Sorry to hear this, but I recently had the opposite...née 920XT band broke after less than 5 months. Never had it in the pool. They sent me a new one free of charge (they should have as it was so mew)—but shout out to Garmin on that as they could have done what they just did to you.

In the past I’ve had above and beyond (even past warranty) assist with % off on née items for my hardware issues. The main Garmin issue I have is the chest straps do not work very long—about 1-1.5 years out of them. I understand both Polar and Wahoo are MUCH better chest straps.

I really think like all things, it depends who you get and what mood they are in to go above and beyond or strictly by their letter of the law for policy. Good luck & sorry to hear you’re not having success with Garmin support. After the data breach hacking/ransom a year or two ago Id think they’d go out of their way to restore faith in their company.

The Wahoo RIVAL is a good watch, but it does not do activity tracking yet. Wahoo has been continuously adding major features since its launch last fall. That may be in its future release pipeline.

Other multisport watch favorites are: COROS Pace 2, Polar Vantage M, and Suunto 5.

Funny, My 935 has done the same thing 2x in a week. I just restarted my watch. If the only issue is the steps, I wouldn't move on from Garmin. I love my Garmin watches and won't move away unless they start to suck big time.

Is the GPS function and HR working properly? To me that's the point of the watch like the fenix. I also love having the golf gps etc. I don't think there is anything better out there actually.

Call 1-800-800-1020 and Garmin will send you a refurbished unit, free of charge.

How do I know? Because I am also on my third Fenix 5 and it was purchased in March of 2018.

Don't be and asshole on the phone and I believe that you will get the same treatment I have had, repeatedly, when dealing with Garmin.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

Simple answer.
Polar.

I got fed up with Garmin for similar reasons years ago and switched to Suunto then.
Their watches are awesome, but lately they stopped activity tracking on Windows computer, which does not make me happy but may not be any issue if you are a phone or iPad guy.

How do you like the Rival as a multi sport computer. I heard it doesn’t have a mode indoor/pool swimming.

I moved to Polar (Vantage V) a couple of years ago after experiences similar to yours. To this day, I still know the Garmin wait music from memory, just to give you an indication of how many times I called their support.

It's alright. Not fantastic, but alright. And it's not Garmin, which is a big plus in my book.

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http://powerful-problem-solving.com

It is good. It does have an indoor pool swimming mode (used it). It appears to track OWS pretty well. Its auto transition is pretty cool. It hits the multisport essentials without a lot of the glitzy features. The one key feature that was absent at launch was workout. I believe that is coming soon.

Hmm, doesn’t allow structured workout? I don’t know why they released it. Seems almost unfinished.

I have a couple of Garmins. My wife has a Coros. She loves it. Battery life is crazy long.

I've been using my coros pace 2 for about a month now and I'm pretty happy with it. Though I've only used it for running since I use garmin 520 for bike and form goggles for swim. I picked it based on price and dcrainmaker's review. My main complaint is that it looks cheapish but they have other models. However, I love how small and light it is compared the the fenix.

I've also had a lot of issues with my Garmin's (920xt and 2 fenix 5). They all had issues with barometer/temperature sensor breaking right after the warranty expires (~2 years for new ones followed by ~1.5 years for the refurbished replacement). I've had to pay ~$100 for each replacement.

I'm not sure why, but Garmin seems to have few competitors and pretty much have a monopoly, which means they don't have to bust their balls in terms of reliability and quality. They seem to be a few years behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology, it took them years to finally get music on their watches, the same with Garmin pay. But the likes of companies such as Suunto simply have not been able to produce watches that do everything the Garmins do. I'd love to go with something else, but you just read the reviews and comparisons to Garmins, it's all bad...

Not a watch but I switched from Garmin after 10 ish years of the 500, 800 and 1000 series units to the Hammerhead Karoo2 head unit and couldn’t be happier. They are always trying to improve the platform but even as a work in progress, it’s already superior to my wife’s 1030. Before I bought the K2, I tried a wahoo and was so underwhelmed that I figured I’d try the K2. I’m glad I did.

Polars Flow app is best in class in terms of UI and how it presents data. Also their ecosystem JUST WORKS. There are very few bugs or software glitches that will ruin your workout or crash your device.

The problem is I just spent the last 2 years fighting with the Polar Vantage M. Coming from the Polar M430 it was a downgrade IMHO. It added a bunch of fluff like guided breathing and sleep tracking that seemed to be more of a random number generator than an actual reliable measure of the quality of my sleep. I also found the GPS on the M to be lacking. During workouts I would be running at a steady 8 minute mile pace, lose signal and watch the pace drop to 10-11 minutes per mile, and then the watch would drop the pace down to 7 minutes a mile in the space of 2 minutes. While your mile splits would be accurate it was impossible to do anything resembling a structured workout at a set pace and use the watch as a guide. I went back to my 430 as my everyday training watch and eventually after 6 years of being an absolute workhorse it gave up the ghost.

That experience meant I was pretty soured on the whole Vantage line so I looked at Coros and was impressed but I just can't dig the dial thing.(I don't like touch screens either). I'd also seen too many Garmin horror stories and frankly I don't like how they have eight thousand different watch lines all of which seem to overlap needlessly while deliberately omitting some feature that requires you to spend more money to buy a more expensive watch that has a ton of different features that you may never use.

