A year ago, users of the best Garmin watches were very angry indeed. They took to platforms like Reddit en masse and filled comment sections (and my inbox) with their fury.
For what? Garmin had announced its new premium tier, Garmin Connect+, which asked users to pay $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$12 per month or $69.99 / £69.99 / AU$120 per year in exchange for exclusive access to new AI features such as Garmin’s Active Intelligence feedback, as well as an improved LiveTrack service, performance dashboard and other items.
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The results
As you can see, most users are still not satisfied with Connect+. Out of 1,325 Garmin users, 80% of respondents (1,061) “never bothered” to sign up for Connect+. Only 12% of respondents tried Connect+, but reverted to the free tier, without continuing to use the service. Only 5% of respondents, or 67 people in total, answered “yes, I use it and it’s good.”
Our smallest group of respondents was reserved for people so excited about the change that they switched watch brands, with 36 people out of the initial 1,325 leaving Garmin entirely in favor of an alternative.
We also received comments and emails from people telling us why they voted the way they did and what they thought of Connect+.
One commenter said: “Garmin’s enshittified app will never bring back my hard-earned money on top of the high cost of hardware.” The hardware is great, their software is mediocre. I will switch to another brand on my next purchase.
Meanwhile, Max said: “I’m sticking to the free tier. If they insist more I’ll move to another brand.” This approach seems to reflect the majority of Garmin users, according to our survey.
Via email, Linda said that as a ten-year Garmin user, she would “take the hit and switch to Withings” if Garmin put her favorite features behind a paywall.
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