I think you are missing the point here completely and utterly. Compared to what the Apple Watch can do (as mention on the post and several comments) the garmin watch may be the real toy here.
That's hardly true, the two devices have very different purposes. I couldn't run an ultramarathon (or even a shorter trail race) in an apple watch. That's before we even start talking about features. The battery would die long before I finish.
The FR945 that was released this year has far more features than the apple watch (including the emergency features). Even comparing the Apple Watch 4 to my FR935 (released in 2017), the Apple watch would be a huge step down for my purposes. That's all without mentioning the fact that I'd probably break the apple watch on my first outing.
The Apple watch might be a better smart watch for day-to-day use, but next to a Garmin it's pretty obvious which is the toy.
When I was a kid, my next door neighbor was an ultra-marathoner and the fittest person I'd ever met. He died suddenly one day of a heart attack while out on a run.
When this happens it's typically due to undiagnosed cardiomyopathy (which is very difficult to detect). It's true that when something like that happens to someone they would've lived longer had they not been an endurance athlete, but most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.
I get a yearly physical just to be safe, but honestly running is my favorite way to decompress and I'd need some kind of diagnosis before giving it up.
> most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.
I'd venture to say they live far longer.
From the introduction of Vina & al 2016:
In longitudinal studies, physically active men and women have an approximately 30% lower risk of death compared with inactive people (Schnohr et al. 2015). No upper threshold for physical activity has ever been recommended (Pate et al. 1995). In fact, in studies performed on top‐level athletes, participation in endurance competitive sports increases life expectancy (Hartley & Llewellyn, 1939; Prout, 1972). Moreover, Karvonen and co‐workers found that Finnish champion skiers lived 2.8–4.3 years longer than the general male population in Finland (Karvonen et al. 1974). We tested the effect of strenuous exercise, performed by well‐trained humans, on their longevity. We measured average and maximal lifespan in cyclists who had taken part in the Tour de France between the years 1932 and 1964 and compared them with those of the average population in those years. Only cyclists born in Belgium, France and Italy were included in our study. The results were striking: we found an 11% increase in average longevity in Tour de France participants when compared with the general population (Sanchis‐Gomar et al. 2011). These results have been confirmed recently with the observation of a significant 41% lower mortality rate among French elite cyclists from the Tour de France, compared with the general male population (Marijon et al. 2013). Evidence from human studies supports the notion that regular, vigorous aerobic exercise might be a useful tool, with a dose–response effect, to improve the overall health status and longevity of the general population (Ruiz et al. 2010; Teramoto & Bungum, 2010). However, the controversy regarding the potential adverse effects of regular strenuous physical exercise continues (Benito et al. 2011; Schnohr et al. 2013). Schnohr and co‐workers have found that moderate‐intensity joggers have lower mortality rates that sedentary people or high intensity joggers. In other words the relationship between intensity of jogging and mortality follows a U‐shaped curve (Schnohr et al. 2015). Thus, the ideal ‘dose’ of exercise needed to improve longevity is not a simple linear relationship. Genetic aspects as well as lifestyle factors (smoking, diet and alcohol consumption) may be important in interpreting studies aimed at determining the effect of exercise training on longevity.
I am wearing a Garmin FR945 right now; in fact, I sold my Apple Watch 4 a month back, after it sat on my nightstand for months following my purchase of the 945. I previously had an Apple Watch 2.
The AW might be a huge step down for your purposes, but I was fine recording 5+ hour bike rides and my 4+ hour (yeah, yeah) first marathon. I really disliked using a touch screen on the AW for recording runs, particularly intervals. I love the feature set of the 945 and haven't looked back.
THAT SAID, I would trust the Apple Watch over the Garmin any day of the week for 'lifesaving' type tech. Garmin's software is spotty, to say the least. First off, I can trigger the Garmin crash detection at will by jolting to a sudden stop on my bike and hopping off. Not all that aggressively -- it happens in my normal dismount process with some regularity. I have to tell it to cancel the emergency call.
Right now it's setup to text my wife. Looking at the config, it says "Select up to 3 people to be notified via text message and email if an incident occurs or assistance is needed". I don't know how I could set it up to call 911 if I wanted to.
And that would all assume it even works. Multiple times a week, my watch says it doesn't have connection with my iPhone X, and I have to reboot the watch for it to find my phone again. My wife's FR235+iPhone 7 setup seems more reliable, but at least once a month for the past 3-4 years, it's decided to stop syncing and we need to reboot the watch again.
IME, the Apple Watch <-> iPhone BT connection just works. All the time.
I had the Apple Watch track me during my hour long bike tours, GPS and heart rate sensor on and all, without any problems and with battery left to spare at the end of the day.
Seven to eight hours is probably the critical mark, but anything below that is no problem at all.
Ultramarathons (full 100 miles) usually takes between 24-30 hours according to one source (WaPo). I'm guessing you're thinking of regular 26.2 mile marathons.
To be wildly pedantic, an ultramarathon is anything over 42.2km (26.2mi). It's perfectly possible to do an ultra with an Apple Watch if you're only going 50km (even I can manage 50km within the 8h battery life.)
Yeah, ok, no you can’t do that with an Apple Watch. Seems an alright trade-off for Apple to make. The amount of people running ultra-marathons is probably miniscule.
Recent Garmin watches and cycling computers also have "incident detection" and can automatically send an alert to your emergency contact(s) after a fall. (I don't think any current Garmin models will directly dial 911, though.)
