I have been an Apple Watch user since the Series 0 was released back in the spring of 2015.

I love my Apple Watch. I am currently on a Series 4 and for the most part I am pleased with it.

Why for the most part?

Well the only downside I have is battery life. Not that the Apple Watch battery is abysmal but I use my Apple Watch almost 24 hours a day.

I only take my Apple Watch off during my morning and night showers. I use it at night to track my sleep and during the day as a smart watch and when doing my daily workout.

And sometime I don’t get to charge it at 100% for that reason it will die on me sometimes forcing me to take it off and put it to charge. For this reason I decided to get a backup watch to use during workouts and alternate for a couple of hours a day.

I wanted something with a different style, from a reputable company and with good reviews.

So I decided the Garmin Instinct was affordable enough as a second watch while ticking a lot of my boxes. But the two most important ones where the ability to sync with Apple Health and battery Life.

While Battery life seems to work as advertised the experience with Garmin was a total fail.

When I got the Garmin Instinct I immediately charge it to 100% set it up and started wearing it. All seemed to work as advertised for the first 7 days. And then Garmin updated its Connect app to version 4.37 and the honeymoon was over.

This update not only stopped syncing with Apple Health but it also deleted all the data already on Apple Health.

I try reinstalling the app, forcing a re syncing and contacting Garmin all without any success. For a data hoarder like my self this is unacceptable. Loosing data and Garmin acting like is no big deal is the total opposite from the experience I have with my Apple Watch. Five years of data and not a single glitch it just work.

Garmin forums and subreddit where full of people facing the same issue and Garmin total disregard was appalling. Garmin seem to be stuck in the 2010’s mentality of siloing data and even worst not caring for customers data or user experience.

At the moment the Garmin is collecting dust on a drawer and I am back with my trusty Apple Watch. Hopefully the Series 7 will bring an improved battery. But I learned my lesson.

Only trust Apple with my data.

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