Buttons are for Doing: Exchanging the Apple Watch Ultra

I traded in my Apple Watch Ultra this week. I haven’t been using it since I got this Garmin Instinct 2x Solar a couple months ago. It’s got better battery, buttons, and the same basic capabilities, for much less bank.

Over the winter, I was annoyed that I had to care for the Apple Watch. The battery life is not enough for me to forget about it. At a max of 3 days, I still have to remember to bring a charger on trips and watch its level to ensure it’s ready to handle my next workout session. And it was no where close to enough battery for the week-long backpacking trips I’ve been taking in recent months.

I also found myself bringing my phone with me everywhere, even when I had the Apple Watch. But part of the reason I got a big Apple Watch with big storage and a big screen and a cellular plan was so that I could bring only it on runs and walks and such. But the screen was never complete enough and the songs/podcasts I wanted to hear were never synced to the watch and I like taking photos while I’m out and about so it was never complete enough.

I used the Apple Watch to tell time, measure my activity/fitness/body/workouts, alert on timers/alarms, glance at the weather - in that priority order. Over the years, I really tried to use other apps and functionality, but I always dropped off because the screen was too small/finicky and the processor wasn’t fast enough and/or the data wasn’t synced quickly enough.

Anyway, I was annoyed. So I browsed a bit and discovered that GPS watches have progressed a bit since I last looked. We now have some that are solar powered, with batteries lasting months. And all the competitors have caught up to Apple’s sensors - most now replicate the same body-signal-monitoring sensors and metrics (resting heart rate, steps, temperature, total sleep time, breathing rate, and overnight heart rate variability and the other ones that you shouldn’t obsess over). I was looking for something that had solar, sensors, and a simple daylight/reflective screen.

That brought me to the Garmin Instinct 2x Solar. I’ve now used it daily for a couple months (at home, exercising, and on long trips).

The best difference are the buttons. I’ve now realized that screens are for looking (revolutionary thought, I know), but I wanted to use my smartwatch to do things: running, hiking, swimming, timers, alarms, etc. And for those interactions, buttons are an amazing invention; touchscreens are horrible. With the buttons on the Garmin, I never mis-press something destructive. I never accidentally start something when I cross my arms. And I can interact with it with my eyes closed or big gloves on my hands. It’s liberating.

The battery life is beautiful. The solar power is like magic power; I want it everywhere. This thing gets a default 30d of battery and if I get it in the sun for a few hours daily it goes on infinitely. Even doing a solid, tracked workout every day doesn’t eat the battery much faster.

The black and white MIPS screen is so much better than the Apple Watch bright LED display. It’s trivial to read outside and there are no more annoying lights from my wrist at night / in the movie theater. Whenever I have enough light to see where I’m walking, there’s enough light to read this no-backlight display.

The Garmin feels more like a tool than the Apple Watch, which is what I wanted: less of a lifestyle, more of a tool that fits me (that I can rotate with my other watches-timepieces). I still think the Apple Watches are good for someone who wants a simple readable display of their health and notifications. But I want to use this as an exercise and expedition tool. I know Apple markets the Ultra for those purposes, but I no longer think it can even compete with what I’ve experienced here.

Funnily enough, trading in the old Apple Watch Ultra, though it was a couple years old, got me back enough money to almost fully offset the cost of the new Garmin. That’s how much more expensive the Apple Watch was!