Garmin Fenix 3 Review: luxury watch for endurance athletes

The Garmin Fenix 3 offers a range of functions and a design in which the competition just slick your ears. And your wallet: for the watch you have to put at least $350 on the table. You can find out in the Review report whether this is worthwhile.

The Garmin Fenix 3, launched in early 2015, quickly established itself as a premium multi-sport GPS watch designed for serious athletes and outdoor enthusiasts. Targeted primarily at endurance athletes, this high-end timepiece combines advanced training features with robust durability, making it an ideal companion for those who participate in intense, long-duration activities. Its versatile functionality spans across various sports, including running, cycling, swimming, and hiking, ensuring that it meets the diverse needs of its users.

The Fenix 3 has garnered a reputation for its exceptional accuracy and reliability, crucial attributes for athletes who rely on precise data to optimize their performance. Built to withstand harsh conditions, the watch boasts a rugged design with a stainless steel bezel and reinforced housing, capable of enduring the rigors of extreme environments. This commitment to durability is matched by its impressive water resistance, rated up to 100 meters, making it suitable for both swimming and diving activities.

Feature-wise, the Garmin Fenix 3 is loaded with advanced metrics and smart functionalities. It includes GPS and GLONASS satellite reception for superior tracking accuracy, an altimeter, barometer, and 3-axis compass, providing comprehensive navigation support. Endurance athletes, in particular, benefit from its extensive battery life, which can last up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode, ensuring that the watch keeps up with their extended training sessions and competitions.

In summary, the Garmin Fenix 3 stands out in the crowded market of sports watches due to its blend of durability, precision, and multi-sport capabilities. Its design and features are specifically geared towards endurance athletes who demand high-performance gear that can withstand the toughest conditions while delivering reliable and accurate data. This combination of qualities has cemented the Fenix 3’s status as a go-to choice for those seeking a luxury watch that performs as well as it looks.

Design and Build Quality

The Garmin Fenix 3 exhibits an exquisite blend of robust construction and premium aesthetics, making it a standout choice for endurance athletes. The watch is crafted from high-quality materials, including a stainless steel bezel and reinforced housing, which contribute to its rugged durability. Additionally, the inclusion of a sapphire crystal lens offers superior scratch resistance, ensuring the watch maintains its pristine appearance even during intense activities.

One of the most notable design elements of the Garmin Fenix 3 is its substantial size. With a diameter of 51mm and a thickness of 16mm, the watch commands a strong wrist presence. Despite its larger dimensions, the Garmin Fenix 3 is designed for comfort, weighing approximately 86 grams. This balance between size and weight ensures that the watch remains comfortable during prolonged wear, whether you are running a marathon or hiking a mountain trail.

The water resistance of the Garmin Fenix 3 is another testament to its high build quality. Rated at 10 ATM, the watch can withstand pressures equivalent to a depth of 100 meters, making it suitable for swimming, snorkeling, and other water-based activities. This level of water resistance adds to the watch’s versatility, allowing athletes to confidently use it in a variety of environments.

The design choices of the Garmin Fenix 3 also reflect a blend of functionality and style. The watch face is customizable, offering a range of watch faces to suit different tastes and requirements. The buttons are strategically placed for easy access during activities, and the sturdy construction ensures they remain responsive over time. Overall, the Garmin Fenix 3 stands out not only for its performance capabilities but also for its sophisticated design and exceptional build quality, making it an ideal companion for the discerning endurance athlete.

Display and Interface

The Garmin Fenix 3 features a robust and vivid display that enhances its appeal among endurance athletes. The watch boasts a 1.2-inch diameter screen with a resolution of 218 x 218 pixels, ensuring clarity and sharpness in displaying data and metrics. This high-resolution display is crucial for athletes who rely on precise and easily readable information during their activities.

One of the standout aspects of the Fenix 3’s display is its readability in various lighting conditions. The watch utilizes transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) technology, which excels in bright sunlight as well as low-light environments. This technology ensures that the display remains visible without excessive battery drain, a critical feature for long-duration activities. The addition of LED backlighting further enhances visibility during nighttime or in dimly lit settings, providing a seamless experience regardless of the time of day.

Navigating the Garmin Fenix 3’s user interface is intuitive and user-friendly, designed to cater to both novice and experienced athletes. The interface is structured around a combination of buttons and a menu-driven system, allowing users to quickly access various functions and settings. The five-button layout—up, down, select, back, and start/stop—offers a straightforward method for cycling through menus and options, reducing the learning curve significantly.

