Garmin Epix (Gen 2) vs Apple Watch Series 8
🗓️ Release Year
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): 2022
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: 2022
🏃 Activity
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Garmin Epix (Gen 2) is a high-performance multisport GPS smartwatch designed for serious athletes and outdoor enthusiasts, featuring a stunning AMOLED display. It offers comprehensive activity tracking, including steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes with personalized daily goals. Its extensive activity profiles and advanced performance metrics are tailored for a wide range of sports and adventures, providing detailed insights into every workout.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The Apple Watch Series 8 is a sophisticated smartwatch offering comprehensive activity tracking designed for daily fitness and wellness monitoring. It precisely tracks steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes, motivating users through the iconic Move, Exercise, and Stand rings. It supports a wide array of workout types with detailed metrics, providing robust data for analyzing physical activity and performance.
❤️ Health Monitoring
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): This device provides continuous heart rate monitoring, advanced physiological metrics including VO2 max estimation, performance condition, and training status. It also tracks respiration rate, Pulse Ox for blood oxygen saturation, and offers detailed sleep analysis, delivering critical health and recovery data essential for optimizing training and overall well-being.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: This device is a powerful health companion, featuring continuous heart rate monitoring, ECG functionality for detecting signs of irregular heart rhythms, and SpO2 monitoring for blood oxygen levels. A key addition is the new temperature sensor, providing deeper insights into overall wellness, cycle tracking, and sleep patterns, contributing to a holistic view of health.
🔋 Battery Life
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Epix (Gen 2) offers up to 16 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 42 hours with continuous GPS tracking. While the vibrant AMOLED display impacts battery life compared to MIP displays, it still provides sufficient duration for multi-day activities and extensive training.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The Apple Watch Series 8 provides up to 18 hours of battery life on a single charge under normal usage, and up to 36 hours in Low Power Mode. It supports fast charging, minimizing downtime and allowing for quick top-ups to ensure continuous tracking throughout the day and night.
😴 Sleep Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): Advanced sleep monitoring on the Epix (Gen 2) tracks detailed sleep stages and utilizes the Pulse Ox sensor to monitor blood oxygen levels during sleep. This provides valuable data for assessing recovery quality and informing training decisions, especially important for athletes managing demanding training loads.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: Advanced sleep tracking on the Apple Watch Series 8 monitors sleep stages (light, deep, and REM), sleep duration, and provides detailed sleep analysis within the Health app. It also tracks blood oxygen levels and skin temperature during sleep, offering valuable insights into sleep quality and recovery.
📍 GPS Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): Equipped with advanced built-in GPS capabilities, the Epix (Gen 2) provides highly accurate outdoor activity tracking and navigation without requiring a paired smartphone. It supports multiple satellite systems and offers detailed preloaded mapping features, essential for exploring remote areas and navigating complex routes.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: With built-in GPS, the Apple Watch Series 8 accurately tracks outdoor activities like running, cycling, and hiking without needing a paired iPhone. It provides precise route mapping, pace, and distance data, essential for monitoring performance during outdoor workouts.
🏋️ Workout Modes
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Epix (Gen 2) supports an extensive range of multisport and individual workout modes, including running, biking, swimming, hiking, trail running, skiing, strength training, and more. Its customizable profiles and extensive real-time data screens provide comprehensive metrics for performance analysis across diverse activities.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The Apple Watch Series 8 supports a wide variety of workout modes, including running, walking, cycling, swimming, yoga, hiking, and more. Users can select specific modes to get tailored real-time statistics and post-workout analysis within the Fitness app.
💫 Exercise Recognition
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The device includes automatic exercise detection for common activities like walking and running through its Move IQ feature, ensuring seamless recording of basic movements within the overall activity log, even during varied training days.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The smartwatch features automatic exercise recognition for common activities such as walking, running, and cycling, ensuring that workouts are logged even if the user forgets to manually start tracking, providing a more complete record of physical activity.
🍎 Compatibility
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Epix (Gen 2) is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, connecting via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for seamless data synchronization and smart notifications.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: Seamlessly integrating with the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch Series 8 requires an iPhone 8 or later running the latest iOS version for full functionality. It connects via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, offering tight integration with Apple Health and other Apple services.
📲 App Support
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): Synchronization with the comprehensive Garmin Connect app is central to the Epix (Gen 2) experience, providing in-depth analysis of all tracked data, performance metrics, training insights, and recovery recommendations. The app allows for creating and syncing detailed training plans, courses, and customizing device settings.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: Leveraging the App Store, the Apple Watch Series 8 provides access to a vast ecosystem of third-party apps, enhancing its capabilities for fitness, productivity, communication, and entertainment. The Apple Health app serves as a central repository for all health and fitness data.
