During the last several weeks I had the opportunity to enjoy some days of vacation in the mountains or by the seaside. I had the Fenix 6X as a great companion for some bike rides, geocaching sessions and runs.
What I enjoyed with the Fenix 6X was the battery life and sturdiness – I didn’t stay with my mind about the charger or thinking about the (un)usual bangs on some furniture.
With the recent betas and the official 10.10 firmware, the on watch sleep analysis looks decent, but it doesn’t take into accounts naps or (due to some bug) you get your main sleep period deleted if you have an interruption-you will only see the period of sleep after the interruption. Beside that, the analysis seems very sensitive to moves, otherwise I can’t explain why I have so much awake times (much more than before, or compared with what Polar Vantage V was reporting when I used them side by side). Maybe things will improve and some other goodies will come after the FirstBeat acquisition.
The maps and around me issues brought with the recent Europe maps update were fixed in the 10.10 firmware, it was really annoying not being able to properly use the local maps in the 9.x versions.
The altimeter is decent but not extraordinary, it has some issues with measuring the altitude, even with periodic calibration.
For example, I had some runs uphill, the ascent was measured well when running up, but it created a mess when going back down. That gives some anomalies when it adds 100 or more meters or altitude gain in one session – anyway, they are not crucial for me, but just an observation for the picky ones.
Anyway, for a all rounder, it’s hard to find a better device at this moment (I won’t comment on the price though) – the Suunto 9 looks nicer in my eyes and might be an option for adventures, but on the ecosystem things are not at the level Garmin offers (and not even the features are at the same level), the Polar Vantage V or Grit X have a nice feature set and the Flow ecosystem which is very nice, but they only cover properly the sporty area and not the outdoor (not even the Grit X is not that ready for outdoor when compared with the Garmin or Suunto – for example if you’ve been wondering somewhere and want to save the POI, you can’t do that with Polar, and that’s a pain). Maybe Coros could be added to the list, but I don’t have an experience with Coros, so I can’t compare.
In the meantime, enjoy your vacations or free time, enjoy an active life and your devices!
Liviu Nastasa 