Customization is another strong suit of the Fenix 3. Users can personalize their display settings to show preferred data fields, such as heart rate, pace, distance, or altitude, depending on their specific needs. Additionally, the watch face itself can be customized with different designs and widgets, allowing for a tailored experience that aligns with an athlete’s preferences and requirements.

Overall, the Garmin Fenix 3’s display and interface are designed to offer a blend of functionality and ease of use, making it a reliable companion for endurance athletes. The combination of high-resolution display, versatile readability, and customizable interface ensures that users can focus on their performance without being distracted by technical complications.

Performance Tracking Features

The Garmin Fenix 3 is renowned for its comprehensive performance tracking capabilities, catering to a wide spectrum of sports and activities. Whether you are a runner, swimmer, cyclist, or participate in multi-sport events, this luxury watch is designed to meet the needs of endurance athletes with precision and versatility.

One of the standout features of the Garmin Fenix 3 is its GPS accuracy. The watch utilizes an advanced GPS and GLONASS satellite reception, ensuring quick and reliable location tracking even in challenging environments. This makes it an excellent choice for trail runners and hikers who venture into remote areas. The watch also offers real-time pace, distance, and route tracking, which are crucial for any endurance athlete aiming to optimize their training sessions.

In addition to GPS, the Fenix 3 boasts an advanced heart rate monitoring system. By using an external heart rate strap or wrist-based technology, it provides accurate and continuous heart rate data. This feature is essential for athletes who need to monitor their cardiovascular performance and stay within their target heart rate zones during workouts.

The Garmin Fenix 3 is also equipped with a variety of sensors that enhance its performance tracking capabilities. These include an altimeter, barometer, and compass, all of which provide valuable data for outdoor sports enthusiasts. The altimeter measures elevation, the barometer tracks weather changes, and the compass ensures precise navigation.

For swimmers, the Fenix 3 offers detailed swim metrics, including stroke count, stroke rate, and SWOLF score, which helps in assessing swimming efficiency. Cyclists can benefit from the watch’s cycling dynamics, such as power metrics when paired with compatible sensors, cadence, and speed analysis. Additionally, the multi-sport mode allows seamless transition between different activities, making it ideal for triathletes.

Overall, the Garmin Fenix 3 provides a robust suite of data metrics for training and performance analysis. Athletes can review their performance through Garmin Connect, a comprehensive online platform that offers in-depth insights and personalized feedback. This enables users to make informed decisions about their training regimens and track their progress over time.

Smart Features and Connectivity

The Garmin Fenix 3 transcends the traditional boundaries of a luxury watch by seamlessly integrating advanced smart features and connectivity options. It offers smart notifications, allowing users to receive calls, texts, emails, and other alerts directly on their wrist. This enables athletes to stay connected without having to frequently check their smartphones, thus maintaining their focus on the activity at hand.

Another valuable feature is music control. With the Garmin Fenix 3, users can manage their music playlists without needing to take out their phones, a convenience that is particularly useful during workouts or long training sessions. The smartwatch is compatible with both Android and iOS devices, ensuring a broad user base can enjoy its smart features.

Connectivity plays a pivotal role in enhancing the overall user experience of the Garmin Fenix 3. The watch supports Bluetooth, ANT+, and Wi-Fi connections. Bluetooth ensures seamless data transfer between the watch and paired devices, facilitating easy synchronization of information. ANT+ compatibility allows the Garmin Fenix 3 to connect with a variety of sensors, such as heart rate monitors, cadence sensors, and power meters, providing athletes with comprehensive data to analyze their performance.

Wi-Fi connectivity further elevates the user experience by enabling automatic uploads of activity data to Garmin Connect, a platform where users can review and analyze their workout metrics. Garmin Connect integration offers detailed insights and personalized training plans, making it easier for athletes to track their progress and achieve their fitness goals. Additionally, the Garmin Fenix 3 is compatible with various third-party fitness apps, broadening its utility and appeal.

In essence, the Garmin Fenix 3’s smart features and robust connectivity options make it a versatile companion for endurance athletes, blending functionality with convenience to support their training and daily activities.

