An amoled screen is the same kind of screen that youll see on the apple series of watches, as well as on a lot of cell phones. There are a lot of things i love about this watch, including some aspects of the screen, but theres. Some big cons that make it so that this watch could never be my go to smart watch, but it could still be right for you and today were gon na, go over all the pros and cons with this watch. So you guys can decide for yourselves, starting with whats good about the watch. Its very easy to use. The epix watch has five buttons, two on the right side and then three on the left side and physical buttons are awesome for a smart watch. I like it way more than watches that only have a touch screen, but then the fx also has a touch screen and that touch screen is super useful for navigating some features of the watch, as well as navigating through the map. You can move around a map and see whats ahead of you or whats behind you and find different points of interest. Garmin has also really polished the ui for the watch, so its really easy to navigate to different info that the watch can provide. You start an activity or just generally fully utilize. The capabilities of this watch as well. The garmin ecosystem is awesome. You can pair the watch to your phone and then the phone apps that garmin uses are really good as well.

Its really easy to sync the watch to your phone and then look at all the info on your phone that your watch has been tracking. Throughout the day. The epics has all the sensors that youd expect with a high end watch, especially one thats geared towards outdoor activities. You have abc sensors, altimeter barometer and compass and then on the back. You have the heart rate monitor as well as the blood oxygen sensor. The epics also has gps capabilities, so you can connect to multiple satellite constellations at a time and get much better gps accuracy theres a lot of features that the epics has that stand it apart from a lot of other smart watches out there and some of them You cant find on any other watch other than garmins high end watches the first one that i really like is auto rep, counting when youre at the gym. So if youre doing a bench press or a barbell curl, the watch is gon na automatically sense that you started a set and then count the reps for that set. Then, when youre done to set and put the bar down its going to stop that, i really like this feature, because it allows me to easily time my rest periods in between sets. Like i already mentioned, the watch has a touch screen, which is a really nice feature, especially when youre navigating the maps. It also has garmin pay attached to it. Garmin pay is really only available through a bunch of banks in the us.

If youre outside the us, you probably dont, have a bank that utilizes garmin pay. But if you are in the us, you can use your watch to tap pay terminals, just like you would with a credit card. One of the best features that garmin has really polished. In the last little while is on device music, so you can take just the watch. You dont have to take your phone with you if youre going for a run or going to the gym and what it does is it syncs to spotify playlist. So you tell the watch which playlist you want to sync to it from spotify and then itll download this those playlists and you can listen to them without your phone, while youre running you just have to put in some bluetooth earbuds. The watch also has removable watch bands with a really easy system. You can just take the bands off and then sub them out. I find a lot of garmin watches. These days are kind of bland, so its really nice to be able to switch out the watch. Bands – i just added these red ones right here: ill have a link to the watch. Bands that i am using as well as the watch in the description. A lot of people are gon na, be using their smart watch for fitness tracking and you can track dozens of different activities with the epics watch, including running hiking swimming even golf and skiing theres 42 000 golf courses and 2 000 ski resorts that are synced to The garmin ecosystem, so you can load up the ski resort or load up the golf course and whats really cool with the golf activity is that it will actually tell you how far away you are from the hole based on your gps location, while youre doing an Activity, you can see all of your stats right on the watch.

You just turn your wrist up and you can see how fast youre going what your heart rate is the distance that youve gone as well as the time of day. Basically, anything youd want to know about the activity youre doing you can just take a look at your watch and see those stats i find having those stats readily available on your wrist is really useful for training, so you can know how fast and what your pace Is as well as when youre hiking, you can pace yourself. So if you know you have a 30 kilometer day and you only have 10 hours to do it, then you know you need to be keeping a three kilometer pace and your watch can help you do that. One of my favorite features with the garmin epix is on device mapping, and especially with this screen, the on device mapping is phenomenal. You can load up topo maps for anywhere in the world. Those topo maps are going to show you elevation lines as well as routes and trails, as well as points of interest for where youre going and, if youre, not in the back country and youre in the city. Youll have all the roads and points of interest that you would want in order to navigate around what i really like as well is. I can use the explorer app off my phone to load routes onto the watch and then follow those routes in order to not get lost in order to navigate when im out in the backcountry thats, especially useful.

If youre in an area that doesnt have really well marked trails or if theres going to be a lot of forks in the road, then you can make sure that youre going down the right one loading. A row will also update the stats on the watch, which will give you more information like how much distance you have left to your destination as well as use your speed information to determine an estimated time of arrival at your destination. Now lets talk about this screen because amoled screens are something that garmin has only recently started introducing into their watches, and it has a lot of pros, but then also some negatives to it as well. The cool thing with amoled screens these days is that the technology has evolved, so you can have an always on display and while amoled screens are going to be a little bit of a drain on a battery which well get into a little bit later, they are Really sharp and very clear that sharpness and detail is especially nice when youre using the map, you can just kind of scroll around the map and really see the details of that map. Clearly, amoled screens are also very bright, much brighter than the trans reflective screens that garm uses on its other watch. In order to save battery the watch screen will dim like it is right now, but if you just tap it or you do a wrist gesture, then itll turn on the screen to full brightness and make it really easy to see.

But not everything is great with that screen and that kind of takes us into whats bad about this watch, starting off with the price. The epics watch is not cheap at one thousand dollars u.s for a lot of people. A thousand dollars is going to make us that this watch isnt worth it for them, but for some other people, its going to be worth spending that money for one of the most technologically advanced watches that you can buy. Another bad thing is the battery life with the watch, and a lot of that is due to the screen that it uses in gps mode. You get 30 hours of battery life and then five days of battery life when its in smart watch mode. For me, i get about two to three days of battery life with the epics, using it as my full time watch and then having one to two hours of activity where i am using gps capabilities that battery life is not great, especially when you compare it to Garmins instinct and phoenix line of watches, but its still gon na be better than the apple watch, but my biggest issue with the epics is the amoled screen and all the inherent issues that come with that. Well, the screen is great for brightness and sharpness and detail. It falls short on two major things. Number one is that it drains the battery those low battery numbers that we saw earlier are a direct result of the amoled screen.

Amoled screens just use a lot of power, especially if you have it in always on mode and brightness set to high. The second issue that i have with the screen has to do with visibility. The way amoled screens work is that if its a black color thats on the screen, thats a pixel turned off and a pixel off is going to save a lot of battery life and because of that, the watch defaults to using a black background as much as Possible and for activities you cant, actually change it from that black background and when youre outside in the sun, you get very low contrast with a black background versus having a white background like you can get on the phoenix series of watches so when im outside out For a run or out for a hike, its very hard for me to take a look at my wrist and see the stats that i want to be able to see and look at the things that im tracking, even with the brightness set to high and wrist Gesture turned on its really hard for me to not be annoyed every time i want to look at the stats i like to be able to just have a very quick look at my watch and see what my stats are as well as where i am on. The trail this isnt an issue when im inside its very easy to see the watch when im inside or if its not sunny out but a lot of the time.

I am using. The watch in sunny conditions. Im an outdoorsy person and this watch is an outdoor watch for me and the biggest reason i like using a smart watch is having quick and easy access to information right on my wrist and with the amoled screen.

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