Apple Watch 8 is rated at 18 hours mixed usage. My Venu 2 is rated at 20 hours with the GPS on the entire time. My experience bears that out. I lose about 5% an hour battery when tracking my bike rides. Mixed usage, I'm getting 5 days out of it.

Apple said their GOAL was 18 hours. Good grief.

Yeah I had a series 7 and the battery life killed it for me. I do kind of like seeing sleep tracking data so I don't want to charge while I'm asleep, so I would basically need to charge it while in the shower. This wasn't always enough charge time.

It really introduced me to a new level of battery anxiety. I'm extremely satisfied with my garmin which lasts a week+ per charge.

It absolutely isn't the same as Apple Watch, not sure what you've been looking at.

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.

Hours?! That’s definitely not true, I am by no means a Marathon runner, but mine has definitely managed to track quite long distances.

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.

Apple Watch Ultra has juice for about 10-13 hours of active GPS activity tracking time. Non-Ultra Apple Watch does less. My Garmin Epix2 can do about 24 hours with full battery, Fenix series does a bit more.

My ex would leave on GPS tracking when we'd go out so he could re-draw his route later, and his Apple Watch would almost always be dead before dinner. Just my N+1 anecdata, and he was using an older (Series 3?) model.

most Garmin watches give you at least 1 week of battery life with 7-8h of GPS activity during that week. if you do less than 8h, you can get 1.5 weeks of battery life.

With Garmin watches, the GPS tracking is enabled when you start an activity. So you're not using it all day, it's for the hour or two that you're out doing something. My old Fenix 3HR is good for close to a week with a daily walk tracked. My Descent G1 Solar (based on the Forerunner I think) is more like a couple of weeks with activities tracked.

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.)