Pros and Cons

The Garmin Fenix 3 is a standout in the realm of luxury sports watches, particularly for endurance athletes. One of its foremost advantages is its robust build. Constructed with a stainless steel bezel and reinforced housing, the Fenix 3 is designed to withstand rugged environments, making it an ideal companion for various outdoor activities. Its extensive feature set is another compelling aspect. The watch supports GPS and GLONASS satellite reception, includes advanced fitness metrics, and provides customizable workout profiles, ensuring it caters to a wide range of athletic pursuits. Additionally, the long battery life is a significant benefit, offering up to 50 hours in UltraTrac mode and up to 20 hours in GPS mode, which is particularly advantageous for long-duration activities such as ultramarathons or multi-day treks.

However, the Garmin Fenix 3 is not without its drawbacks. One potential disadvantage is its size and weight. The watch is relatively bulky, which might be cumbersome for individuals with smaller wrists or those who prefer a more streamlined design. Its weight, while indicative of its solid construction, can also be a deterrent for some users, especially during prolonged wear. Another consideration is the price. The Garmin Fenix 3 falls into the higher end of the market, which might be prohibitive for budget-conscious athletes. Despite its extensive features, the investment required may not align with the needs of more casual users or those exploring entry-level options.

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Garmin Fenix 3 Review

Design

The first thing you notice about the Fenix 3 is its sheer size: the watch is really huge. However, Garmin does not try to hide it in any way, but gives the watch a brute exterior design that almost screams: I survive everything. And so in the end I have to say that I really, really like the watch.

On the front there is a round, 1.2-inch and transflective color display that can still be read well under difficult lighting conditions. The resolution is 218 × 218 pixels. For a surcharge of around $100, the display is even protected from scratches and other adversity by sapphire glass.

The Sapphire Edition also comes with a metal bracelet, otherwise Garmin supplies a rubber bracelet. The manufacturer’s accessories also include leather bracelets, with which the Fenix 3, as one of the very few sports watches, also cuts a fine figure on somewhat finer occasions. Unfortunately, the bracelets can only be replaced with a screwdriver and not with a quick release. If you want to quickly switch to rubber wristbands for sport to protect the leather, you have to do something.

In the meantime, other versions of the Fenix 3 are also available, including rose gold and titanium – or the Fenix 3 HR with an optical heart rate sensor on the back. In addition, the Fenix is 3 to 10 ATM waterproof and therefore suitable for swimming without any problems.

Service

The Fenix 3 is operated using three buttons on the left and two buttons on the right. There is a button on the left to activate the backlight – and two other buttons to scroll through lists. On the right there is a start / stop button to confirm and a back button, which is also used to mark laps during training. Plain and simple, that’s how it should be.

With the up and down buttons, the user scrolls through a vertically arranged list of health home screens. In addition to the time, there is a standard daily activity, compass, altimeter, barometer and temperature. In the PC application and in the smartphone app, it is possible to rearrange or hide the widgets.

Connectivity

The Garmin Fenix 3 offers ANT +, Bluetooth and even WiFi. The ANT + connects the watch to various accessories, such as chest straps for pulse measurement, cadence sensors for bicycles or stride sensors for shoes. It is also practical that the Fenix 3 supports several sensors at the same time – if you have several bicycles, for example, you don’t have to convert the cadence sensors every time.

The Fenix 3 connects to the smartphone via Bluetooth, and thanks to WLAN, the watch can also synchronize with the cloud when no mobile phone is in range. We had no connectivity issues during the entire Review period. Unfortunately, the Fenix 3 does not support Bluetooth sensors.

Pedometer

The Garmin Fenix 3 also serves as an activity tracker and counts the steps. You can also set a daily target that dynamically adjusts the watch if desired to motivate the wearer to move more and more. In addition, the Fenix 3 also counts the climbed floors – here you can also set a daily goal.

Furthermore, there is also an inactivity alarm that signals if you sit on your butt for too long – or if you stand still for the most part.

Sleep tracker

Those who wear the Garmin Fenix 3 at night will be rewarded with details about their sleep. The sports watch automatically determines the time of falling asleep and waking up and distinguishes between light and deep sleep. However, there are no details on REM phases. Sleep detection works quite reliably and provides exciting data in the long term.

For example, if you work on getting to bed earlier or getting up earlier, you can admire your progress in the statistics. While the weight of the Fenix 3 didn’t bother me during the day, I found the clock for bed almost too bulky.

