Wondering if you should upgrade to the Garmin Fenix 8? Garmin may have made that decision a touch easier for some.
Garmin has told me that while a migration of some new Fenix 8 features to older series like the Fenix 7 Pro isn’t off the cards, it’s unlikely the last generation will get the new watch’s fresh interface.
“In terms of features rolling back – at this stage we can’t know what will be rolled back as our software updates happen quarterly,” says Garmin.
“However, as the UI of the Fenix 8 is so different it’s unlikely that will be incorporated into the Fenix 7 range.”
I’m currently using the AMOLED version of the Fenix 8. It’s going to compound the sense of freshness over the Fenix 7 and Fenix 7 Pro watches.
But the sense of it being “so different” is probably not something you’ll pick up from Garmin Fenix 8 product images anyway.
The core layout of the interface is roundly similar to previous recent generations. There’s a section with glance widgets, a menu of activities and — where applicable — Garmin’s mini apps.
There is more of an embrace of smart features in the new interface, though. And this does not only extend to the OLED Fenix 8 either, as I have the MIP screen Enduro 3 in at present too, whose interface likely roughly matches that of the non-OLED Fenix 8.
The notifications system, found when you press “up” from the watch face, is completely different. It’s much better at letting you look back over at alerts that have come in earlier in the day, and displays groups of notifications as sort-of virtual post-it notes. In older versions of the interface, notifications felt more ephemeral.
It’s more involved, but more useful if you actually want to use a watch to avoid needing to look at your phone so often.
The Fenix 8-generation interface also puts a greater separation between exercise tracking modes and applets like the music player and stuff you might download from the Garmin Connect IQ store.
Are these must-have changes? Not for those who only care about having a top-quality sports watch, but it’s a reminder you can’t fully judge these watches by a look at their feature lists. Garmin says the “different code base” of the new platform generation makes it incompatible with the last.
But as Garmin said in their statement to me, this does not mean new features won’t come to the Fenix 7 generation watches. Garmin has a very solid track record in adding features to its older high-end watches for a good long time. I’ll be looking into what these new Fenix 8 features actually are in more depth soon in my upcoming Fenix 8 review.
