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Comment by atomflunder3000 | Hacker News Reader

The first thing they mention is the "great" battery life and it is still only just over 2 days, great.

The battery life during workout tracking did at least see a 3x improvement. 14 hours sounds plenty at first until you start riding your bike over long distances! 45 hours should cover most except the craziest ultra athletes, and those are probably sponsored by Garmin anyway

I haven't met anyone who is serious about cycling and not using a real bike computer.

Triathletes are more likely than most cyclists to use wrist computers over bike computers.

(Cue joke about triathletes not being serious about cycling.)

If anything triathletes are least serious about swimming

Fair enough, but they are not really cycling for 45 hours :)

If biking around 5000 km yearly is serious enough then I'm one - using only my phone to track. Since I will be taking my phone with me anyway, I don't need another device.

Hyperbole is Apple’s favorite communication style, but at this point it’s so overused that it’s just a meaningless meme. Apple’s wearable competitors blow the Apple Watch’s battery life out of the water and it’s not even close. Hyperbole is all Apple has in this race.

On the flip side, Apple blows them away on feature set, and often on data accuracy. There is give & take, different priorities for different people.

Blows them away? I haven't seen anything that is not just one or two features that other watches don't have. But all the.features require the watch to be on.

Data accuracy most certainly is not in relation to GPS which often cuts distances on the Apple Watch.

People like to complain about the GPS but I use it when running and it'll easily show me what side of the path I was on at any given point. And the path distance matches precisely with other sources of truth. Maybe there was a time when Garmin had an advantage on some of their watches but I am far from convinced that this has been true anytime in the past few years.

To be pedantic it's not just GPS anymore. Newer smartwatches from Apple and competitors generally support multiple GNSS constellations including GPS (USA), Galileo (EU), GLONASS (Russia), Beidou (China), and QZSS (Japan). Some devices also support multi-band GPS which further increases accuracy in areas with degraded satellite signals, although at the cost of higher power usage.

Tracking performance on the previous Apple Watch Ultra 3 was "solid" in an independent test. A little worse than competitors in some activities, a little better in others.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/11/apple-review-ultra-3-in-...

I’ve had a previous Apple Watch Ultra, it was nice but after playing with it for a while I used it for notifications and working out. I have a Garmin Epix Pro Gen 2 51mm that will do 31 days of being just a smartwatch and can track my multi day cycling trips. The real killer feature I didn’t know I needed until I had it is a proper led torch on my watch, the light up screen on the Apple Watch doesn’t compare.

I need to see receipts on this claim. 31 days as just a smartwatch would be a stretch. Tracking activities also during that time, based on my experience with many, many Garmin watches, would be a bridge too far. My EpixG2 will last 7-10 days, with 1.5-2 hours of daily workouts during that span. I have most power hungry features turned off, like always on display, pulseox monitor etc.

In any case, it’s longer than the AWU by a long way.

Isn’t Apple famous for faking GPS accuracy by moving the points to roads and paths using their mapping data?

I desperately wish apple would release a viable competitor to the garmin fenix line but they can't with that battery life. Garmin UX and software overall is such dogshit, and to have Apple UX with garmin raw performance (battery life, GPS tracking accuracy, activity modes) would be perfect. Apple could never though because the fenix was designed from the ground up as an embedded device microcontroller, whereas apple watch is a general purpose computer with a GPU.

I suspect the screen is also a big battery drain. I dont find color useful in a watch so perhaps a greyscale version with no GPU. Apple could definitely do 7+ day batter life if they wanted.

Yup. This tells me the AWU is not the adventure watch for me. I love my Apple Watch (8? I think?) and I love my Garmin Instinct Solar with 40d battery life. One of these is for daily wear as a communicator; the other is for weeks in the mountains or offshore.

I bought an Apple Watch recently so I can enter my workplace without much hassle (first world problems). Highly disappointing watch coming from a no-name Amazfit brand. I like my step counter, I don't care whether it's slightly off, I want to see it on my watch face - you'd safely assume it was possible, but no! So now I have to go through multiple menus and swipes to see it and it doesn't even show right away (takes several seconds at times). Don't get me started with the joke that is the battery life.

Apple Watch is probably Apple's shittiest product today.

I take it you are opposed to using non-Apple apps? I show step count on my Apple watch face.

No, I'm not opposed. I got my watch like 2 months ago and haven't really messed with it since. Just baffled that the option doesn't exist. Which app do you use for that and does it affect battery life?

Why so helpless? Maybe try and solve the problem before complaining about it.

Pedometer apps that pull from Apple Health and offer Watch face complications are a dime a dozen in the app store.

Users just find it odd that this isn't a built-in optional data field considering that step counting (pedometer) has been one of the most common smartwatch use cases for many years now.

First the complaint is that steps are not on the watch face. Then the complaint moves to it not being part of Apple's built-in complications. It seems more like nitpicking just to be contrary. The data is there and easily accessed for people who want it, and we should be happy that there are a plethora of third-party complications that can be used on the Watch.

Having basic expectations out of a smart watch isn't being nitpicky.

What's it matter if I solved the problems then complained about it after? The bottom line is the battery life is garbage and not including a pedometer as a complication is silly.

Check out Pedometer++

Thanks, will do.

My Garmin Venu 4 has 10+ days.

My Garmin Fenix has over two weeks with regular activity tracking. Wish people were more aware of these amazing devices.

My Casio F91W has 7+ years. AW are much more capable devices than Garmins, both when it comes to compute and screen - it's understandable they use more power.

Why do you need it to last longer than ~20 hours?

It’s very convenient not having to worry about your watch state of charge.

Meanwhile, 2-3 weeks on my Pebble Time 2

Meanwhile, 7 years on my F-91W

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