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Amazon also have the fenix 6 for £280 as part of black friday sales.
Could I ask about fenix (or other music smart watch) experiences?
Is it usable for "other" non musical audio too?
Would it be easy to listen to podcasts, audio books or other audio, on day something like a longish hike?
I'm not really up to date with things like Spotify or Amazon music yet so not sure how easy putting this sort of stuff on it would be. Would it involve cables, or Bluetooth/wireless transfer from phone?
Would you not have your phone with you? So could you listen from that rather than the watch?
I've not put any music on my Fenix but I can control Spotify on my phone using the watch.
What kind of battery life are people getting out of Instinct Solars with the GPS turned off?
If I'm not sport tracking but am outdoors at some point in the day, my watch nets out approx zero battery use. Indoors I recon its probably got 3-4 weeks if you're not tracking
Thanks @5lab
So you'd say that using it as a watch and HR monitor outdoors it stays on pretty much as a regular solar G-Shock?
I haven't used a gshock, but it basically lasts forever
Would you not have your phone with you? So could you listen from that rather than the watch?
I guess I'm asking about the times that I wouldn't be carrying a phone.
They do advertise it's onboard music storage fairly strongly, so hopefully it's worth using.
Thinking about it, probably more likely to be running than hiking (very rarely hike without, very rarely run with a phone) but that could still be a good 2-3 hours so would be useful if I knew I could take podcasts etc.
Could I ask about fenix (or other music smart watch) experiences?
Is it usable for “other” non musical audio too?
Would it be easy to listen to podcasts, audio books or other audio, on day something like a longish hike?I’m not really up to date with things like Spotify or Amazon music yet so not sure how easy putting this sort of stuff on it would be. Would it involve cables, or Bluetooth/wireless transfer from phone?
I have the Garmin Vivoactive 3 music. I assume the music function is the same as on all Garmin watches. Links with Spotify, you have to have a spotify subscription (rather than a free account). You download to the watch (via wi-fi or bluetooth) from your recently played list of music or podcasts. You can then listen to the downloaded items without needing your phone. You can't just plug in a cable and copy music \ podcast files to the watch as you'd do with a mp3 player \ some phones.
@loum, I load podcasts from spotify onto my fenix 5 plus and while I take my phone with me, it sits in a bag and i don't use it. The watch has to be paired to your phone, and obviuosly you need a spotify acct. but once it's downloaded you can control it from the watch, with a pair of paired Bluetooth earbuds, you're good to go.
From playing around in the menus, it certainly seems like you can navigate through your library/subscribed podcasts in Spotify on the watch and choose what to download to the watch itself, rather than using the phone to control the app on a phone.
If you want to add local music files then it's done through Garmin Express with the watch connected to a PC via usb.
Thanks nickc and bails, that sounds good.
I've got an older suunto Spartan that does the sports side of things nicely but isn't holding charge like it used to do so might need replacing/upgrading soon.
Have never really liked carrying the phone running, and the newer Garmin's ability to do audio looks tempting for long slow run training.
With my Fenix 6 Pro, I just copy music across from my laptop with file manager and it plays it like an MP3 player.
There folders for music, podcasts and audio books. It all works as you would expect it too.