also run for up to 51 hours in trail running mode. 

Watch 6 is playing a completely different game. The 42 mm version is rated for around three days of typical use in Standard mode and the 46 mm for 4.5 days. You can stretch those figures to seven and 11 days respectively in Battery Saver mode, but that mode disables some of the features that make Watch 6 different in the first place.

That difference alone could decide this for a lot of people. Charging every few days is perfectly normal for a full smartwatch with cellular connectivity, but once you have lived with a watch that comfortably makes it through a week or two, going back can feel like a chore.

Watch 6 has the edge for health and smartwatch features

The basic sensor lists are actually very similar. Both watches cover heart rate, HRV, SpO2, skin temperature, ECG, stress and the usual daily health metrics, while both also have microphones, speakers, NFC, maps and Bluetooth calling. Our database comparison counts surprisingly few outright sensor differences between them. 

Watch 6 separates itself with X-TAP. Pressing the side sensor launches Health Glance, pulling several measurements together into a quick health check rather than making you open each metric individually. Huawei is also putting more emphasis on physical readiness, health interpretation and AI workout analysis with this generation. 

The other obvious advantage is eSIM. Watch 6 can connect to a cellular network without your phone nearby, so calls and connected features can keep working when you leave the handset behind. GT 7 Pro has Bluetooth calling but no cellular connection of its own. 

That is probably the cleanest way to separate the two. Watch 6 behaves more like Huawei’s answer to an Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch, while GT 7 Pro is much happier behaving like a sports watch that happens to have plenty of smartwatch features bolted on.

GT 7 Pro still makes more sense for serious outdoor use

Watch 6 is not lacking in sport modes. Huawei lists more than 100 of them, including golf, snow sports, cycling and diving, so GT 7 Pro does not win this simply because it tracks more activities. 

The difference is in how much Huawei has built around those activities. GT 7 Pro gets its newer Sunflower positioning system with AI-XDR, native running power, expanded cycling tools, detailed skiing features and a much more developed golf package. It is also where that 51-hour trail-running battery figure starts to become genuinely useful. 

Both watches can handle maps and offline navigation, and both support 40-metre freediving. So Watch 6 is hardly a lightweight on the sports side, but GT 7 Pro has a clearer emphasis on spending long periods outdoors without having to think about charging.

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That came out during Zepp Health’s Q2 2026 earnings call, where CFO Leon Deng was explaining why selling and marketing costs had risen so sharply. Q2 was unusually busy, with around six or seven launches. But Deng said the company is now “almost done with new product launches for the year.” And added that only “1 or 2” more products are expected in 2026.

T-Rex Dual Solar could be one of the final 2026 launches

One of the remaining devices could well be the Amazfit T-Rex Dual Solar⁠. We recently found the full T-Rex Dual Solar name inside the Zepp app, along with a solar-focused software package that includes charging records, solar intensity information and a dedicated Solar Boost Mode.

Regulatory filings have also linked model A2570 with the device, so this is well beyond a vague product-name leak at this point. There is still no confirmed launch date, but we are expecting the device to launch soon.

That also lines up with what Zepp was saying earlier in the year. After the company’s Q1 earnings, we looked at its 2026 device plans⁠, which pointed to more activity around the T-Rex range later in the year.

Since then, most of the important hardware has arrived. The company has expanded Active, Bip, Cheetah, Balance, T-Rex and Helio across several price points. So there simply are not many obvious gaps left.

Supply problems held back some new products

Not everything Zepp launched translated into revenue as quickly as it hoped. Management specifically pointed to supply constraints around Balance 3, Helio Strap and Bip as factors affecting its numbers and its Q3 outlook.

Balance 3 has apparently been particularly tricky to manufacture, while Helio Strap demand exceeded available supply. Zepp expects Helio Strap availability to improve during Q3 and return to full supply in Q4, giving both products more room to contribute later in the year.

Revenue improved, but spending jumped

As far as financials, Zepp Health reported Q2 revenue of $63.5 million. This was up 6.9% year over year. Gross margin improved from 36.2% to 37.4%, helped by a stronger mix of higher-priced Amazfit products.

That shift is showing up across several families. Zepp says higher-end T-Rex models account for around half of recent T-Rex activations. The more expensive Active models have also been taking a larger share.

The downside is that getting all this hardware into the market was expensive. Adjusted selling and marketing costs rose to $18.2 million from $12 million a year earlier, while adjusted operating loss widened to $11.1 million from $4.9 million.

GAAP net loss attributable to Zepp came in at $11.3 million, compared with $7.7 million a year ago. Management said much of the extra spending was tied to launch campaigns, e-commerce fees, athlete sponsorships and wider brand activity.

That spending should ease as the launch schedule calms down. Zepp is guiding for Q3 revenue of $68 million to $73 million, which would be down around 4% to 10% year over year against a very strong Q3 2025 comparison.

