[microtonal]

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get.

Sounds very similar to another US company - Garmin. They are still popular, but have been raising prices a lot every generation, because for a long time there was no real competition [1]. At this point, Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow (sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to re-render) because they have used the same CPU/MCU for multiple generations while increasing screen resolution. They also haven't really innovated a lot as of recently and are moving some new functionality behind a subscription.

This has opened a large gap for Chinese competition. Now you can get a Coros Nomad that goes head-to-head with models like the Garmin Enduro for 350 Euro. They don't have full feature parity yet, but they are so rapidly adding features that they will at some point. Also, in contrast to Garmin, they seem to be using modern microcontrollers, so panning or zooming a map is insanely fast in comparison, while still having ~20 days of battery for daily use.

[1] Of the traditional competitors, Apple Watch Ultra and Galaxy Watch Ultra have gotten closer, but are nowhere near the battery life, robustness, mapping support, mapping + workout support, etc.

[CWuestefeld]

> Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow

I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US.

You're right that it's slow due to a wimpy processor. But the processor isn't because they're too lazy to innovate, but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks.

[microtonal]

I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US.

As a sibling commenter said, the Instinct 3 Solar only does breadcrumb navigation, it doesn't do topographic maps on the watch (there are some Connect IQ apps that can add mapping, but you don't get good integration with workouts).

I use them all the time when cycling. I often plan a route, but when some different direction looks more interesting, I can spot check whether it leads to bike paths that will eventually merge back into my grand plan, erm, route. Or sometimes even for following the route, you want to look ahead by quickly zooming out or get a lot of detail at some complex intersection, where having a full map gives you much better orientation.

Well, except on a Garmin, my Fenix 8 is often so slow that I had to pause cycling to zoom in/out (even more complicated by not being able to do gradual zooming because it does not have a crown).

Yes, I know I can also use a bike GPS or a more generic GPSr with a large screen. I have used their gpsmap line since 2010 or so and even have the gpsmap H1. But having to always carry it around when you have a break somewhere is a drag and I always have a watch on me anyway. So I primarily use the gpsmap for geocaching and switched to using a watch for other activities.

but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks

Coros watches have several weeks of battery life and fast maps. It is laziness (or margin maximization), because they could reach the same power budget by moving to a processor that is on a smaller node.

[lostlogin]

> I know I can also use a bike GPS or a more generic GPSr with a large screen.

Their bike computers have a long lasting battery and are helpful for data. But wow are they frustrating. Software update regularly loses the config, the interface is just so painful (laggy touch screen or confusing buttons). The mapping is hard to follow.

Not that Strava mapping on a phone is any better. Why can’t Strava put arrows on the direction of travel?

[wartijn_]

I think they meant watches that can show actual maps, not just a line or arrow with your route. That feature has always been reserved for the more expensive watches.

[overfeed]

The more expensive watches (Fenix) also have long battery lives: lasting up to a month on a battery that can fit in a watch. The processors still have to sip power.

[microtonal]

The Coros watches are less than half the price, have 22 days of battery life in smartwatch mode (in the Nomad) and render maps extremely fast. If they added solar, they could probably also last a month (the Coros Apex 4 does 24 days, also without solar).

The funniest thing is that earlier versions of the Coros even used the Garmin map format (though as many small files and not a single/small number of .img). Though they have switched to the open PMTiles format in later versions.

BTW, I had a Fenix 7x solar (before a Fenix 8 AMOLED) and it would usually 'only' last about two weeks. I think you can only reach Garmin's stated time if you disable a lot of functionality.

[overfeed]

> The Coros watches are less than half the price, have 22 days of battery life in smartwatch mode

Garmin gets almost 30% more battery life in exchange of not being as fast (30 days)

> I think you can only reach Garmin's stated time if you disable a lot of functionality.

Turning off always-on Pulse ox gets you there. Turning everything off except telling time gets you 2.5x the battery life (69-71 days)

[CWuestefeld]

My Instinct 3 Solar shows 34 days remaining in the battery. I charged it sometime last week, so we're talking about upper 30s at least.

