Watch Series 6

I’m not as hardcore as you. Doing fairly intense, compared to the average 71 year old, but I do exercise very rigorously for over an hour everyday. I’m tracking what is happening especially for endurance in improving general health and stamina. I do pool exercise and needed to have a watch that could last 6 to 8 hours per week every week. I went through my Series 6 with 5 replaced watches (I kept AppleCare) every year. So the Ultra Series has better water redistance and battery life. In can appreciate your comment about heart rate. I have seen problems with outlier measurements. There are one or two times, very intermittent. I’ll get a recorded heart rate reading about double the rest of the recorded HR. My anecdotal observation is it tends to happen in the pool. If I see the reading I will tighten the bad a bit and it doesn’t seem to continue. This happened on my old Series 6 and it has happened on my Ultra 3. It probably comes down to the intent of the design combined with the use case. If I go to my doctor every office visit begins with vitals being taken. It’s a snapshot in time. If a reading is about of whack they may repeat it in a few minutes once or twice, another slice of time. All Apple Watch products are really good at monitoring trends over time. You can setup alerts snd there are apps that can do additional analysis using the collected data. I look at trends events there too low and too high. The outliers do not really impact trend data. The other thing about trend data is knowing when your trend data occurs. I had a heart rate that would go below 40 bps in the 15 to 30 minutes before I wake-up in the morning. I got an alert that I was able to tell that to my Primary doc and Cardiologist. They suggested a change that needed to monitor for another couple of weeks. In my use case, the heart rate monitoring capability is 100% effective. It’s so effective I have the entire days HR data displaying in a compilation a full view of yesterday’s data and to date of the current day. Tap the graph and I can drill into the data, even the outline events. I’m not sure if the watch face comes from the heart health app I have or it’s in the Apple Watch stock watch faces. I have been enrolled the multi-year Apple Heart & Movement Study. The study has found that the Apple Watch sensor is accurate to within 5 bpm (beats per minute) for 98% of the time when users are in sedentary (or resting) mode, and reaches 99.7% accuracy with an error margin of 10bpm. The sensor’s heart rate accuracy varies: * 96% for outdoor cycling, * 87% while walking, * 88% while running, and * 91% during high-intensity workouts, with a 5 bpm error margin when recording in the foreground. Starting with the Apple Watch Series 6, accuracy has improved significantly. * Data from 480 participants logging 21,000 hours shows 89% accuracy (within a 5 bpm error margin) in the background, compared to 72% in older models.

Had AW 6, 7, 10... Had Garmin Fenix 7 somewhere between AW... Now with Garmin instinct 3. ALl has pros and cons. none is perfect. For me it's great to switch from time to time... I would happily do the same between iphone and android, but the cost of switch in terms of software is crazy...

Had a quite similar journey Series 6 to Fenix 7S to Ultra 3

Let me preface this by saying that I already know that this is stupid, lol. I have 2 AW's, a 5 series, and a 6SE. They both only last for about 2hrs or so when I use them during my runs to listen to music. If i plan to run for about 3hrs, I take the 2nd watch with me and throw it on when the first watch dies.

I have an Apple Watch (6, now 11) and Garmin 965, that I both use for sports (marathon running) and daily life. At one point I used the Apple Watch for daily life and running, and the Garmin for running only (yeah 2 watches). Afterwards I changed and used the Garmin for everything, and the Apple watch for running and sleep only. The reason I went for Garmin daily, was to identify myself as an athlete. However, the metrics you get from Garmin (readiness) is something you can have with an Apple watch as well, with apps like Bevel, Athlytic or The Outsiders. Today, I'm back at the Apple Watch for daily usage, for convenience of apps and voice commands. And to use my phone less. I think it just comes down to what you need most. Garmin is focused on "sports", while an Apple watch is more seen as lifestyle, yet can do similar things with tweaking & apps. However, to comment on the battery life, any Garmin will give you way more than an Apple Watch. I don't remember when I last charged my Garmin, while my Apple Watch was charged this morning. Also, a Garmin will be better for connecting external data sources, customizable data fields, navigation while you're out and about.