Apple significantly extended the battery life of its premium smartwatches with the release of the Apple Watch Ultra 4, but Garmin still has it beat. The company has announced the Garmin Enduro 4, a new smartwatch with up to 320 hours of battery life, well exceeding the over two days the Ultra 4 manages.
That 320 hours of battery is only possible if the watch’s “activity mode” is enabled and you use it in appropriately sunny conditions—a claim that would need to be tested in a long-term review—but it’s still an impressive number. Garmin says it’s able to offer that extended battery life thanks to new software power modes it includes on the Enduro 4 and the watch’s built-in memory-in-pixel display (MIP), which helps it charge in the sun.
The watch is otherwise designed to be durable, though not as premium as Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro. The Enduro 4’s MIP display isn’t as bright and vivid as the OLED panel used on the Fenix 9 Pro, nor is its “fiber-reinforced polymer” shell as luxurious as the all-titanium finish of the Pro. Still, the Enduro 4 has 50% more RAM than Garmin included on past models, which should help the watch offer smoother map scrolling and navigation. It also includes 64GB of onboard storage, plus the scratch-resistant sapphire lens and 10ATM of water resistance the company offered on the Enduro 3.
More importantly, the Enduro 4 supports the same health and fitness tracking features Garmin included on the Fenix 9 Pro. The new watch can display stamina zones and a stamina curve to help you understand your endurance over time. The Enduro 4 also supports Garmin Epic, the company’s new way to track and summarize multiple types of activities over an extended period of time.
If having your smartwatch last for an extended trail run or a backpacking trip is your biggest concern, the Enduro 4 seems like a good fit. It’s not as expensive as the Fenix 9 Pro or as connected to your smartphone as an Apple Watch Ultra 4, but for $900, Garmin is promising a whole lot of battery life.