So despite reading a bunch of lukewarm reviews I tentatively decided to give the Wahoo Rival a shot and it's a thing of beauty. All I want from my watch is for it to remove all the useless junk and BS features and just give me the data I need when I'm doing a workout. The data fields are clear and easy to glance at during a workout. The zoom feature that they brought over from the bike units is a game changer for me. It's SO easy to go from 2 fields with time and distance and zoom out to add pace. HR, calories, and AVG Pace.

I've played with the touchless transition and it's neat but I'm not sure its the super amazing feature that everyone focused on. I think the integration with the Element Bolt/Roam is much more useful everyday item for when you're doing brick workouts or just on a ride. My wife loves the live tracking functionality which all the Polar watches still lack. In short the Rival is a stripped down performance watch that's focused on training and training only, which I happen to love. I don't care that I can't install an app that lets me feed and play with a Tamagotchi on my wrist and I feel like most brands are trending towards making Apple Watch competitors that have a training component versus just making a pure training watch.

Now its not all great. The first watch had a major issue with the elevation data. I would go for a 4 mile run and show 1,200 feet of climbing and I live in central Florida. After contacting Wahoo they quickly shipped me out a new unit and I have not had any elevation problems since. The bluetooth connection from watch to phone can be a bit flakey and I've noticed that the new addition of music controls has exacerbated this issue requiring you to power off and power on the watch to reconnect it to the phone. I've also noticed that when the Rival is set to broadcast HR data to the Bolt, it will occasionally crash all of my connections, dropping my cadence sensor, heart rate sensor, and varia radar. I've turned broadcasting off for the time being and just paired the HR strap to the Bolt via ANT+ and use BT for the Rival and it seems to be playing fine thus far with no dropouts. It's clear that the Rival is an unfinished product and you can expect to see some significant glitches as they push out new features.

I don't miss structured workouts as much as I thought I would. If anything its forced me to discover that the LAP button still exists just like it did on my Timex back in high school XC. I tend to run similar routes most days so I have a pretty good idea at where each mile split is. I hit the lap button and the Rival actually has a pretty good Lap Data page where I can get all the relevant metrics. I've been doing 4 to 6 sets of longer intervals and its worked fine so far without the need for prompting. I'm supposed to go out tomorrow and do 15 x 1 minute at 5k pace with 1 minute recovery which should be a good test of how my brain handles more repeats without having the watch do it for me.

I'd have to say for the most part I'm really happy with the Rival, in fact I'm almost worried that as Wahoo adds more features to it it will screw it up!

Garmin watches have inaccurate GPS data in my area. The wrist hrm is totally unreliable. And I don't trust the chest monitor when I am cycling either.

I bought a Suunto watch.
I found it had the same GPS problem- they use the same satellites and their wrist HRM didn't work well either.

Nice review of the Rival. Have you tried it in the pool and, if so, how accurate is it's length/lap measurement? I had a Suunto 9 and it sucked in the pool and I now have a Polar Vantage V2 and its only marginally better. The V2 still inevitably misses 2-3 lengths per swim session. My training buddies have Garmin 935/945 and they indicate that they rarely miss a length/lap.

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tinman

The RIVAL was perfect for me in the pool, but I do not have tons of sessions. I think part of the issue is individual— if you have a hitch or quirk in your form that fools the watch. My Garmins have not missed a length in years. But a buddy with a 735XT gets miscounts all the time.

+1 for the Polar Vantage. I have had one for a year and half now and it served me well. Good battery life and general functionality. The additional features like training load pro, guided breathing exercises and suggested workout routines are pretty much nonsense but do no harm. The Polar Flow app and site are brilliant though and track all the data you need.

This is a problem with the new Sony chipsets most watches are using today, they’re less accurate but they’re way better for battery life. Apparently since everyone is doing an ultramarathon on a daily basis and needs 40 hours of continuous GPS recording it’s a priority for manufacturers over getting more accurate location data.

This is my 3rd Fenix too. I'm excessively friendly with their support teams, to the point where I sound absolutely delighted that my watch failed (again) and I get to talk to them. But each time it's a hassle. And mainly, the watch needs to do what it was designed to do. It's marketed as a watch for triathletes. It needs to work as one.

Really interesting, thank you! Do you like it for pool swims? Does it work well with stroke and distance tracking indoors?
And does it integrate well with their trainers? That was another negative for the Garmin for me - I was able to connect it to my Kickr but still had to use the Wahoo or the companion training apps to get good information on power.

I had a suunto, then a garmin, now I have a coros. All have their pluses. The coros seems to be most accurate in the most places, and the battery life is amazing. Generally happy with it except for track workouts. The dial is a pain for those. I've solved this problem by abandoning speedwork altogether, but that might not have been the best decision.

FWIW, and since this topic came up, garmin offered me a discount on a refurbished unit of the same model (fenix 3). I told them that if they offered me the same credit toward a new watch purchase I'd be more interested, they said no. this was via email, not phone.

For what its worth, despite some folks like yourself having the some bad luck, literally everyone I know who has tried to move away from Garmin, eventually went back to garmin.

Maybe try a forerunner model instead of a Fenix?

I've been using a 920xt for 5 years now I think, training and racing, pretty much zero issues. I'm tempted to buy something new only because my eyes are having a hard time seeing the screen, but decided to hold off since no racing this year.