[alphakilo]

I definitely agree with you. Even my Garmin Phoenix 5x plus will last multiple days with GPS usage for Backcountry camping. Another factor I worry about is the durability of the screen. Although you should always travel with backup Maps nobody wants to lose their primary navigation tool because a touch screen is nicer than Sapphire glass displays.

That said the Apple watch is a nicer experience than the Phoenix which I don't tend to take out of the house too often outside of activities now. Indeed the Apple watch is claiming to be usable for recreational scuba for which the Phoenix is not and you would need to use an alternative Garmin watch

Perhaps the next iteration of the ultra watch will have features to extend battery life beyond the 60 hours in low battery mode it claims and hopefully towards 100 hours (14 hours * 7 days) of usage on low battery

[zimpenfish]

> Even my Garmin Phoenix 5x plus will last multiple days with GPS usage for Backcountry camping.

Sporadic GPS usage, I'm guessing, since Garmin themselves only claim 13 hours of GPU usage (can't tell if it has UltraTrac though - the 5x non-plus can do 50 hours in UltraTrac mode.)

[mackmgg]

UltraTrac on my Fenix 5 is pretty useless though, you may as well not be recording at all at that point. I'm not sure if it's gotten better on the more recent watches, but the reported mileage would be off by 30%+ and the resulting map wouldn't even come close to resembling my actual path.

That said, even in normal GPS only mode (no Gallileo/GLONASS), the 5 when it was new would get 30 hours of recording. Enough for most ultras, 3 days of backpacking if you record 8 hours/day, and also enough for a week trip with an hour of running every day.

[ghaff]

I had an older Fenix and the distance accuracy was pretty bad. But no one seems to have an issue with the current ones.