Garmin fenix 8 Review: The Everything Watch, at an Everything Price

The fenix 8 is Garmin's flagship multisport watch, and it arrived in August 2024 as the first fenix you can dive with, talk to, and read in bright sun on a proper AMOLED panel. The 47mm model reviewed here sells for around £620 on Amazon UK, which puts it level with a Forerunner 970 and well above what most people need to spend on a running watch. Whether that's good value depends entirely on how much of the watch you'll use.

What makes it different from the Forerunner line is hardware rather than software. A stainless steel bezel, leakproof metal buttons, a 40 metre dive rating and a built-in speaker and mic sit on top of the same training platform. If none of that matters to you, save the money.

Who it is for

Trail runners, triathletes, hikers, skiers and anyone who swims or dives will use more of this watch than they expect. So will people who want a single device to survive five years of abuse rather than replacing a plastic watch every two.

Road runners who track their mileage, do the occasional threshold session and want their sleep score in the morning are paying for capability they'll never open. The Forerunner 265 covers that use case for less than half the money, and the Forerunner 965 sits neatly between the two.

Build and screen

The steel bezel and metal buttons are the reason this weighs what it weighs, and the reason it will still look presentable after two years of scraping through doorframes. Garmin redesigned the buttons for the fenix 8 so they seal properly, which is what unlocked the dive rating; a small engineering change with a real consequence.

The 1.4in AMOLED is the same technology that made the Forerunner 965 such an easy sell. Text is sharp, maps are readable at a glance mid-run, and in direct summer sun it stays legible where older memory-in-pixel screens needed a torch angle. Set always-on and it looks like a proper watch. Set it to gesture-wake and you'll get noticeably more days per charge.

Training features

Garmin's training platform is the reason people stay in this ecosystem for a decade. Training readiness pulls together sleep quality, recovery time, training load and HRV status into a single number each morning, and after a few weeks it becomes uncomfortably accurate about whether you should push. Real-time stamina during a run tells you how much you have left rather than how much you've done, which changes how you pace long efforts.

Strength training gets proper attention too, with guided plans and rep counting that works well enough on machines and barbell lifts, less well on anything with an unusual bar path. The NHS recommends strengthening work covering all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and having those sessions logged next to your runs makes the balance visible.

The honest caveat is heart rate. Optical sensors have improved a lot, and this one holds steady efforts well, but a 2019 study in Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy comparing wearables against ECG found chest straps sitting at a concordance of 0.99 while wrist-worn devices ranged from 0.52 to 0.80. Devices have moved on since, but the physics haven't: wrist movement and cold skin still upset optical readings. If your intervals depend on zones, pair a strap. Our heart rate monitor guide covers the options.

Battery in practice

Sixteen days and 47 hours are the headline numbers, and both assume settings most people won't run. With the always-on display active, smartphone notifications arriving all day, Pulse Ox tracking overnight and an hour of multi-band GPS daily, a week is a realistic expectation. Turn the always-on display off and you'll comfortably clear ten days.

That's still four or five times what a smartwatch from Apple or Samsung manages, and it means you can do a weekend in the hills without carrying a charger. Anyone chasing genuine expedition battery life should look at the solar MIP version instead, which trades the beautiful screen for weeks of running time.

Speaker, mic and the flashlight

Taking a call from your wrist is a party trick until the one time you're driving with muddy hands. More useful is the off-grid voice command feature, which lets you control the watch with no phone nearby, and the voice notes function for recording a thought mid-run.

The LED flashlight sounds like marketing until winter, when you use it every single week: finding a headtorch in a dark car boot, checking a gate latch, or setting the red strobe mode on a lane with no pavement. Garmin was right to keep it.

Value

At around £620 the fenix 8 costs about the same as a Forerunner 970 and roughly double a Forerunner 265. What the extra money buys over the Forerunner line is durability, dive capability, audio and the metal build. What it does not buy is better running data, because the software underneath is largely shared.

That makes the decision refreshingly clear. Multisport athletes, hikers and divers get their money's worth. Runners who want the best running watch should look at a Forerunner and spend the difference on shoes or a decent turbo trainer. If you're kitting out a home setup around the watch, our treadmill guides and the Venu 3 review cover the lifestyle end of the range.