Hear me out before you grab your pitchfork… I was there too earlier today. I understand the feeling. Garmin’s sell has always been that you pay upfront for a lifetime of “free” features. They bundled the cost of these things with a marginal cost (i.e. maintaining the server infrastructure for Connect, mobile app development to support new OS, etc) into the price we paid at the til. In return, you weren’t buying something that would brick if you opted not to pay them $50-$100/year.  That is sort of changing… Today, they introduced a subscription feature that costs $70/year.

TBH, I don’t see anything I consider worth paying $70/year for in the subscription; given how I use the devices. Also, they don’t seem to have moved anything that was “free” behind the subscription paywall. So while emotionally, I’m not thrilled that this is a thing. It hasn’t harmed me in any way. So it’s hard for me to get too worked up about it, yet.

There are a lot of folks out their with their pitchforks making the slippery slope argument. They might be right long-term, but they aren’t correct now. So I’m going to roll with “cautiously optimistic” that Garmin will only charge people who find value in these new features, and those that don’t opt in won’t suffer because their devices keep working exactly how they used to yesterday. Below is a chart of how it splits out, I grabbed this from the Connect+ product page.

As always, DCR has excellent coverage on the topic. It’s pretty thorough, well worth a watch, but I think there’s something he missed…

Over the last few device generations Garmin stopped EOL’g hardware when a replacement device came out. So, my fēnix 7 has continued to get better; with new features, activities, blah, blah, blah in the years (plural) that I’ve owned it. This has removed most of the upgrade pressure that I, as someone who always wants my device to say “yes” to me when I ask it “can you do this?”, used to feel. This is great from a sustainability perspective. Way less e-waste. While selling or down-cycled devices to friends/family is an option, a lot of folks throw them in a drawer or in the bin. Selling it on is kind of hassle.

This strategy shift has revenue implications for Garmin. It’s hard for me to unsee that… On balance, I prefer that my watch/cycling computer get better with time. I prefer not needing to upgrade until a hardware limitation makes that necessary. If the cost of all of us getting that is borne by those who want fancy charts, better coaching, and to see their live stats on their phone – I’m OK with that. Some of those things have a marginal cost to Garmin, so I am totally OK with that. Who knows, maybe at some point Garmin will add a new sub-only feature that I will find useful. Maybe I’ll get angry then… Maybe, if I see value in it, I will even pay for it… For now though, I’m having a hard time understanding the rage after working through my initial emotional response.