Garmin Enduro – Everything you need to know

The Garmin Enduro is Garmin’s ultimate long-lasting Multisport GPS watch. This battery is honestly impressive, considering Garmin hasn’t made a ludicrously heavy or oversized watch face. Garmin loves making highly specialised versions of their fenix 6 series aka, the Quatix 6, d2 delta, descent Mk2i, MARQ series, tactix delta, etc. The Enduro is no exception; it’s a repurposed fenix 6X Pro Solar, so it runs on the same software and design-wise looks almost the same. It does lose some interesting features to achieve a long-lasting battery life.

Give me the skinny

Unlike this quick summary, the Enduro keeps going and going and going. Realistically battery life is the only significant feature of this watch. These are the battery specs:

*Solar charging, assuming all-day wear with 3 hours per day outside in 50,000 lux conditions

**Solar charging, assuming use in 50,000 lux conditions

Garmin has done some serious magic with their battery modes giving the user a huge range of options depending on your purpose. Now while, for the most part, the Enduro is just a slightly redesigned fenix 6, there are a couple of additional differences. The Enduro watch models do not include the following:

• Wi-Fi Sync functionality
• Music storage
• Workout Animations
• Mapping Features: Trendline Popularity Routing, Round-trip course creator, Golf Maps*, Ski Resort maps
• Golfing Features

*Golfing maps can be downloaded from your phone to the watch.

There are a couple more niche differences which I’ll outline below if you’re interested, but the features above are the significant differences. The Enduro also comes with an Ultrafit nylon strap which during the peak fenix 3HR popularity were prevalent.

*As of writing this, the fenix 6 models don’t come with some software features available on the Enduro at launch, but these features will be rolled out to the fenix 6 models. These features include ClimbPro 2.0, VO2 Max (Trail Run), Ultra Run Rest Timer.

Hardware and Design differences between the Enduro models

The Enduro has two different models available, a black version which is slightly more expensive than the silver version. The price difference stems from the material used for the case on the Black version. Garmin opted to use DLC (Diamond-like carbon) coated titanium, which is lighter than stainless steel. The DLC version is also much more resistant to scratches.

Garmin Enduro - Carbon Grey DLC with Black UltraFit Nylon Strap (010-02408-01) - weight 56g (case only 52g)

Garmin Enduro - Steel with Grey UltraFit Nylon Strap ( 010-02408-00) weighs 72g (case only: 66g)

The fenix 6X Pro Solar has almost the same body as the Carbon Grey model, but the silicone band included on the fenix 6 models are heavier than the Ultrafit nylon bands; the fenix 6X Pro solar model weighs in at 82g (54g with only the case). Realistically these numbers may be off a little bit, but the difference should only represent a couple of grams.

Other than the weight, the only other hardware difference is the colour; the stainless steel appears grey while the titanium model appears closer to black though it's labelled as grey.  The stainless option also comes with a grey nylon band, while the titanium model comes with a black nylon band.

The Enduro is button operated with no touchscreen functionality on this model. The 5 button layout is exactly the same as the fenix 6 style.

How to get even more out of your battery life on the Garmin Enduro

Considering this watch's battery focus, I'll detail each watch mode and battery-draining factors that impact fitness watches. The Enduro comes with 5 different battery 'modes' out of the box, but there are additional options to tweak your battery further. As a side note, a lot of these tips can be applied to any multisport GPS watch. 

Smartwatch mode (Up to 50/65 days with solar*): Garmin words this a little confusingly as they state that the watch is tracking activities, but this activity tracking is only your daily activities like step count, stair count, Heart rate tracking, intensity minutes, sleep tracking, etc. This mode is generally the default and won't use the GPS unless you start a specific activity that uses GPS tracking (any outdoor recreation activity will ask for GPS connection**). This mode still connects to your phone via Bluetooth, so you will still have access to all the typical smart features (notifications, music controls, incoming calls, etc.).

*Most Garmin outdoor activities ask for GPS tracking, but you don't actually need to allow GPS tracking for the activity to still track your health and performance stats. Not using GPS or limiting GPS usage will provide an increase in your battery life performance.

