Earlier this week, reports emerged of Garmin’s new flagship watch, the Garmin Fenix 8, crashing in cold water conditions.
At the time, we had just published our Garmin Fenix 8 review, which stated that while we hadn’t yet tested the dive functionality (and were planning to hand it to a recreational diver for this purpose), the watch was otherwise “rugged, expensive perfection,” one of the best Garmin watches ever, and worthy of five stars.
This was before a reader emailed me (with the subject line “Garmin Fenix 8: zero stars”) to inform me of the issue.
They also provided links to several different Reddit threads and forum posts featuring multiple users complaining about the issue. The Garmin Fenix 8, with its leakproof buttons and dive watch capabilities, reportedly crashed when submerged in liquid with a temperature below 8°C. According to the owner’s manual, the watch is able to operate in water up to 0°C.
I was a little skeptical, but I opted to test my Fenix 8 review unit very unscientifically under the conditions I had available: an ice-cold glass of water straight from the TechRadar office’s water cooler and my colleague’s generously donated Garmin Fenix 7S as a comparison test.
First, I started the Apnea Dive workout profile on the Fenix 8 and then submerged the device in cold water for 10 seconds, timed on my phone. That was all it needed: unfortunately, the watch bricked before it even came out of the water.
I was able to revive it again with a press of the On button, so it didn’t appear to have suffered any permanent damage. It immediately buzzed away with notifications again.
On the other hand, a dunk of the Fenix 7S for the same amount of time did nothing to impair it; as far as we could tell, the watch came out unscathed.
Undeterred, I tried again: I refilled the water from the same tank at the same temperature and submerged the Fenix 7S first, this time, followed by the Fenix 8, in case the water had warmed during that first submersion. Again, almost the same result: the Fenix 7S was unharmed, and the Fenix 8 shut down. This time, it made its way all the way out of the glass before crashing.
The watch restarted once again without issue. However, any attempt to swim or dive in cold water will likely cause the watch (at least, my review unit and those tested by the forum posters) to shut down, stopping the watch from tracking your dive or other activity.
Don't panic, divers: A fix may be imminent
Following the story's publication and reaching out to Garmin for comment, it’s been brought to my attention that a fix is imminent.
A post on the Garmin forums reads: “Our engineers have identified a potential concern, that may cause the watch to shut down when submerged in water. They have released the latest BETA software update version 11.81, that includes a fix for this. So if you are experiencing this concern, you may consider installing this update.”
A link to the Beta update is available here. However, this doesn't immediately solve the issue, rather it just temporarily disables the ECG/Dive functionalities.
The update post states, "the ECG and Dive features will be made available again on versions of beta software that we anticipate becoming Live updates. In other words, you will see the ECG/Dive features become enabled again in Beta software toward the end of our quarterly beta cycles. The ECG feature and Dive features will remain available with Live software updates (on compatible watches)."
So it appears Garmin is working on a solution and that it's a software issue rather than a hardware one.
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