Sunday Runday
In this weekly column, Android Central Wearables Editor Michael Hicks talks about the world of wearables, apps, and fitness tech related to running and health, in his quest to get faster and more fit.
Garmin Connect Plus is a surprisingly useful skeleton of a strong fitness subscription. The AI is mostly a retread of the Garmin analytics you know and love, with plenty of room to improve. But it’s just window dressing next to the Performance Dashboard, coaching videos, and other features designed to give Garmin fans FOMO.
But the better Connect Plus gets and the more features it receives, the more it will piss off loyal Garmin customers already revolting over the service.
Garmin Connect Plus is arguably the most significant change Garmin has made to its business model in years. It joins the AI health and fitness trend alongside Fitbit, Samsung Health, and Strava (among others). In doing so, Garmin undermined its decade-long business model of free software paired with expensive hardware.
Rather than focus on whether or not Garmin should have made Connect Plus — or at least bundled it with recent Fenix 8 purchases or all recent Garmin watches to ease the transition — I’ll discuss how Connect Plus works in practice, what needs improvements, and where things should go from here.
Active Intelligence has a ton of room to grow
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