
19 in Fitness Trackers
Apple - Watch Series 8
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Reddit Reviews:
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Based on 1 year's data from Mar 28, 2026 How it works
Liked most:
74
7
"I unlock my computer and phone with it."
"the fact that they integrate to the Apple Watch simply cannot be understated for me, I couldn’t go back to Garmin now, it is just so much part of my life now. ... Tracking weightlifting workouts, nutrition and other stuff, analysis of the data, send messages to HomePod, changing NC automatically, sending emails …."
"works very well as an iPhone extension ... your iPhone is in your pocket or nearby and the phone rings. Who cares, because you can take/make calls on your watch! ... Stuff like that is great."
28
7
"never thought apple would let any 3rd party access the data their devices collect. ... That is a game changer"
"authentication apps ... doorbell camera where you can actually talk through your watch ... various email/chat apps ... todo list software"
"Combined with an app like Athlytic and its sleep / stress scores become much more accurate."
8
1
"my AW alerted me to heart irregularities that sent me to the ER and findings of a small heart attack and a secondary artery in my heart with 99% blockage. I am AW for life now."
"The heart monitoring capabilities alone are second-to-none."
"needed a bit more like the ECG to make sure I’m not relapsing. ... It was cardiologist that pushed me in this direction as well. ... the AW just gives me a bit more insight and monitoring moving forward now."
Disliked most:
0
154
"Also the battery life was trash, I’d leave my new series 10 in the drawer charged and it’d be dead the next day."
"The battery life is a literal joke. ... Do an activity? There goes 75% of your battery."
"after having it die on a couple seven mile/1.5 hour runs WITH the battery freshly charged and battery saving options on"
0
12
"If you are in long sleeves in the rain, you need to lock the touchscreen to prevent accidental touches. But that prevents you from using the touchscreen without holding to unlock for a few seconds. So if you are doing intervals, it can be hard to end the interval quickly."
"I already got sick and tired of touch screens with my Apple Watch ... Dripping sweat, rain and sleeves really screw with touch screens ... where I live we have like 6 months worth of snow so needing to take off my gloves and disable a screen lock before being able to pause my workout is an annoying PITA."
"The biggest issue for me on the AW that stops me going only AW is Sweat. ... The screen becomes impossible to use when I hot and sweaty. I mean completely unresponsive. Can’t press the music controls, can swipe the screen etc."
17
51
"one day I only got 3 1/2 hours of sleep and I got a 95 sleep score on Apple lol the Garmin was correct in telling me I got shit sleep."
"my sleep was very fragmented which the Apple Watch didn’t pick up. ... The difference is the garmin should a lot of awakenings which is what I really had. This is the effect of alcohol being metabolized."
"Because what's the value of the score if it doesn't correlate to real-world experiences? It's meaningless to get a high score and be told you slept great just because you slept a long time, but it was restless and low quality and you feel like garbage. ... My Oura gives a much more accurate picture of my sleep then Apple Watch unfortunately. ... I'm not sure there's much I can do short of sleeping for 4 hours to get my Apple Watch score to drop below 90."
3
11
"I dont get overloaded with notifications like my apple watch"
"The constant notifications on the AW were too distracting, I feel more zen now."
"The AW is going to get in your face about instagram stories and text messages and email."
Any Series 8 owners thinking of upgrading? I have the series 8 with 87% battery health. Before the announcement of the Series 11 I was dead set to upgrade because I wanted the slimmer design, assumed better battery and faster chip. When I workout I use the timer to time my rest periods so I find it lags when using both workout and timer. Also my battery at the end of a day is down to around 20%. But now that the announcement is out the chip and battery appear to be the same as the Series 10 so I don’t think I can justify the upgrade to the Series 11. I am considering an upgrade to the Series 10 or to just wait until next year for the series 12. Anyone else in a similar boat and want to bounce ideas?