That's with running activity tracking including GPS for about an hour a day, and continuous heart rate monitoring.

At least on my device (and my body) the spo2 sensor is very finicky, requiring absolution stillness, and even at that I don't think it's accurate. So I don't use that.

I also discovered recently that simply using a custom watchface - even one built with an eye toward efficiency - lowers my battery life to about 2 weeks. The native faces enjoy privileged operations and are thus highly efficient. But custom-coded stuff apparently runs in a sandbox that has the effect of costing much more power. That's unfortunate, because my custom face used custom high-legibility fonts (derived from what's on interstate signage), making it noticeably easier on my aging eyes. The built-in fonts aren't great for this.

[microtonal]

My Fenix 8 only gets two weeks at most with pulse ox off. Yes, it's the AMOLED version, but I have the screen off by default (which should be similar to MIP). I got similar runtimes on my 7 Pro Solar without pulse ox.

[subscribed]

For me coros are non started because of lack of the NFC payments. I'm not even looking beyond that, it's a dealbreaker.

It's brilliant coros sticks to MIP though - the moment I cant buy MIP Garmin when I update the watch next time, I don't buy Garmin.

Good watches, Coros, though, I wish them success.

[dingaling]

Sounds like the perfect use-case for big-small processors. A power-sipper for routine 99.99% of operations and a more powerful beast for the CPU intensive ops.

[microtonal]

It's mostly because Garmin wants to maximize profits by sticking to old CPUs. The Coros watches (from what I've heard, the same applies to Suunto and Polar) are fast.

This has been an issue across the whole Garmin product line. E.g. the Garmin eTrex 32x from 2019 still used the same CPU as the eTrex 30 from 2011. 8 years without a CPU update. And the eTrex was already had miserably slow map rendering in 2011 with maps from that year.

[kccqzy]

Although Coros watches are fast, the Coros DURA bike computer is pretty slow when re-rendering maps. Naturally, companies can still choose between how fast the CPU is versus how long the battery life is (100+ hours on the Coros DURA I believe).

[lostlogin]

> It's mostly because Garmin wants to maximize profits

I see people riding bikes worth tens of thousands regularly. They should try a top tier models and see what happens.

[justinator]

One of the benefits of these old eTrex models is that they run on AA's, so they're used for things like long distance cycling (across countries).

I don't know if there are top tier models that run on replaceable batteries you can get at any gas station.

[lostlogin]

They have solar ones, but judging by reviews, they get about 10 minutes extra battery life per hour in the sun.

[tadfisher]

Yes, this ships in basically every smartwatch since the Snapdragon Wear 3100 launched in 2018.

[m4rtink]

A modern powerful MCU should be able to do both due to advanced power saving modes. Or youcan even have a power MCU and very low power standby MCU.

[topspin]

This is correct. There are a number of excellent asymmetric multicore MCU platforms now. You don't have to choose between efficiency and performance today.

[edsimpson]

How do you like the Instinct 3 Solar? I'm considering one for the exceptional battery life.

[krick]

Really considering Coros since Garmin introduced a subscription. It doesn't currently prevent me from using anything I want to use, it's just moving in the wrong direction, but I was annoyed by Garmin for a long time, and this is the last drop.

However, my understanding is that Coros just doesn't have an SDK. At all. So it's not really "lagging on features", it's a totally closed platform, that doesn't any have 3rd party apps at all, and will not have them, because it's impossible to write them. I don't know if it's enough of a reason to completely write them off as a competitor, but that does give me a pause. I mean, if I don't have a feature on Garmin, I can theoretically implement it myself, or even hope that somebody else did. If I don't have it on Coros, I will just have to make do.

[loloquwowndueo]

It’s interesting that you mention Garmin - they’re a good example of pivoting from your original market (standalone gps units for cars) once you see a nimble competitor eating away at it (gps-enabled smartphones). Garmin would be dead if they had held fast on the standalone GPS market.