Zepp still expects revenue to grow for the full year, with supply looking much better by Q4. So the rest of 2026 should be less about throwing loads of new hardware at the market and more about getting the current lineup properly into stores and onto wrists.

There are still one or two launches coming. But Zepp has made it pretty clear that neither will be on the scale of what we saw earlier in the year. At this point, most of the 2026 Amazfit lineup is already out there.

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Gemini can now do more without your phone

There is quite a lot packed into build CP3A.260905.002.

Offline Gemini is probably worth mentioning first. Google says Pixel Watch 5 can now handle core commands on-device, so things like setting a timer, starting or stopping a workout and turning on Do Not Disturb can work even when the watch has no connection.

The company is also improving the Raise to Talk gesture model. This should make invoking Gemini by lifting your wrist a little less hit and miss.

Gemini Personalization goes in the opposite direction and makes much heavier use of your wider Google account. It can pull information from past conversations and connected services including Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube and Photos, allowing questions such as what is on your calendar or where a tracking number is buried in your email.

Google says an offline user profile works alongside real-time online retrieval to provide those responses. So the simple stuff can increasingly happen on the watch itself, while more personal questions can pull information from the Google services you already use.

There is also a new Proactive Suggestions feature, although this one comes with a fairly big catch. It only works when Pixel Watch 5 is paired with a Pixel 11, with Gemini and proactive assistance enabled on the phone.

Double pinch suddenly does a lot more

Google is also making much better use of hand gestures. Double pinch can now open At a Glance or the notification centre from the watch face, scroll through Gemini responses, move through Google Wallet cards and scroll through workout metrics.

The same gesture can switch between Google Maps views and control the Recorder app. Wrist turn also becomes a universal back gesture, which should make one-handed navigation around Wear OS considerably easier.

The company has been gradually adding more gesture-based interaction to Wear OS, including improvements to Raise to Talk in the Wear OS 7 update for earlier Pixel Watches. Pixel Watch 5 now gets a much broader version of that idea.

Google is also changing the GPS route maps

The other interesting part of the update is GPS. Google describes the change as its “most accurate GPS route tracking” and says there are major improvements to the route maps shown in Google Health after running, cycling, hiking and walking sessions.

That fits with what Google already revealed about Pixel Watch 5. The watch uses dual-frequency GNSS alongside more sophisticated post-processing to clean up tracks using environmental modelling, atmospheric corrections and other data, something we covered in our Pixel Watch 5 vs Pixel Watch 4 comparison.

A cleaner-looking route map is nice. But what really counts is whether distance and pace improve in difficult places such as city centres, wooded trails and areas with tall buildings. This update should help with that.

The September health features are not mentioned

One thing that is conspicuously absent from Google’s changelog is the new Health Guardian features. Google has separately said that Insulin Resistance Trends is arriving around this period, while Blood Pressure Trends is also part of the wider health package announced alongside Pixel Watch 5.

Neither appears in this particular September update announcement. Nevertheless, this still leaves Pixel Watch 5 with a fairly substantial first update. The other features should, hopefully, arrive later this month or in October.

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And this one is already on the way. Garmin says the updates have started rolling out and will reach more devices over the next few weeks. The list includes the Venu X1, Venu 4, vivoactive 6, Forerunner 570 and 970, Fenix 8 models, Fenix E, Enduro 3 and Instinct watches, along with a handful of Edge cycling computers.

There’s quite a bit in this update

Let’s start off with hands-free voice control. On supported watches you can say “OK, Garmin” and then do things such as start a timer or launch an activity without pressing a button, while “phone assistant” hands things over to the virtual assistant on your paired smartphone.

The feature is new for the Venu X1, Venu 4, D2 Air X15, Forerunner 570 and 970, plus the Fenix 8, Fenix 8 Pro, tactix 8, quatix 8 and D2 Mach 2 families. That makes this a fairly broad expansion of the hands-free controls Garmin has been gradually building into watches with the necessary microphone hardware.

Fall Detection is also arriving on the Venu 4. This is the first time we are seeing proper fall detection on a Garmin watch.

The company describes this as an all-day feature that can detect a fall and send your live location to predefined assistance contacts, although the watch needs to be paired with a smartphone. Users can leave monitoring enabled throughout the day or restrict it to selected activities.

Quick Workout is getting a much wider rollout. Instead of digging through plans or building a workout yourself, you choose the amount of time you have and the intensity you want, and the watch suggests a running workout based on your fitness level.

Garmin is also adding new Run Coach plans aimed at people who want lower training volume or a run-walk approach. These still adapt from day to day using recovery and health data, so they aren’t simply static beginner plans.

There are a few more specialised additions. Indoor XC Ski becomes a proper activity profile with support for compatible indoor ski trainers, while Fenix 8 and related outdoor watches gain Dive Setup Sharing, allowing dive settings to move between compatible dive computers using Garmin Share.