I’m leaning towards this too. I just hope that my battery can still last all day for another year as I presume watch os 26 will be more power hungry 😖
currently use aw s8 and whoop. i love the setup, i know ill always have sleep data cause the chances of me letting both die are very small and i know i have the constant metrics from whoop and use aw for daily stuff and workouts
yea i wear both aw on the left whoop on the right. they are both good for different things and having the whoop gives me some peace of mind about my apple watch charge like i don’t stress about if it dies cause ik the whoop is running
For example : - metronome - Pace Pro: pace monitoring with the possibility of automatically adapting the target pace according to the elevation or with a negative or positive split - adaptive maps: you can ask the watch to create a loop route of a defined distance; if we decide to change the route, the Fenix 8 recalculates a new loop, - maps: turn-by-turn audio guidance. With enough battery to last a hike of 12 hours or more - maps (always): whole world included so no need for data (practical if you get lost in the mountains) - I find the instantaneous look more reliable than on my old AppleWatch series 8. You can include refueling locations, or a hydration reminder - structured training: the pace or heart rate gauge is practical, the displays are generally much better when running - the Garmin coach adapts to our state of form based on sleep, HRV and training load - the flashing flashlight allows you to be better seen when running at night (it does not replace a headlamp except in an emergency) - with a cardio belt the watch can be attached over the jacket in winter There are certainly many other things. Well I just ordered an AWU3, I hope I won't miss all that...
The Apple Watch is the choice of compromise between daily life and running. I find it very inferior to the Garmins for running and hiking, but it is still acceptable considering the advantages for everything else.
I switched from an Apple Watch Series 8 to Venu 4. I miss certain aspects of the Apple Watch but I have grown to really appreciate the garmin. Things I miss: - Apple Pay (Garmin pay doesn’t work well in Canada) - answering quick texts from my wrist - ping my phone feature (garmin has this but doesn’t work all the time) - fitness rings - integration with peloton app Things I love about the garmin: - golf gps built into watch (need separate app for AW) I am an avid golfer and any app thru AW would kill battery incredibly fast - battery life - looks far better - health metrics are amazing - sleep metrics are amazing For me the positive outweigh the negatives. I can see why people hate the garmin ecosystem, but after switching for past 2 months I am truly happy with my choice. I wore Apple Watch daily for previous 3 years and never wore it at night due to needing to charge it. -
I ran Paris marathon last year and my AW8 ran out of battery at 38k so I took the first opportunity to upgrade to AWU2. Runna saved the run up to that point but I’ve never ran a marathon according to Strava which is annoying 😂
Just did this. From the series 8 once the battery couldn’t last a day. Ended up going higher to the forerunner (thanks REI 90 day returns) bc the trade offs of losing some of the apple integrations wasn’t enough gained on the venu The activities list is really limited. And its integration with Strava sucked a bit more than the Apple Watch. I could at least pick specific activities through Strava app on my watch if they didn’t come built in on apple activities, but you can’t edit the data fields on that. I wanted both. I only got about 4 days of battery, not super worth it IMO. Just enough I wouldn’t have ti charge it daily but not enough that I wasn’t frequently like “oh, I’m kinda low on battery” No unlocking each other, (phone and watch) or my MacBook for work. I miss it auto doing that the most Media players kinda suck Biggest is custom notifications on my watch vs my phone. I had to basically go in and do an overhaul so it wasn’t constantly pinging me with useless notifications I had silenced on my watch but not my phone Activities pages were limited. They were limited on the Apple Watch too but I was hoping for an upgrade here. I upgraded to the forerunner 970. Big jump. But it has a LOT more data points readily available. It’s more of what I was looking for.
Battery seems always decent with new watches, but after 2 years it ain’t very good at all and you can’t change the battery at Apple until it’s less than 80%. I bet apple on purpose shows battery health above 80% for far too long, quite suspicious. My S8 stayed at 84% for one whole year and in that time frame the watch battery clearly tanked, yet was not reflected in battery health. Nice trick Apple! 😉
Six more hours of battery life does it for me. My S8 has been lagging…
They said 24 hours overall. Before (for all previous models) they said 18 hours.
I use Apple Watch Series 8. Works fine. But the pacing thing is infuriating. Always laggy enough to be pointless. So if I just start going uphill and slowed down, it might still tell me to slow down, due to my pace a good few seconds ago. It just becomes annoying after a while. Their devs seem to suggest it’s just depending on GPS strength and suggested newer devices are better.
Just switched from a AW Series 8 to a 970. I can get over the fact that the Garmin did not calculate active calories on my 10k steps yesterday. My AW for sure overestimated active calories, but the Garmin has to be underestimating. Am i right?