[radiorental]

I'm not sure you are fully aware of the markets that Garmin is in. When it comes to marine, aviation and offroad, you simply cannot run a gps app on a phone. E.g.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/aviation/general/

[microtonal]

Yep, also, they had gpsr units way before their gpsunits for cars became popular. They started making GPS receivers in (I think) 1993:

https://static.garmin.com/pumac/GPS95AVD_PilotsGuide.pdf

[lightedman]

"offroad, you simply cannot run a gps app on a phone"

I almost exclusively use GaiaGPS as my offroad GPS navigation app on my phone. It works perfectly fine and it has for a long time, roughly speaking 1/7th of my life.

[radiorental]

You are correct, I should have been more specific - SxS, MTB and Enduro/Dualsport motorcycling. I've tried to use smart phones but they often heat up running a gps app in direct sunlight. More importantly the touch response accuracy caused me to double check the phone while trying to pay attention to the trail.

In applications such as jeep rock crawling, car camping - yes, smartphones will work. In more extreme activities - nope.

[loloquwowndueo]

Thanks! I’m clearly not aware.

[radiorental]

I have a love/hate relationship with Garmin.

As a motorcyclist and sailor, their hardware is second to none in terms of build quality and robustness. The ability to look down at my Zumo GPS on my motorcycle in a rain storm on a dirt road and have it respond to my wet dirty glove is a close to magic as you will get.

Then there's the watches, the Instinct range is ok but I have a button that doesn't pop back out, my wife's vivoactive suffered the well known touch failure.

However, as a UXer I will say that across all products the software interaction model sucks balls. "China" can and will produce hardware to meet a price point, its not that they can't build good products.

As soon as "China" figures out how to do good UX, the last moat western companies have will fall.

[microtonal]

I think the only sports watch company that has an app that is worse than Garmin's is Polar. I have used Garmin devices since 2010, but their UX is (as you say) pretty quirky. They changed the UI/UX of the gpsmap H1 to look more like a smartphone, but it is still weird. Another issue is that their software has been very buggy the last few years, with software only stabilizing 1-2 years after the release. One the largest external source for Garmin information (gpsrchive) has actively recommended against purchasing the H1 because it has been so buggy. Similarly, earlier firmware releases of the Fenix 8 had a lot of issues. Also a lot of functionality of older units hasn't been implemented yet. These are often not small bugs, but of the type, "oopsie, your device froze or rebooted while you were navigating". They basically released an alpha version as a final product.

I don't know about UX, but I've had my Coros watch for a few weeks now and I didn't find it hard to understand. I think it's much easier than when I first learned to use a Fenix watch. It misses some Garmin features though that I'd really like to see like off-course rerouting. But like I said above, they have been adding features at a good pace and a drastically undercutting Garmin on price (most watches less than half the price of the closest Garmin watch).

[idiotsecant]

'China' can do UX just fine, when the incentive is there. Part of the reason UX seems rough, outside of low quality products where it's a tertiary consideration, is cultural differences. User interfaces are part of culture, like everything humans touch. Those preferences shape the resulting tech. Sometimes those choices are less optimal for western users with their own preferences.

https://youtu.be/WSMFnJnY7EA?si=NMz0wd94gM5abxyj

[misiek08]

Garmin will survive a year or more easily, because in Europe there is a big group of people who belive in Garmin even more than people belived in Apple (this group is still huge and strong, but the company itself does everything it can to change it).

The real competition is Apple Watch and for sport-intensive application Garmin wins because of battery and simplicity of usage in harder conditions.

[SoftTalker]

About 10 years ago I was looking for a rugged small camera. Found some by Garmin that were on a closeout sale. Excellent quality, never owned a GoPro so can't compare but I used them in similar applications and they never had an issue.

[icar]

They seem to be a top brand in sailing for now, still. But they did move to a subscription for their Navionics charts.