Garmin conducts themselves really well, too. They make good stuff and do little to lock it down: you don't have to use their cloud shit if you don't want (I do use it and like it), they created a peripheral standard in ANT+ that became widely adopted, without actually privileging their own stuff, etc.
Are you talking about Garmin Express?
If so, a "little clunky" would be a massive understatement based on my experience...
I love my Garmin watch, but I wish the Garmin software was lot more...usable.
I wear my Garmin all day, and charge it every other week. Physical buttons are a game changer, and the activity tracking software feels like it was made by someone that actually uses it.
And battery life...I can put it in low power mode and it just works as a watch until I want to record an activity. And it has power for ~a month that way.
The said they'd replace it for free and gave me a label to download (great!) However, I was travelling and the label wasn't valid for where I was. I asked if I could send it myself or get the label re-allocated when I got back (it had a time limit).
We then exchanged a dozen or so emails where Garmin CS kept ignoring my suggestions and giving me stupid instructions (terrible) until we eventually agreed they'd give me another label when I got back (ok).
I got back home and requested another label. CS demanded payment equivalent to the cost of a new watch (terrible!) I repeatedly asked why they were suddenly asking for payment when they'd previously offered it for free and they kept ignoring the question (argh!)
I'd have been much less annoyed if they'd just said up front that it was out of warranty, as then I wouldn't have wasted weeks and dozens of emails.
I eventually noticed that the original label still seemed to be valid, so I took up their original offer, sent my watch off and got an apparently new replacement within a day or two (great! I think.)
So, very mixed views! It's a lot like trying to write a Garmin app. They've got some nice API documentation (with a tutorial) but very incomplete as soon as you try to do something non-trivial.
Looking at the Garmin specs, the two-week battery life is sans-GPS. With GPS enabled the battery life is the same as the Apple Watch.
Apple said their GOAL was 18 hours. Good grief.
It really introduced me to a new level of battery anxiety. I'm extremely satisfied with my garmin which lasts a week+ per charge.
Apple Watch lasts hours with active GPS tracking while Garmin will last for a day (or even several days when in so-called Expedition mode).
Nothing from Apple comes close to Garmin's battery life at same usage.
Although the two are not directly comparable of course, when is more of a fitness watch, the other is a general smart watch with fitness functionality.
There are quite a few settings that you can tweak as well, depending on the model of watch. My Descent has most things turned on during the day, but switches most off automatically using a power-save mode configured to match the "sleep" time on my phone. I think if it's set to minimum power usage, it's closer to a couple months. (Estimated battery time is typically shown in the watch face.)
Just get one without a screen. Iirc there are a bunch of G SHOCK digital watches that can show phone notifications. You can even get solar for a never ending battery life
I use a Garmin smartwatch. One of the surprising things about Garmin is that they don't have a proper app store. They have an app where you can load apps into your watch, but it's rather crippled by having no payment system.
That would be fine if all the apps are free, but they're not: a lot of the prettier watch faces (for example) expect cash - but there's no easy way to pay for them. I recently added a watch face which stopped working after a few days because the author wanted cash sent through some dubious third party website.
I presume they do this to avoid issues with Android / Apple rules about payment, but it's a poor experience.