Review: Garmin Epix Pro (Gen 2)

There is a sad truth every outdoors person must face, which is that eventually, you have to move on from your #vanlife and get a real job. Even sponsored athletes get creaky or tear a rotator cuff eventually. You have to pay for your kids’ ski lessons somehow.

Are you, like me, similarly convinced that you are just as extreme as you ever were, and also able to afford a $1,000 sports watch? Then, my friend, Garmin’s latest Epix Pro (Gen 2) is for you. It’s the best multi-sport watch for a person who has a lot of different outdoor hobbies and a bit of disposable income. This year, it has better battery life and a wider size range to accommodate smaller wrists. Unlike the similarly-priced new Fenix 7 Pro ($900), it still has a beautiful OLED screen you can use to view many maps.

Those maps—Garmin’s gorgeous, detailed, and easy-to-use proprietary offline maps!—and the better battery life are the two reasons why I’d still recommend a Garmin over the Apple Watch Ultra (especially if you don’t have an iPhone). I found last year’s Epix to be a little bit annoying, but this year’s model is one of my favorite sports watches I’ve tested.

Like most of Garmin’s sports watches, the Epix Pro comes in several iterations—a 42-mm, 47-mm, and 51-mm case size, plus the standard and sapphire lens crystal edition. I tried the Epix Pro Sapphire in the 47-mm case size with the silicone band, which fits my 150-mm wrist. I did get the white band surprisingly dirty, which I never noticed on the black watches.

The bezel is titanium, which I was surprised to note because I did bang it up while rock climbing and there are visible scratches. The sapphire crystal, however, has held up and is still unmarked—something to keep in mind if one of your hobbies is also scraping your hands in and around rock cracks full of spiders. You can also turn off the touchscreen in the settings. I have a Fenix 7 Pro on hand here and can report that the Epix’s AMOLED screen is noticeably brighter and easier to see, both outside and inside.

Garmin claims the battery life can last 16 days in smartwatch mode; with multiple tracked activities per day, like walking, running, climbing, and ebiking, I more commonly get around 14 days. That’s totally fine! Unlike the latest Vivomove Trend, however, you still have to use Garmin’s proprietary plug-in charger. It also doesn't have a solar charging edition, like the Fenix.

As always, the number and breadth of Garmin’s features is extensive, and a little overwhelming. The newest ones on the Epix include a one-button LED flashlight at the top of the case. You can pick the intensity and whether you want it to be white or red. Its positioning makes it a much more convenient and capable little light than the ones on other screened watches. I love not having to twist my arm around or scramble for my phone or headlight while rummaging around a dark tent.

There are a bunch of new, preloaded sports, which include common ones like soccer and horseback riding. There’s also ice skating, but—I am noting this out of pique—no roller skating, which my daughter and I do twice a week. For some sports, it’s unclear why you’d need a lot of workout data. I understand I don’t particularly need heart rate measurements when I’m just spinning on a blacktop 4,000 times in a row. But if you’re going to spend this much money on a sports watch, it would be nice to be able to check off why I was active for two hours on a Thursday night.

That’s in addition to the other notable Garmin features, like sleep tracking and the daily Morning Report, where you can quickly check your sleep, the weather, and other data before you even roll out of bed. The Epix Pro is slightly less accurate at tracking sleep than the Oura ring—it normally shows me as getting a half-hour to an hour more sleep per night.

But overall, I found that other health data, like my HRV status, made for a much more accurate reflection of my body’s ability to tackle sports that day than the Oura. If I got a good amount of sleep, the Oura noted I was ready to tackle the day; the Epix Pro, on the other hand, reliably noted that my HRV status was usually unbalanced when I drank alcohol the night before (in other words, I was hungover and should probably get some rest).

In my younger days, I would regularly go for 20-mile runs with my husband with nothing but a handheld water bottle. Halfway in, I would start frantically detouring to find a Chipotle or a Panera just to get enough calories in so I could make it home. I really could've used this watch. One of the Epix Pro's new features is the Up Ahead feature, which notes points of interest and directs you to them with remarkable accuracy.

This is easy to do because the Epix Pro has a touchscreen you can use to scroll through maps. It's incredibly fast and easy to use because not only does the Epix Pro have multi-satellite support, but it also has Garmin SatIQ, which automatically toggles between different kinds of satellite support based on your environment. For example, I live in an area with a lot of tall trees and power lines that tend to foul up lesser satellite-enabled fitness trackers. I never had a problem locating my position with the Epix Pro, or noting my minute shifts in position whenever I paused a run, wandered around to stretch, and then restarted.

You can now also access maps and points of interest with WatchOS 10 and the Apple Watch Ultra if you have an iPhone, but Garmin started out as a navigation company, and … well, it does navigation really well. Do you want to check out topographical contours, have preloaded ski resorts, and find Chipotle? Done. Halfway through a run, I clicked through Navigation, Points of Interest, and scrolled through Food & Drink options. I selected a nearby coffee shop and watched interestingly as the distance lessened, foot by accurate foot. Once inside, you can pay for your muffin via contactless Garmin Pay!

As someone who runs almost every day, the running features on the Epix Pro have gotten even more extensive. Now there’s a new hill score, which tracks your VO₂ max and your elevation gain to measure your ability to tackle hills. There’s also your endurance score, which takes into account your running and hiking workouts and is different from your Body Battery measurement or fitness age in that it specifically addresses your ability to run long distances.

Over the past four weeks, I’ve improved both of these metrics by following Garmin’s suggested running workouts, which seem to tally roughly with an 80/20 training plan (80 percent low intensity, 20 percent high intensity). Apple has come a long way, but clicking on the day's suggested workout is still easier than customizing my workouts with the Apple Watch. For example, even if you’re going at the wrong pace, the Epix Pro just notes when you’re in the right heart rate zone; it doesn’t ding you constantly when you step outside your workout parameters, as you inevitably will if you run outside and, you know, hit stoplights or hills.

There is also a new weather overlay on the maps, which you’ll need your phone for, and a night shift mode (the Apple Watch Ultra has this as well). I do have more connectivity issues with the Epix Pro than with the Apple Watch Ultra, but that’s to be expected when the Epix Pro is much more of a standalone unit and not so intimately tied to the use of your phone.

Summer in Oregon is amazing. It’s why we live here—on any given day, I can bike 20 miles or run 10 on a trail in the woods; meet up with a friend at the boat launch by our house to paddleboard, watch the sunset, and drink a beer; or drive 20 minutes to rock climb on a sunny afternoon. But it’s a little ridiculous. If you’re doing this many sports, you are (I am) not good at any of them, especially if you’re also balancing childcare and a full-time job.

When I run one day, bike the next, and climb the day after, I'm not really working toward anything besides having a good time. In fact, I prompted my climbing partner to shout that she had no intention of ever wearing a Garmin, or ever climbing with me again, if I didn’t stop standing around tapping out the number of falls I took on my stupid expensive little watch. There are plenty of other more affordable options that will fit your needs, including many other Garmins.

Still, if you also do a lot of sports, love to spend time in the backcountry, check all your smartphone notifications, and pay for emergency snacks, there’s no watch that’s better, especially if you have an Android phone. That is, until Garmin comes out with the next one next year.