Garmin Enduro and Fēnix 6, 6 Pro and solar editions compared

What are the differences between the Garmin Enduro and the Fēnix 6 watches?

Posted on February 17, 2021 in Compared, Running

With the introduction of the Enduro a lot of discussion has been around what makes it different from a Fēnix 6 or Fēnix 6 Pro. In this article I’ll list the technical specification differences side by side and I’ll explain what these differences mean in real life.

Technical Specifications

These are the *different* technical specifications. If something is not listed they ‘all’ have it, or ‘none’ have it (or it’s so minor that I missed it). I’m not going into all the different colour, size or wrist band variations as that would make this article way too long (the 6 Pro has 28 different options alone), and the chart unreadable. I want to spare you the newspaper size chart.

	Enduro	Fēnix 6	Fēnix 6 Solar	Fēnix 6 Pro	Fēnix 6 Pro Solar
Solar charging	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅
Music Control	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Music Storage	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
Maps	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
Wifi	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
PacePro on the fly¹	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
ClimbPro on the fly¹	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
Animated Workouts	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
Screen	1.4″	1.3″	1.3″	1.3″	1.3″
Resolution (px)	280×280	260×260	260×260	260×260	260×260
Storage	64 MB	64 MB	64 MB	32 GB	32 GB
	Enduro	Fēnix 6	Fēnix 6 Solar	Fēnix 6 Pro	Fēnix 6 Pro Solar

1) The ClimbPro and Pace Pro require Maps in order to determine it on the fly. If you load a route before your workout, it does work. For all new features introduced with the Enduro, these are (or soon will be) available on the Fenix watches too.

Battery

The main ‘USP’ of the Enduro is the amazing battery life. There are so many factors here that I’ve plotted these out in a separate table. In this table, I’ve taken the declared times with Solar from Garmin for the Enduro. These numbers are a prediction based on the available light and other circumstances (battery age, temperature, etc). You should read these as ‘up to’ in optimal conditions.

	Enduro	Fēnix 6	Fēnix 6 Solar	Fēnix 6 Pro	Fēnix 6 Pro Solar
Smartwatch	65 days	14 days	16 days	21 days	24 days
Battery saver	1 year	48 days	80 days	80 days	120 days
GPS	80 hrs	36 hrs	40 hrs	60 hrs	66 hrs
Max Battery GPS	300 hrs	72 hrs	93 hrs	120 hrs	148 hrs
Expedition Mode	95 days	28 days	36 days	46 days	56 days

And to visualise, I’ve put the numbers in graphs. The Enduro really is for super endurance.

Enduro & Fenix 6 Smartwatch battery life

It should be clear that the Enduro is the winner. By far. Or, as Pierce Hawthorne would say: It’s streets ahead. Considering that the Enduro is using the same housing as the Fēnix 6 watches this is remarkable. Those gains were made by removing some small items (WiFi, storage), making the battery larger and ‘optimising the platform’. The latter is a rather ambiguous statement from Garmin and we can only speculate what it means until we open both up. Since I don’t have $1600 laying around to burn I can only guess. That guess would be: new cpu and and optimised board layout.

Weight

For the weight weenies, it’s interesting to note that the Enduro DLC-titanium is the lightest of all too at 58 grams and 72 grams for the stainless steel edition. The 6 Pro comes in at 83 grams and the Fenix 6 at 85 grams.

Conclusion

Well, in conclusion that’s about it. The Enduro is targeted at the super endurance. You pay more and get a couple features less, but a massive step in battery life. So if you’re really into long-long-long endurance or just hate charging your watch, the Enduro is for you.