Garmin Venu X1 Smartwatch

Decided between the Forerunner 970 and the Venu X1, and settled on the X1 due to the fact it is by far the slimmest Garmin smartwatch to date, and it features a huge OLED square display with a sapphire crystal lens. If you are looking for a Garmin smartwatch that can track 99.9% of the activities that you do daily, displays notifications with large text fields, and can also be worn to sleep for accurate sleep tracking, this is the one. I've worn it over the last two weeks, and have done over 22 hours of hiking/walking activities when I visited Acadia National Park. The watch tracked perfectly fine for densely wooded trails, despite not having dual-band GPS. Many have complained about shortened battery life compared to a forerunner or previous venus, without even using it, but let me tell you, the charging is convenient and fast. Topping battery off every couple of days during your morning coffee routine takes 15 minutes or less. And the watch uses about 5% of battery per hour during GPS tracking, and uses about 10-15% of battery per day including during sleep, so your realistic battery life is about 5-7 days (more workouts shorten this number). Touch interface is quite good, not apple watch smooth but smooth enough to do all the tasks needed. OS is reliable, no freezes or restarts like my previous Garmin Edge cycling GPS. I come from Garmin Epix Gen 2, which I've used for the last 3 years, and I am super excited that Garmin finally put out a ultra-slim smartwatch that can do everything that I need. The watch is extremely comfortable to wear; you don't feel it much on your wrist. The nylon band is elastic, easy to remove. If you are a sweaty person, the strap can be easily removed and cleaned and it drys out pretty quickly too (20-30min in the sun in a humid region, probably 10 min in the sun if you are in a dry region).