The fenix 3 does look nice, and 2 weeks battery in 'smartwatch' mode is a reasonable amount.

Been badly burned by Garmin in the past, but maybe I'll take a look. They seem to be competing with Suunto, but without that ridiculous iOS only thing.

The Garmin Vivoactive HR (which supports their app platform, has GPS and optical HR) was on sale for $170 on Black Friday. It periodically will go on sale for this price.

Thanks for that. Looking at the specs it seems to have equivalent battery life (ignoring GPS, which is fair), is just as water proof and generally looks like an alternative.

I'm not sure I like the looks of the thing (but then again, pictures are bad and I should get my hands on one first) and I've no idea about their app platform yet.

Do you happen to know if this works completely offline, ignoring cloud offerings? Can I track whatever I want to track and keep it on the device and/or my phone only?

> Well, they're three times the price. That's a bit hard to swallow, honestly.

Exactly, people keep bringing up Garmin as a replacement but I don't think it is. I was into Pebble for the open C API and price, which did everything I wanted. The Pebble 2 was at the limit of what I would ever pay for a smartwatch, Garmin I just won't consider as I only want a few features.

I'm sad that it is almost certain that the Pebble/fitbit blend that we will see in the future will be completely closed/proprietary which definitely doesn't help me "make awesome happen".