💡 Smart Features
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): Beyond its primary focus on sports and outdoor performance, the Epix (Gen 2) includes practical smart functionalities such as on-wrist notifications, Garmin Pay for contactless payments, and on-device music storage with support for streaming services, offering convenience during training and daily use.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: As a full-featured smartwatch, the Apple Watch Series 8 provides comprehensive smart capabilities, including on-wrist notifications for calls, texts, emails, and apps. It supports Siri for voice commands, Apple Pay for contactless payments, and allows for calls and messages directly from the watch (cellular models). Advanced safety features like Fall Detection and Crash Detection are also included.
💦 Water Resistance
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): With a robust water resistance rating of 100 meters (10 ATM), the Epix (Gen 2) is engineered to withstand swimming, showering, and various water activities, making it suitable for serious water sports and providing durability in wet environments.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: With a WR50 water resistance rating, the Apple Watch Series 8 is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a durable companion for everyday wear and aquatic activities. It is capable of tracking swimming workouts.
⌚ Display Quality
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Epix (Gen 2) features a stunning AMOLED display with high resolution, offering vibrant colors, deep blacks, and exceptional brightness. This touchscreen display provides excellent readability in various lighting conditions, including direct sunlight, enhancing the visual experience for mapping and data review.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The Apple Watch Series 8 features a vibrant Always-On Retina LTPO OLED display, offering sharp resolution, deep blacks, and excellent brightness for clear visibility in various lighting conditions, including direct sunlight. The edge-to-edge design maximizes screen real estate.
👌 Ease of Use
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The device offers a dual interface with reliable buttons and a responsive touchscreen, providing flexible and easy navigation through menus, data screens, and mapping features during both activities and daily use. The user interface is designed for intuitive operation and quick access to critical information.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The device offers an intuitive user interface with a combination of the responsive touchscreen, Digital Crown for precise scrolling, and a physical side button for navigation. The watchOS operating system provides a familiar and user-friendly experience with customizable watch faces and complications.
✨ Design and Comfort
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Epix (Gen 2) features a premium and durable design with a high-quality titanium bezel and stainless steel or DLC coating, built to withstand extreme conditions while maintaining a comfortable fit for all-day wear and extended outdoor use. The design balances robust construction with aesthetic appeal.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The Apple Watch Series 8 features a sleek and refined design with a lightweight aluminum or stainless steel case. It offers a comfortable fit for all-day wear and comes with a wide variety of interchangeable bands for extensive personalization, balancing aesthetic appeal with functional design.
🩸 SpO2 Monitoring
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): An integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for on-demand spot checks and continuous monitoring of blood oxygen saturation levels, particularly valuable for acclimatization at altitude, monitoring sleep quality, and assessing overall physiological status during demanding activities.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: Equipped with an SpO2 sensor, the Apple Watch Series 8 allows for on-demand spot checks and background monitoring of blood oxygen saturation levels. This feature provides valuable data for assessing respiratory health and overall well-being, especially during sleep.
💖 ECG Functionality
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): It is important to note that the Garmin Epix (Gen 2) does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: The Apple Watch Series 8 supports ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality through the ECG app, allowing users to take a 30-second ECG to detect signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). This feature provides valuable heart health data that can be shared with healthcare professionals.
🧘 Stress Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The Epix (Gen 2) tracks stress levels throughout the day based on heart rate variability and offers guided breathing exercises to help users manage stress and promote mental well-being alongside physical training and recovery.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: While not a dedicated stress tracking metric, the Apple Watch Series 8 contributes to stress insights through features like Mindfulness and Breathe apps, heart rate variability (HRV) data, and sleep analysis, helping users understand their body's response to stress and find moments of calm.
🩹 Recovery Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): The device provides advanced recovery insights, including a daily readiness score, recovery time advisor, training status, and training load focus, offering detailed guidance to help athletes understand their recovery needs and optimize their training schedule to prevent overtraining and improve performance.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: Recovery is primarily tracked through sleep analysis, heart rate variability (HRV), and insights provided within the Apple Health app based on workout data. While not a single "recovery score," the collected data helps users understand their body's state and inform rest and training decisions.
💳 Subscription
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): A significant benefit of the Garmin platform is that all features and data tracked by the Epix (Gen 2) are accessible through the free Garmin Connect app, requiring no additional subscription fees for core functionality or advanced training analysis, providing comprehensive value for a premium device.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: No subscription is required to access the core features and data tracked by the Apple Watch Series 8 through the Apple Health and Fitness apps. Optional services like Apple Fitness+ require a separate subscription.
🏷️️ Price
1️⃣ Garmin Epix (Gen 2): $999.99
Check Garmin Epix (Gen 2) Price *2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 8: $399.00
Check Apple Watch Series 8 Price ** If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you