Garmin Takes Aim At Endurance Athletes And Golfers With Two New Flagship Watches

Garmin has unveiled two new premium smartwatches. The Enduro 4 targets ultra-endurance athletes and adventurers, while the new Approach S72 takes aim at serious golfers.

The Enduro 4  retains the Enduro 3’s focus on extreme battery life, but gains additional memory, faster mapping and new training features.

The headline specification is battery life. Garmin claims the Enduro 4 can deliver up to 90 days in smartwatch mode with solar charging, while activity tracking can run for up to 320 hours in its extended mode. The watch is designed for runners, hikers and endurance athletes who may spend days away from a charger. 

On the inside, Garmin has doubled storage to 64GB and increased RAM by 50%. These upgrades are designed to improve the handling of maps, music and other onboard content. Garmin has also introduced an updated mapping engine that it says enables map panning to be around 30% faster, along with a new perspective view which gives more detail ahead of the wearer’s route.

The Enduro 4 also adds new training capabilities, including grade-adjusted pace targets and enhanced stamina tools. There are also expanded features for a range of other activities, like indoor rowing, and the watch continues to support more than 100 activity profiles.

The 51mm Enduro 4 features a titanium bezel, sapphire lens and fibre-reinforced polymer case, along with Garmin’s solar-charging Power Sapphire display. It is priced at $1,449.

Garmin’s S72 golf watch range.

At the same time Garmin has also launched the Approach S72, its new flagship golf smartwatch.

The S72 is available in 43mm and 47mm versions and combines an AMOLED display with a titanium bezel, sapphire lens and ComfortFit fabric band. Garmin has added biometric golf data to the model, which allows players to review how their heart rate changed during a round. 

New golf features include on-wrist swing metrics that cover hand speed, backswing length and wrist rotation, along with tools that read the green, driving-range tracking and more detailed putting analytics. An active Garmin Golf Membership is required for some of the advanced green-reading features.

The S72 also moves further into smartwatch territory with the addition of a speaker and microphone for calls and voice commands, as well as featuring a built-in torch. Its battery life is rated at up to 20 hours during GPS activity and up to 16 days with GPS switched off. 

The two launches add to Garmin’s broad smartwatch portfolio, ranging from everyday health and fitness devices through to highly specialised products for endurance athletes and golfers.