The Garmin Fenix 3 also serves as an activity and sleep tracker.

The Fenix 3 provides the user with interesting data, for example on his running style or the VO2max value.

Heart rate sensor: HRM-Run

We tested the Fenix 3 together with Garmin’s HRM-Run pulse belt, which is also available individually from around 80 euros. In addition to a heart rate sensor, this belt also has an integrated motion sensor that provides some interesting data on the running style. The evaluation is reserved for the top models from Garmin – and of course this includes the Fenix 3. The vivoactive, for example, is limited to the pulse data in the HRM run.

This running style data then tells the user how badly he stomps and bounces, namely in the form of ground contact time and vertical movement while running. The following applies to both data: the less, the more effective the running style and the better. In addition, the HRM Run also counts the step frequency, where the highest possible values are desirable. With the HRM Run, I personally found that I stomp a lot.

Finally, the Fenix 3 also measures the endurance performance with the HRM-Run, namely in the form of the VO2max value, separately for running and cycling. The VO2max value provides information about the maximum amount of oxygen that the body can transport into the muscles under stress. After the workouts, you also get an individual recommendation for the regeneration time.

GPS

Finally, the Garmin Fenix 3 also offers an integrated GPS module – and a self-calibrating barometric altimeter. As a result, the user not only receives an image of the distance covered after his runs or bike tours, but also an altitude profile including ascent and descent meters.

I would also like to mention the virtual racer function, with which you can compete against a ghost – as you know it in car racing on the computer – either against yourself or against other users. With the live tracking feature, it is also possible to share other people live in your own workout and view the current position on the map.

In addition, there is also a trackback function that guides the user back to the starting point along the route covered so far. Particularly practical for people who like to get lost.

Swim

The Fenix 3 also has a few tricks for swimmers. With the help of the motion sensor, she not only recognizes the swimming style, but also how many trains the athlete needs for a lane, and uses this to determine the so-called Swolf value, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the efficiency.

In the open water, the Fenix 3 determines the distance covered by GPS. With the HRM-Swim and the HRM-Tri, Garmin also has heart rate belts in its range that were specially developed for swimmers and triathletes.

Apps & Co.

A big advantage of the Fenix 3 is its configurability. The Garmin Connect-IQ store has dozens of alternative watch faces, data fields for workouts, widgets for health home screens and apps. The various extensions can be installed either via the smartphone app or via the Garmin software available for Windows and Mac OS X.

From weather apps and watch faces to apps for additional sports to alternative pulse and tempo displays for workouts, there is a lot here. There are currently 91 apps, 257 workout data fields, 558 watch faces and 69 widgets, including exotics such as an advertisement for Slovak name days.

Smartphone app

And while we’re at apps: Garmin offers a mobile application for Android, iOS and Windows. Here you can evaluate the various statistics on steps, sleep, training etc. and create your own training. There is also the possibility to add equipment. And so you get a warning, for example, if you have covered too many kilometers with your running shoes and it is urgent to change.

I still find the LiveTrack function nice, with which you can share current outdoor training sessions with others. Via a link, friends and relatives can then follow live where they are in the browser.

And finally, the Garmin Fenix 3 also offers a range of smartwatch functions and, for example, displays notifications from the smartphone including individual text snippets of the notifications. The other way around, it is also possible to control the media player on the cell phone or – via a third-party app – the smartphone camera. Thumbs up.

Web interface

Garmin’s web interface Garmin Connect is probably the most convenient way to look at the training results again. Here you will find the functions of the smartphone app as well as a few extras, for example regarding the evaluation of previous training sessions. There are also a large number of predefined training plans, from 5K runs to the Olympic triathlon and the possibility to create your own training courses.

Battery pack

The Fenix 3 offers strong battery performance: According to the manufacturer, it lasts for six weeks in watch mode as an activity tracker. With activated GPS, the runtime should be 20 hours, in UltraTrac mode with reduced accuracy it is even 50 hours. The values coincide with our experience.

Conclusion

The Garmin Fenix 3 is currently the ultimate fitness watch. There is hardly a competitor who can offer such a range of functions and at the same time looks outrageously chic. However, this also has its price: the basic version of the Fenix 3 with a rubber bracelet and without a pulse sensor or pulse belt already costs $350 . This watch should be worth every penny to enthusiastic athletes.

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