A Reminder of Why I Stopped Using the Garmin Watch

Yesterday I was reminded of why I stopped wearing the Garmin watch, replacing it with Casio watches instead. It's because Garmin, Suunto and Xiaomi don't count walking as real sport. Imagine, you're wearing a watch twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, every day, and charging it every month with the Garmin Instinct, and every few days with the other devices, and you see the absurdity of certain trackers.

If you wear a Casio watch it tells you the time, 24/7 and theoretically it could stay on your wrist for ten years or more, without ever being removed, if you don't fly. The likelihood of wearing it that long is low.

## Planned Obsolescence

Garmin and Suunto both sell watches, that over time, their apps will render obsolete. I notice that some of the features that both the Garmin and Suunto apps offer, are not usable with the lower end watches they sell. If you have a watch for two to three years then you will have to update, if you want to keep using certain functionalities. I replaced the Garmin Instinct and the Suunto Spartan by cheaper newer models and they still miss some of the functionalities.

Even when you have some of the latest devices you're meant to feel FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and that's bad. You should not have to deal with this with the apps for devices that you paid for.

## Intentional Break

Yesterday I slipped back into the old desire to track myself with a watch that has more features and more to play with, but as I looked at the app I was reminded of why I want to break the habit of wearing two fitness trackers at once.

### Twice the Data

If I wear a Garmin and an Apple watch or Apple device they cancel each other out on Apple Health whilst I get duplicates on Strava. I then need to choose which to delete.

### The 'Addiction'

These apps want us to feel that we need to wear them 24/7 and I'm tired of that. I' tired of wanting to have 24 hour tracking of steps, sleep, heart rate and more. I want to be happy with a simple watch.

### Choice

If you don't have to wear the same watch every day, for the quantified self, then you can choose whether to wear a formal analogue watch, or a formal digital watch, or a 19 CHF watch, or one or two other variants.

## And Finally

The Garmin Etrex SE works well, when you want to track a walk, without wearing a Garmin watch. Suunto and Apple play well together so you can wear either a Suunto Watch or an Apple Watch and get the same result.

In winter wearing two watches doesn't matter, because no one will know. In summer it's better to walk with just one watch at a time.