It’s fair to say that last week was tumultuous for Garmin owners, to say the least. All around the world, Garmin watches – from those on our best Garmin watches list to entry-level running watches like the Garmin Forerunner 55, suddenly began to get stuck in boot-up mode. Even some other Garmin devices, like cycling computers, were affected.
We spent most of last week reporting on the Garmin outage, and your emails came flooding in. We got at least 500 emails from beleaguered Garmin users, helping us expand our lists of affected devices and providing useful reports of which fixes were working. You also shared stories about your crashing devices affecting weekday run clubs and snowboarding honeymoons. You guys stepped up.
One week later, the dust has settled, and people’s devices went back to normal. However, we’ve not heard from Garmin about what actually caused the outage. Now that we’ve had a bit of space from the incident, I wanted to pose another question to you, our readers, in the comments below this article – will you trust Garmin again?
A few of your emails mentioned switching to a rival best running watch brand, such as Suunto, Coros, Apple, and Samsung. Are you still planning to switch, and if so, who to? Or do you consider this an isolated incident, and want to stick to Garmin in the meantime?
For myself, a habitual Garmin user, my instinct (pardon the pun) was initially to stick with Garmin. From the battery life to the layout, a Garmin watch has been my loyal companion across almost every major long-distance race I’ve run.
However, when I think of the possibility of such an outage happening again and imagine it happening on the eve of, let’s say, the London Marathon, I can picture the thousands of disappointed, panicked runners who wished they’d switched brands. If it happened in the middle of a long cycle or a hike, you might be left with no navigational tools but the physical things you brought with you, and your phone’s compass app.
My way forward will be to continue using my Garmin watches and keep a Coros Pace Pro, or another one of the best cheap running watches on hand in case of failure. However, I’m in a very privileged position: if I want to test a device, I grab it out of the TechRadar vaults. Besides, these devices perform at their best when each one your primary wearables, accessing your data to tell you more about your performance.
If you’re a Garmin user, what will you do?
- Stick with the brand
- Grab a cheap backup watch
- Completely switch allegiances (and if so, which brand will you switch to)?
- If you were planning on getting a Garmin and haven’t already, has this outage drama put you off?
Let us know in the comments below! I’ll be in there, replying to your posts, and we’ll even feature your thoughts in a future article.
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