Garmin Announces New Wearables For 2015

Published January 6, 2015 01:20PM

These watches attempt to combine performance capabilities with wear-all-the-time fashion.

Garmin has opened up 2015 with a bang, announcing three new watches that will hit the market this spring.

With the vivoactive and the fenix 3, Garmin is attempting to blend performance wear and all-day wear into one watch—with running as one of the target markets. The epix is a whole new animal—the first-of-its-kind hands-free navigation device for your wrist.

The most affordable of the three, the vivoactive, offers all of the GPS essentials for runners and triathletes—pace, time and distance, an accelerometer when GPS is unavailable, as well as bells and whistles like vibration alerts for heart rate and pace. There are also programs to target cyclists, golfers, swimmers and more.

In addition, vivoactive has 10 hours of battery life when GPS is on, and three weeks when GPS is off. Its suggested retail price is $249, jumping to $299 with a heart-rate monitor.

For the more high-end wearable, the fenix 3 ($499, or $549 with a heart-rate monitor) is a rugged alternative that, as Garmin boasts, “suits both the outdoors and the boardroom.” It has a highly sophisticated navigation toolset with both GPS and GLONASS capabilities, impressive battery life (20 hours in GPS mode, six weeks in watch mode) and a color display with an LED backlight, among many other perks.

“Premium materials, a rugged aesthetic and smartwatch capabilities make fēnix 3 the perfect watch for someone who lives a rigorous lifestyle,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice president of worldwide sales. “Designed to handle even the most rugged conditions, fēnix 3 provides a comprehensive multisport feature set that can be fully customized to the user, making it easy to transition into everyday activities.

The epix, meanwhile, is marketed more toward outdoor enthusiasts. It’s preloaded with a worldwide shaded relief basemap, 8 gigs of memory for additional maps and an altimeter, barometer and compass.

For runners, the epix can offer the traditional GPS training data, as well as VO2 max estimates and other running dynamics such as cadence, vertical oscillation and ground contact time.

Epix will have a suggested retail price of $549, rising to $599 with Garmin’s detailed TOPO US 100K maps included.