11 December 2023
It’s December – and you know what that means: It’s time for the annual (and sprawling) – Sportswatch Year in Review video! This marks half a decade in a row of this annual video, where Des of DesFit, and I, sit down and pick-apart how the year went for sports watches.
This is now the 5th year in a row, and with it – by far the biggest and most epic year yet in terms of the number of watches that came out. With about 22 watches this year, it was a very strong year. But in some ways, the strength of the year is better measured by just how good so many of these releases were – and also, how big a shift it was this year for some of these companies in terms of technological shifts. And in some cases, also very jumps up technologically or platform-wise.
Here’s all the chapters in the video, diving into each of the watches or major announcements individually. You can click on any of these to be taken right to that section. There’s plenty of entertaining nuggets along the way, though one notable one is a discussion both of us ending up having within the Fenix 7 Pro & Epix Pro sections on what the future might look like naming-wise, as well as product-wise for Epix/Fenix/Enduro. Your head might hurt a bit (ours certainly does).
0:00 Trends of 2023
2:57 Garmin ECG on Venu 2 Plus
5:21 Garmin vivomove Trend
7:43 Garmin Forerunner 265
13:03 Garmin Forerunner 965
18:22 Casio G-Shock Move GBD-H2000
23:19 Garmin Instinct 2X
26:56 Suunto Vertical
33:13 Mobvoi Ticwatch Pro 5
38:24 Garmin Fenix 7 Pro
45:16 Garmin Epix Pro
50:37 Apple Watch WatchOS 10 New Features
52:35 Amazfit Cheetah
56:26 Samsung Galaxy Watch 6
1:01:48 COROS Pace 3
1:04:07 Garmin Venu 3
1:08:02 Apple Watch Ultra 2 / Apple Watch Series 9
1:15:40 Garmin vivoactive 5
1:18:17 Fitbit Charge 6
1:22:21 Google Pixel Watch 2
1:25:42 Garmin Tactix 7 AMOLED
1:29:07 Suunto Race
1:33:01 Polar Vantage V3
1:38:18 Garmin Descent Mk3 / Garmin MARQ Carbon
1:39:12 Final Thoughts
And while a 1 hour 45 minute video might seem long, they’re specifically designed to be put on in the background – akin to a podcast. Thus, feel free to just listen in the background while pretending to do work. Thus far, the formula seems to be popular, with last year’s 2022 video having topped 400,000 views, 2021 at 481,000 views, 2020 at 443,000 views, and so on…
As usual, for each watch, we talk through what worked well, and what didn’t work. As well as how we think things might change going forward (both at the product level and industry level). And obviously, we included the bloopers at the end as well. Simply a requirement for this annual video series.
Give it a watch (or at listen), I think you’ll find it a bit addicting, especially if you’re a sports tech or watch geek.
Thanks for watching!