Edge MTB, 550, 850 and 1050 computers get improvements to the Enduro Ride profile. Climbs and descents can now be detected automatically rather than requiring the rider to hit the lap button each time, with ascent and descent tracked for individual runs as well as the overall ride.

There is also Live Activity for Outdoor Workouts, which Garmin marks as new across a surprisingly large selection of watches, including the Instinct E, Instinct 3 and Crossover AMOLED. There is a catch here, as Garmin’s table specifies that this requires a Garmin Connect+ subscription, extending the Live Activity feature that originally arrived with Connect+ beyond its earlier indoor focus.

But where are the Fenix 9 features?

This is the odd bit. Just a few days ago, we learned that a long list of Fenix 9 features is coming to existing Garmin watches. But they are nowhere to be seen.

That list included Garmin Epic, Stamina Zones, Endurance Time, stamina trends, improved rowing metrics, expanded rucking support, Rolling Grade Adjusted Pace and Field Tools. None of those appear anywhere in Garmin’s new Q3 feature table.

We wouldn’t read that as Garmin quietly dropping those plans. The Q3 document specifically describes the features listed as highlights from “this update”, so it looks more like a separate software wave rather than Garmin’s complete roadmap for the next few months.

Interestingly, even the Fenix 9 range is not mentioned in the table of devices getting the new updates. Although, surely it will.

There could also be a fairly simple explanation for the separation. This is speculation, but Garmin may have prepared the Q3 feature document before the Fenix 9 officially launched. Putting features such as Garmin Epic and the new Stamina tools into a public quarterly update beforehand would have revealed part of the Fenix 9 software package early.

Either way, owners of recent Garmin watches now appear to have two batches of software to watch for. This Q3 update is already moving out, while the larger Fenix 9 backport looks like a separate round that should follow, and that second one may ultimately be the more interesting of the two.

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So while plenty of runners obsess over GPS accuracy, heart rate, pace alerts and recovery scores, Pacheco crossed the line first with none of that on his wrist. Race photos show the familiar black Casio with the blue trim, and it looks very much like the F-91W.

About as basic as running watches get

The F-91W is almost the complete opposite of what you would expect to see on an elite marathon runner in 2026. It weighs just 21 grams and gives you the time, date, an alarm, a backlight and a basic stopwatch. Casio rates its battery for around seven years.

Even the stopwatch tells you how far removed this thing is from today’s running watches. Its measuring capacity tops out at 59 minutes and 59.99 seconds, so it cannot even record Pacheco’s 2 hour 10 minute race as one continuous stopwatch session. There are no kilometre splits, no GPS track and certainly no post-race recovery analysis waiting in an app.

¡El Maratón de la Ciudad de México Telcel 2026 ya tiene a sus campeones!

Así quedó el Top 3 de la rama varonil:

Cristhian Simeon Pacheco Mendoza — 2:10:03
Anbesa Lencho Tefaye — 2:11:25
Balew Yihunie Derseh — 2:11:58#MaratónDeLaCiudadDeMéxicoTelcel2026 pic.twitter.com/9dzDyHN97k

— Maratón de la Ciudad de México Telcel (@MaratonCDMX) August 30, 2026

None of that seemed to bother him. Pacheco stayed with the leading group through the first part of the race before making his move later on, eventually winning by more than a minute. Anbesa Lencho Tefaye finished second in 2:11:25, with Balew Yihunie Derseh third in 2:11:58.

That makes the watch choice particularly fun because this wasn’t somebody jogging around with a retro Casio for the novelty of it. Pacheco is a three-time Olympian and Pan American Games champion, and he has previously run 2:07:38 for the marathon. The man knows exactly what a serious racing setup looks like.

Elite runners keep making expensive watches look optional

We’ve seen variations of this before. When we looked at the watches worn by the leading runners at the 2026 London Marathon, the interesting thing wasn’t a rush towards the most expensive models. Lightweight Forerunners and relatively affordable dedicated running watches were everywhere.

More recently, Yomif Kejelcha wore a Amazfit Cheetah alongside Whoop while setting the half marathon world record. Again, the watch providing the useful race was not a hugely expensive one.

But Pacheco takes that idea several steps further. The F-91W isn’t a stripped-down GPS watch. It isn’t really a running watch at all, although its tiny weight and simple stopwatch have made it useful for sport for decades.

Casio has much more capable fitness watches these days. We even found that the G-Shock DW-H5600 can produce surprisingly decent running data when compared against a Garmin. But Pacheco apparently didn’t need any of that during the race.

And then comes the best part. Coverage of the Mexico City Marathon says the men’s and women’s winners received $50,000 plus a Garmin watch. So Pacheco started the morning with a €20 Casio on his wrist, ran 2:10:03, won the race and finished the day with a considerably smarter watch than the one he used to get there.

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