If you just talk about notifications, the apple watch is better, in that you can reply without pulling out your phone, or even take the voice call, which you can't (at least afaik) on a Garmin.
If you look at Apple watch activity tracking, though, Garmin is playing a different ballgame.
Calorie counting on apple is off by 2-5x (compared to energy output measured on an erg, and running and biking are similarly _really_ incorrect on apple, and in my experience pretty spot-on with Garmin).
Reviewing an activity on apple fitness is really, _really_ coarse. You can't pick what metric is shown on the map. You can't plot a metric over time. Even something as simple as max speed? Who knows!
Apple's attempted copycat of body battery functionality in the new iOS 18 seems like it was designed by a PM that was handed 2-3 screenshots from a Garmin, shrugged, and went from that. It's wholly useless—but on Garmin, this is a valuable feature included 8 years ago in their cheapest running watches.
Some Garmin devices have a speaker and microphone so you can take a voice call using it as a Bluetooth device linked to your phone.
You can also reply to text messages with a limited set of canned responses on Android phones only. This doesn't work on iPhones because Apple has intentionally blocked third-party smart watches from being allowed to use that API in a particularly monopolistic and consumer-hostile move.
If you look at Apple watch activity tracking, though, Garmin is playing a different ballgame.
Calorie counting on apple is off by 2-5x (compared to energy output measured on an erg, and running and biking are similarly _really_ incorrect on apple, and in my experience pretty spot-on with Garmin).
Reviewing an activity on apple fitness is really, _really_ coarse. You can't pick what metric is shown on the map. You can't plot a metric over time. Even something as simple as max speed? Who knows!
Apple's attempted copycat of body battery functionality in the new iOS 18 seems like it was designed by a PM that was handed 2-3 screenshots from a Garmin, shrugged, and went from that. It's wholly useless—but on Garmin, this is a valuable feature included 8 years ago in their cheapest running watches.