If you’ve seen my other reviews for other Garmin watches, such as the Quatix 6 and Quatix 7, then it’ll come as no surprise to hear/read that I still love this watch in its latest incarnation.

I’ll getg on to the bit about what it’s like to live with in a moment, but first, I need to talk about the strap.

For every new watch I try from Garmin though I have to  quickly remove the standard silicon strap and clip on a metal strap instead. I find the standard issue Silicon strap causes irritation as I wear the watch 24/7, at the gym, at the pool, out sailing, out rowing, cycling, sleeping and so on. It it a constant companion. So if this is how you roll , then I strongly suggest ordering a  metal band to go with it. The good thing about the  strap system is that they clip on and off in seconds. So it’s easy to switch between a sports strap and a daily strap.

I use my Quatix for everything, from sleep monitoring, to streaming my heartrate on a rowing machine at the gym, to keeping tabs on the tides, barometer, sunrise times, and a host of other features to keep me informed of my health and wellness stats.
Now, I have always preferred a simple analogue watch, but as someone with poor executive function and time blindness, I find the multiple alarms I can set throughout the day have been a huge help. The curated selection of diary alerts I allow to buzz me via the watch ensure I’m never later for a video meeting.  I get a buzz reminder and I also have multiple alarms set for the mornings to wake me up and throughout the day to give me steady stream of time checks throughout the working day. Including one to remind me to feed the dog… more on this later.
At night I have a do not disturb set and the watch turns off the bright screen and there’s a much dimmer red option displaying the time on demand. This helps with the battery life as since they switched the screens over from the MIP, that loads of people whinged about being too dark to see, but used very little battery allowing for very long battery lives and solar charging, so we now have the bright and garish amoled sapphire displays. Yes, they’re bright. Nobody is complaining about them being dim anymore. I am complaining though that they don’t go dim enough for my eyes in the middle of the night on night watch.

There’s a load of functionality I don’t get to use right now because I don’t have a fully integrated Garmin set up on my boat, but I do like being able to control my music playback from my watch. This means if I have music playing through my stereo via my phone and it’s down below on charge and I want to skip a track, play one a again or change the volume I can that from my watch.

So, there’s the Quatix 7 and the Quatix 7 Pro. What’s the difference?

Well, the display is a little bit sharper and more defined, with the sapphire glass it is a bit more robust too. And they’ve finally added a built in LED torch light. There’s a couple of new apps too related to fishing, but let me just go back to that flashlight.

I’ve tested the best head torches from so many top manufacturers. They sit around my desk and all over the place, but invariably, I take my dog out at night and forget to pick a head torch up. So I’d be in the dark, plastic bag on hand, tapping the ground, trying to find the warm bit in the dark (if you know what I mean). Except, now I have what I can only describe as the James Bond gizmo of choice for poo picking. Why have a $30 head torch when you can have a $1000 wrist watch to find that chihuahua nugget in the dark hey? I can’t help but feel smug when I light the way for others in a similar predicament.

It’s also kinda handy for lighting up a kit bag at night while trying to find your hat/gloves/headtorch when heading out for night watch. (it has both white and red functions)

If you already have a Quatix 7, then I can’t really say it’s worth upgrading to the Quatix 7 pro, but if you’re still using a Quatix 5 or maybe a 6, then it’s worth a look. I absolutely love it. I live in mine.