It's not about the money, man. At a price like $800 you could hire out a personal trainer for 3 months of twice weekly sessions. No way some wrist gadget is going to do the average computer weenie more good than receiving regularly scheduled and personally tailored training regimens.

Given that most weenies aren't crazy about regular people (especially the fitness types), that the watch lasts more than 3 months, and that weenies love dense character stat screens and leveling, I really could not disagree more. It's a borderline science fiction cyborg health tracking device.

Also, for most of the weenies here, an $800 purchase isn't too rough. They have decent $500 and $300 dollar options, but the available amount stats and tracking goes down.

I don't know what kind of computer weenies you know but speaking for myself: needing to interact with someone to get exercise would add a major hurdle for me. OTOH, I'm really getting in to minmaxing myself in Garmin...

It's not always black and white. I have a high end Garmin and pay quite a bit for personal training. Personally if I was forced between the two, I'd pick the Garmin and all the functions/training regimens it contains. However, I'm the type of person that gets a lot of joy from being outdoors mountain biking or trail running. Spent years in the gym getting big and all that, but it just doesn't do it for me like shredding down steep embankments or hitting large gaps on a bike does, examining all my data and stats afterwards.

IMO, it's all about what drives someone - if they are going to be more motivated by someone training them, then they should do that. But if they are going to have more longevity by paying for an overpriced watch, maybe that's the better choice. Maybe even both? One thing is for sure - speaking in absolutes doesn't apply here.

Just saw this, but for others wanted to add that you don't need the $800 watch for access to most of the health and fitness metrics and supporting features.

Pretty much any of the more recent Forerunner series will do. The Forerunner 165 starts at $250 and the Forerunner 255 has been discounted to this level several times as well. They both have nearly all the available metrics and many sports modes, as well as triathlon modes most of us probably never need. They sync with the same (free) Garmin Connect smartphone app and cloud service.

So with any of these watches, you can sample the Garmin features. Upgrading to a more expensive watch later would mostly be for case material and size, aesthetics, or conspicuous consumption reasons.

The biggest functional difference between their lower price and expensive watches is that they limit on-watch mapping to only the expensive watches starting around $400-600 when on sale. The cheaper watches can only show a "breadcrumb" trail of your path in an ongoing activity, but no mapping of the surrounding terrain, roads, or landmarks.

There is also a funny distinction where their "outdoor" watches work a bit differently than their "health fitness" watches, developed in separate product divisions. But, these differences seem to be narrowing in recent years.

The other major feature tier is "music" which is a roughly $50-100 premium for the Forerunner 165 and 255 having non-music and music variants. This is where the watch can store and play music through bluetooth headphones, without a phone being present.