Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar Hands-on

There are already plenty of smartwatch models on the market and most of them are targeted toward lifestyle and casual health & fitness. But what if you want something more rugged, something that can withstand more extreme activities like outdoor sports? That’s where Garmin comes in and its Fenix line of wearables. What we have here is the Garmin is the Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar.

One of the things I noticed about the Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar is that it’s huge. At 51mm, I kinda thought that this will look better on the wrist of The Rock. Still, it looks good, and you will certainly like it if you’re the type who prefers large wristwatches.

The bezel material is made of titanium, while the case material is made of fiber-reinforced polymer with a titanium rear cover. As for the lens, it uses what Garmin calls Power Sapphire. What it means is that it uses Sapphire Glass to cover the solar cells found on the outer ring of the screen.

Looking around the case, there are five buttons for Light, Up/Menu, Down, Start/Stop, and Back/Lap. The buttons are metal and tactile, but feel a bit shallow when pressed.

Placed North of the bezel are LEDs for the flashlight. It even comes in white or red, which comes in handy during blackouts or when camping.

For the strap, it is made of silicone. Underneath the watch, we can see the sensors and the charging port.

The Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar is a bit hefty on the wrist at 89 g. It’s not something you’ll forget that you’re wearing it but it’s comfortable and you’ll get used to it.

For the touch display, it has a 1.4-inch diameter with 280 x 280 resolution and uses a sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) panel. It’s a type of LCD that allows light to pass through and bounce back through color filters to make the screen visible with colors.

Unlike AMOLED screens in most smartwatches that require backlighting, this one is like an “always-on” screen but without the backlight and uses natural light to be visible. Don’t worry, though, if you’re in a dark environment as you can activate the backlight with a press of a button.

The only downside to this kind of screen is that it’s not as vibrant compared to AMOLED. Not to mention, the resolution is low. But it does provide a huge boost in battery life, which we’ll discuss later. There are customizable watch faces available but very limited.

Setting up the smartwatch requires the Garmin Connect app and will connect to it via Bluetooth. Some features will be downloaded via WiFi. From there you can start tweaking the features. Garmin packed the Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar with sensors and plenty of health monitor features that there are too many to list down, so we’ll mention the notable ones:

• Hear rate w/ abnormal heart rate alerts
• Respiration rate
• Pulse OX Blood Oxygen Saturation
• Fitness Age
• Body Battery Energy Monitor
• All-day stress
• Sleep
• Hydration
• Women’s Health
• GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO w/ Multi-Frequency Positioning
• Barometric Altimeter
• Compass
• Thermometer
• Gyroscope
• Accelerometer
• Step counter

Aside from the mentioned above, the Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar can provide you with smart notifications, dual grid coordinates, activity tracking features with gym activity profiles, training, planning, and analysis features, running features, golfing features, outdoor recreation (it even supports skiing, bouldering, kiteboarding, and Mountain biking), cycling features, swimming features, and kid activity tracking features.

It can even provide maps that you can use when running or biking. As I said, there are tons of features that we recommend visiting its webpage here, if you want to go into detail.

Let’s talk about the battery, the Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar can last up to 28 days on a full charge in smartwatch mode, which is amazing. Remember the solar cells around the screen? That gives the watch solar charging capabilities, which can add up to 9 days of battery life. You can also get over 3 days in GPS mode with an additional 1 day when solar charging.

At this point, we can say that the Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar is not just for regular users. The price alone with show you that. It’s for those whose activities are a bit more extreme and in need of something that can keep up. It’s for athletes and outdoorsmen. And even if you are one of them, I think this watch’s features will still exceed expectations.

The Garmin Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar is priced at PHP 56,795USD 968INR 82,046EUR 922CNY 7,048 and is available in Carbon Gray Titanium with Black Silicone Band and Black Titanium with Black Silicone Band.