In addition to its new vivofit activity tracker for kids, Garmin has unveiled the Legacy Saga Series, a pair of smartwatches that feature Star Wars imagery including character insignias and digital elements. The designs come only months ahead of the Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker movie scheduled to arrive in theaters this December.
Garmin has launched a new version of its vívofit jr. 2 fitness tracker for kids, one featuring a Star Wars theme. The new product packs a themed band with embedded Star Wars imagery, as well as a companion app that brings experiences inspired by the franchise. Kids will be able to unlock new adventures and get help with Star Wars characters, motivating them to get enough activity during the day.
Smartwatches are a dime a dozen these days, including those not even running on Wear OS by Google, many of them sporting nearly identical hardware and features. Standing out from the crowd, therefore, all boils down to how you market those features and when it comes to presentation, Garmin's new MARQ Commander might take the cake. Save for one or two features, the smartwatch almost sounds like any other but the way Garmin talks about this "tactical timepiece" makes it sound like you're reading about 007's latest toy.
We're in the midst of IFA 2019, and Garmin decided to show up to the event with a slew of new wearables in hand. In all, Garmin is launching eight different smartwatches today, many of them with a number of variants to boot. These watches all seem to have the same core feature set centered around fitness, with one or two major differences to make them stand out in the lineup.
Today Garmin pulled the veil back on its fenix 6 series of smartwatches. The watches in the fenix 6 line come with all of the improvements you'd expect in a refresh, with Garmin touting the series' larger displays, improved performance, and increased battery life in its announcement today. That's all well and good of course, but Garmin also has quite the marquee feature up its sleeve: A solar-powered watch.
Smartwatches are a dime a dozen but the majority of them seem to be targeted as a specific class of users that prefer casual or classy looking timepieces. Even those designed for active users wouldn't really look out of place in a board meeting or gala. Athletes and fitness buffs, however, need more than just a handsome smartwatch. They need one that caters to their specific lifestyle and uses cases as well. Navigation expert Garmin might deliver exactly that in the upcoming Fenix 6 series of smartwatches headed to IFA next month.
If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber and you happen to have a Garmin smartwatch on your wrist, then here's some good news: Amazon Music is landing on Garmin's smartwatch lineup today. In its announcement today, Garmin boasts that it's the "first wearable company to offer Amazon Music," so if you've been looking for a way to access your library on a smartwatch, then it sounds like Garmin is the pick.
Garmin is no longer just about GPS navigation in cars. It isn't even about golf watches. An almost unlikely player in the wearable market, Garmin has started making smartwatches and fitness wearables to jump on that still unstable industry. Despite the uncertainty and the number of players already in the market, Garmin is showing no hints of slowing down. In fact, it might have as many as six such wearable devices coming next week, and four of them have already been leaked.
When Amazon first announced the Amazon Echo smart speaker and its Alexa assistant, there were some jokes about putting it inside cars somehow. With the Echo Dot and third-party batteries, that almost became possible. Now they won't have to resort to hacks and workarounds thanks to the new Garmin DriveSmart 65 that not only gets drivers and their passengers to their destination, they can also make their shopping list on the go, all hands-free.
Garmin has a new GPS navigation device, and while smartphones may have taken over in-car directions, the Garmin Overlander aims to prove that standalone still has its place. Targeting the overlanding community, the eponymous all-in-one navigator includes not only road mapping and directions but topographical mapping, too.
Garmin today refreshed its Forerunner line of fitness tracking smartwatches from top to bottom, launching five new devices in the series at a range of different price points. There seems to be a bit of something for everyone here, whether you're looking for a relatively straightforward device that offers typical fitness tracking capabilities or you're looking for a top-end smartwatch that has a more densely packed feature list.
There is a wide variety of smartwatches in the market today but most of them fall into two categories only. One is designed to keep up with sports-minded users while the other can be worn with pride at a gala. Few smartwatches try to break out of those molds to appeal to very specific users. Garmin's new MARQ "smart tool watches" dare to be different and, in doing so, have some rather unique features to offer people with unique jobs and hobbies.