Almost a year ago, my inbox was very full as people emailed, commented, and posted in droves about Garmin’s new Connect+ launch.
If you’re unfamiliar, Connect+ is a premium tier layered on top of Garmin’s existing Connect+ platform, the excellent companion app to the best Garmin watches. More than a place to view your stats, Garmin Connect is a workout planner, equipment tracker, lifestyle journal and much more.
Garmin Connect+ introduced several new features, including Active Intelligence, Garmin’s AI advisory service that provides contextual feedback on your workouts and recovery scores. It also offered an improved LiveTrack service, a performance dashboard that allowed you to view your historical data, exclusive badges, and several other small improvements and quality of life features.
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For this, Garmin charges $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$12 per month or $69.99 / £69.99 / AU$120 per year, with a one-month free trial available. This isn’t the first time Garmin has charged extra for a service, such as Garmin Golf, its InReach satellite messaging service, or Outdoor Maps+, but they’ve always had a specific purpose.
It’s hard to overestimate the number of people who started the project, perceiving it as being nickel-and-dimed for features that people thought they should already get, after spending hundreds of dollars or euros on an expensive smartwatch.
You can read our live blog about the backlash for the full story, but it’s been a crazy couple of days. Garmin Reddit posts calling for a boycott have received thousands of upvotes, and I’ve personally received hundreds of emails with lines like “If Connect+ continues, I’m definitely done with Garmin,” “greedy company,” and “All new features from now on will be behind a paywall.” And in a few years as the initial anger sets in, they’ll move more and more features behind a paywall like Strava did.
True to form, now that the furor has died down, we’re just starting to see new features locked behind the Connect+ paywall, in the form of nutritional tracking.
Vote in our Garmin Connect+ poll here
So, a year later, we follow up: are you using Garmin Connect+? If so, is it good? If not, have you given up on Garmin?
Wherever you are, we want to hear from you. Vote in our poll above and I’ll post the results next week, on the anniversary of Connect+’s launch. You can also contact me at [email protected], and I will post some of your emails with the survey results.
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