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Comment by dingaling | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like the perfect use-case for big-small processors. A power-sipper for routine 99.99% of operations and a more powerful beast for the CPU intensive ops.

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It's mostly because Garmin wants to maximize profits by sticking to old CPUs. The Coros watches (from what I've heard, the same applies to Suunto and Polar) are fast.

This has been an issue across the whole Garmin product line. E.g. the Garmin eTrex 32x from 2019 still used the same CPU as the eTrex 30 from 2011. 8 years without a CPU update. And the eTrex was already had miserably slow map rendering in 2011 with maps from that year.

> It's mostly because Garmin wants to maximize profits

I see people riding bikes worth tens of thousands regularly. They should try a top tier models and see what happens.

One of the benefits of these old eTrex models is that they run on AA's, so they're used for things like long distance cycling (across countries).

I don't know if there are top tier models that run on replaceable batteries you can get at any gas station.

They have solar ones, but judging by reviews, they get about 10 minutes extra battery life per hour in the sun.

Although Coros watches are fast, the Coros DURA bike computer is pretty slow when re-rendering maps. Naturally, companies can still choose between how fast the CPU is versus how long the battery life is (100+ hours on the Coros DURA I believe).

Yes, this ships in basically every smartwatch since the Snapdragon Wear 3100 launched in 2018.

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