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I'm trying not to feel underwhelmed by this $1100 watch

The Garmin Fenix 8 is an objectively great watch. But if I spent $1,100 on one, I'd be thrown off by how messy and familiar everything seems.

For example, the Fenix 8 LED is nice for emergencies but not especially bright, burns through your whole battery in a few hours, and makes you hold your wrist at an unnatural angle to illuminate what's in front of you — just like the Instinct 2X Solar flashlight. And while its heart rate tracking did excellently against my COROS optical armband in most cases, matching its average and keeping up with quick HR changes, it has the same infuriating issue as my Forerunner 965: When I start a hard track run without ramping up, it'll spend the first lap failing to register my faster heart rate by about 20–30 bpm, forcing me to pause and give the Fenix 8 time to find the correct data and skewing my aerobic/ anaerobic load totals. But I don't "need" it, and if I were shopping for the best Garmin watch for my needs, it'd be hard to justify spending that extra $500 for streamlined software, voice commands, and dynamic routing when the $600 Forerunner 965 has most of the same essentials.

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