Battery Saver Watch Mode (Up to 130 days/1 years with solar*): This is dependent on what tracking features you're willing to lose to increase the battery. You have the following options:

• Select a low-power watch face -watch face updates once per minute
• Select Phone - disconnect from your paired phone
• Activity Tracking - turn off all-day tracking (including steps, floors climbed, intensity minutes, sleep tracking and move IQ events)
• Wrist Heart Rate - disables the optical heart rate tracker.
• Backlight - disables the watches automatic backlight.
• During Sleep - automatically set your watch to battery saver mode during your designated sleep hours. Your sleep hours are designated on Garmin connect app in the user settings.

Each option will update with how much battery you're saving by adjusting this setting.

GPS (up to 70 hours/80 hours with solar***): This isn't really a mode, more of an indicator of how much battery is consumed by using GPS consistently.

Max Battery GPS Mode (Up to 200 hours/300 hours with solar***): This mode utilises UltraTrac, which essentially records fewer GPS tracking points and sensor data points. It also implements other battery saving options like disabling the HR sensor and certain accessories.

Expedition GPS Activity mode (Up to 65 days/95 days with solar**):  This mode disables almost everything about the watch except that it turns itself back on to take a GPS tracking point once per hour.

• **Solar charging, assuming all-day wear with 3 hours per day outside in 50,000 lux conditions
• ***Solar charging, assuming use in 50,000 lux conditions

As if all the above wasn't enough, you can do a couple of additional things like turning off Bluetooth when not using the 'connected features'. You can disable activity tracking and run a watch face that doesn't update every second. Furthermore, disabling Pulse Ox from automatic and even sleep would add a chunk of time to your battery life.

Software Features

At its core, the Garmin Enduro is a multisport GPS watch designed for athletes. It comes preloaded with many features that are becoming pretty much standard on fitness watches these days.

Vo2 Max 2.0

The Enduro does come with Garmin's VO2 Max tracking system based on several factors that largely influence your 'rating'. It tries to determine how much 'effort' you put in for an activity. It uses many different information points to get this rating like HR, elevation, information about the activity, duration, speed. These information points increase if you use additional accessory sensors during your activity. All that said, Garmin's VO2 Max system is fairly robust and helps to ensure your tracking your performance correctly. The Enduro comes preloaded with the new Vo2 Max 2.0 software, which now includes trail running. Trail running is given a special designation due to an increased number of environmental conditions (elevation, terrain) that may impact your 'effort' expended on that activity. If it wasn't specially considered, the watch might incorrectly underestimate your Vo2 max performance as it won't understand the additional factors that make trail running tougher.

Optical Heart Rate and Pulse Ox

The Enduro comes with Garmin's optical heart rate tracker and blood oxygen saturation sensor (Pulse Ox). These sensors work separately, but their information combined can provide a lot of detail about your health, training performance, how well you've recovered and a whole bunch more. Garmin has really gone in deep on using the Pulse Ox and optical HR sensor to give you detailed information on your training load areas and recovery information. Similar to the way VO2 Max works, your watch takes several different data points and brings them all together to give you a meaningful information dump. The best place to see how all this information coalesces into actual workable information is on your Performance metrics and recovery advisor widgets.

The Load focus feature tracking what type and level of activity you've been doing and whether you're hitting your target in that area. This information, coupled with the data from pulse ox and the HR sensor, fills out the widgets for Recovery, Load Focus, Sleep quality scoring, and many more.

The Enduro also comes with your standard smartwatch features, including smartphone notifications, music controls, weather, etc. These are pretty stock standard these days, so I won't go into depth about all the smart features on this watch.

Accessories and Compatibility

The Enduro is compatible with all 26mm Qucikfit Bands, ANT+ or Bluetooth Garmin sensors and HRM straps. You can find a full list of compatible accessories on this page.

Summary

The Enduro is designed for a particular audience, and that’s a user that wants longer battery life at any cost. It’s currently priced the same as a fenix 6X Pro Solar, so the choice between them primarily comes down to if you prefer the mapping functionality, music storage and a couple more quality of life features or increased battery life.