Honest question - How is it helpful to know a car is coming? On my commute to work I have a bike lane and 100s of cars pass me in their lane, knowing a car wouldn't be helpful, knowing a car was going to hit me also may not be helpful if I couldn't move over, exactly what is the benefit?

I have one of the Garmin varia radar lights and feel exactly the same about them.

> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?

UK; It's handy for knowing when on town or country roads without too much traffic; it can typically spot fast moving vehicles before you can hear or see them in mirrors (let alone if relying solely furtive glimpses over shoulder)

Tbh, nice as it is to be notified about approaching vehicles, what I really like is that the light flashes at proportionately faster rates in response to the speed of the approaching vehicles. The changing rate does a better job of attracting the attention of drivers than constant illumination, and is also a psychological hack that makes the driver think they are being watched [0] and consequently behave slightly better when they do pass.

Cumulatively the light/radar combination is a winner because it makes cycling more pleasant _and_ reduces the chances of getting hit by drivers.

[0] In some of the newer units they are being watched as well, as they have camera's in them - apparently unit is a bit chunky and video quality in low-light is ropey.

> I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.

With a headwind I often don’t hear cars behind me at all, so I can see the use case

Not op but I also have a varia and feel safer for it. Living in Switzerland, cycle a lot on public curvy roads in the alps. Often I don’t hear someone coming if I’m focusing on something else important - like traffic in the other direction - or I don’t realise there’s actually more than one car about to overtake which the Varia also shows. Generally turning your head around to check is a bit dodgy!

> I'm struggling to understand the need. I ride my bike every day but I don't remember the last time I was surprised by a car approaching from behind.

Not get rear-ended by a car? There's also model with a camera to collect evidence. I have the one without the camera, just the radar and a light.

> Where in the world do you live / where do you typically ride your bike? In what situations are you glad to have that radar?

Central and Eastern Europe. Whenever I share the roads with cars. Although I'm more relaxed on outdoor paths or gravel roads where I don't have to keep an eye on cars all the time.

For MTB you probably don't need it, but in road scenarios it's great.

Yeah you probably don't need it in slow moving urban traffic but I saw a video with some bike packers in Australia who used Varia. They were on rural roads shared with road trains.

Road trains a very big, move very fast and they don't stop for anyone on a bike. So knowing they are coming up on you from a distance gives you time to get off the road.

That's a very special usage case but I think any rural road with fast moving traffic would also benefit from the early warning even with just cars to contend with.

> Where in the world do you live

I’m in New Zealand. I ride in the road in town and out in the hills at the weekend.

The way I use it is to look down, see if a car is behind, then look behind before pulling out. I don’t bother looking back if there is a car close (the range must be around 100-150m I think?).

It also yells louder if the car is approaching fast. The integrated light changes how it flashes when it sees a car.

In group ride with talking etc, it’s helpful too as it usually doesn’t pick up bikes (unless the guy behind is an absolute unit) and the squawk of an approaching car is helpful for the group.

Electric cars and busses no longer sneak up on me, it’s great use of tech on a bike.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/698001/

US. I ride shoulders on semi-rural highways. Sometimes there will be traffic in the opposing lane creating enough noise that I don't hear the vehicles coming from behind. With my Varia, I get warned well before they show up. It has even detected "hidden" vehicles that I couldn't visibly see -- like a small car trailing a truck.

Buses! The front of the bus arrives much earlier than the engine up the back where most of the noise comes from

Are modified ebikes popular where you live yet? They can be very fast, very quiet and will do a lot of damage if you collide with one.

Anywhere that has cyclists sharing the road with cars.

Better but circumstance dependent. Its for rural roads, and less busy roads. Not urban traffic

You have so many negatives in your statement I had to read it 3 times as a native English speaker to realize it doesn't make sense. We can make cycling safer in multiple dimensions simultaneously: 1. we learn from the Dutch about infrastructure and integrating cycling into the transportation fabric (slow and expensive), 2. the Dutch start wearing helmets (fast and cheap).

There's so much the world can learn from the dutch when it comes to traffic

I've had multiple Instincts as well as Fenix. I am exceptionally hard on watches. I don't take them off when I'm working on anything out in the shop. The sapphire of the Fenix is not a silver bullet and the case on the Instinct does a lot more to prevent direct hits to the face than you'd think, at least in my experience.

The Instinct is also easier to polish than the sapphire. I've tried to buff out blemishes on Fenix watches I've gone to sell and have had a hard time getting them back to flawless. I've not had the same issue on any Instinct.

That being said I'm really tempted by the new Fenix Pro. I have an inReach device I take with me for backcountry snowmobiling in the mountains and I've forgotten it a time or two. I never forget my watch and always have some extra battery with me.

I just wish I could get basically the same specs as Fenix in a non-color and highly efficient display like Instinct. The 2 Solar is my daily watch and the battery life + built in flashlight make it my almost perfect watch. I don't even care about LTE but if I could get Instinct with inReach that would be a perfect setup IMO.

Garmin does a lot of things right, but pricing is not one of them. Especially given they're moving towards subscriptions which is counterintuitive to their buyer market. I really don't want anything AI in my watch.

On my Fenix 6, Bluetooth volume control broke after a few years, and now the volume slider does nothing, which the hivemind confirmed.

So, it is in fact worse than not getting upgrades, the software actually deteriorated over its lifecycle.

on the flip side, my 12 year old garmin fenix 3 still works great. I finally upgraded to an instinct crossover last year because I wanted the mechanical hands and a smaller face, but the old Fenix is still great.

Historically, in order to get support for one of the Asian languages, you typically had to buy the watch in the exact right country, not anywhere else.

So how bad is it if you're "just" eastern european? I.e. latin alphabet but extra squigglies and ofc not an en_US locale.

are you talking about the titan pg or equivalent? I've seen reviews so far saying GPS and HRM are not that accurate?

A good reminder here for people who don't do lots of activities on their watch and think that we just don't want to charge for a month.

GPS uses battery. So having a watch that can last a month, for us means it will last a couple weeks of constant running/cycling/etc.

This is in stark comparison to a smart watch.

Yeah my 7x is going to last me a very very long time.

Yep they are. And I’m not trying to say that should be ok.

But if Garmin isn’t killing it today, opening the iPhone won’t let them kill it tomorrow.

I see lots of Apple Watches. I see some Google/Samsung watches. I don’t think I’ve seen a Garmin watch. So I don’t think it’s fair to claim Apple’s policy is the only thing holding them back from being a dominant player.

Power reserve mode, not mechanical.

>When the battery level reaches 10%, you will receive a notification. At 10% you can no longer run a Respiratory Scan. When the battery reaches 0%, your watch activates power reserve mode. Only the analog clock, step, and sleep monitoring features remain available, and only for about a few days. In power reserve mode you will no longer be able to start an ECG or oxygen saturation measurement on demand via the watch display.

It only happened once or twice, I was surprised that once you charge you still see the step tracking stats when it syncs. I remember using it in this mode for over a week when I was moving and couldn't be bothered to find the charger.

> anyone who really cares about accurate heart rate data uses an electrical chest strap anyway.

I want to check, but not for exercise, for AF detection. Surely no one wears a chest strap full time.