A year ago, users of the best Garmin watches were very angry indeed. They took to platforms like Reddit in droves, filling comment sections (and my inbox) with their rage.
Why? Garmin had announced its then-new premium tier, Garmin Connect+, which asked users to pay $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$12 per month or $69.99 / £69.99 / AU$120 annually in exchange for exclusive access to new AI features like Garmin’s Active Intelligence comments, along with an enhanced performance LiveTrack service, and another enhanced LiveTrack service.
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The results
As you can see, most users are still not happy with Connect+. Out of 1,325 Garmin users, 80% of respondents (1,061) have ‘never bothered’ to sign up for Connect+. Only 12% of respondents tried Connect+ but returned to the free tier and did not continue with the service. A paltry 5% of respondents, 67 people in total, ticked “yes, I use it and it’s good”.
Our smallest group of respondents was reserved for the people who were so mad about the change that they actually switched watch brands, with 36 people out of the original 1,325 abandoning Garmin entirely in favor of an alternative.
We also had some comments and emails from people telling us why they voted the way they did and how they felt about Connect+.
One commenter said: “Garmin’s single hittified app will never get my hard earned money on top of the high cost of the hardware. The hardware is excellent, their software is bad. I’ll be moving on to another brand with my next purchase.”
Meanwhile, Max said: “I’ll stick to the free tier. If they want to push more, I’ll switch to another brand.” This approach seems to reflect the majority of Garmin users, based on our poll.
By email, Linda said that as a decade-long Garmin user, she would “take the plunge and move to Withings” if Garmin put her favorite features behind a paywall.
The best Garmin watches for all budgets
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