We're six months into 2020 already, and I think we can all agree what a year it has been so far. Everyday lives across the globe have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic which is still spreading amongst us this very moment. Global supply chains have been disrupted, bilateral relations have turned sour, politicians have tried doing everything to deny the existence when COVID-19 was still not present in their own countries, and several high profile politicians and actors have even caught the virus.
The lockdown eventually came, when countries realized they had to do something before the entire population of their countries caught the virus. Hoarding behaviors sprang up first in Asia, while westerners derided the survival mindset of Asian countries. Before long, the very same behavior was observed in western countries where the most severe wave of the virus was seen. For awhile, everyone was trying to get used to the life of lockdown; shops and malls were closed across the world, as people ate and worked from home. Things were starting to stabilize. 'No', said the powers that be, we're not ready for peace yet. And thus, after an act of police brutality, protests and riots began USA. Fueled by the pent-up frustration of having to stay home for the last three months, social unrest got to an all-time high and riots spread to the streets across the country, as were looters looking to cash in on the chaos. That wasn't the only thing that was at an all-time high though; stock markets around the world recovered from what must have been the shortest bear market. Whether it was the immense stimulus packages around the world that was artificially propping up asset prices or not is god's guess. As if economic outlook does not matter anymore, stock indices rose to record highs leaving behind their footing in reality, and behave as if they had a mind of their own.
Meanwhile back in reality, the economic engine has had a spanner thrown into the works and the aviation and tourism industry is basically left in limbo while they're burning cash to pay off fixed costs and expenses every day while barely generating any revenues. A good chunk of employees in these sectors have been forced to severely reduce spending in fear of getting their jobs cut anytime, which is a process that is well underway as employers in aviation, tourism and F&B are declaring bankruptcy left and right and choosing to close for good. This in turn leads to less consumer spending as the reduced spending from people in all these affected sectors mean less earnings for someone else. The economic engine is being shaken to its very roots. At this point, it's hard to say what might come next, but if I had to I'd bet heavily on the effects of climate change. The consequences of mankind's actions for the last 100+ years is fast catching up with us.
What to do in tumultuous times like these? If you were thinking that it's about keeping your head down, working hard to retain your job, learning new skills, you'd be somewhat correct. More obviously though, it's to buy a new watch. Don't forget that this is The Watch Post, after all (please note that I'm not advocating you spend your money frivolously, I am fortunate enough to be in an OK position financially, and I managed to score a good deal on a used piece). With so much being said, let's introduce my most recent acquisition.
(pic on Garmin against yellow background)
I've always held out against the idea of a smartwatch, given that the average digital Casio lasts two years on a button cell battery. Two years? Yea, that's as good as a mechanical for me. I reckoned that this level of maintenance should be what is expected of a watch, and that having to charge a smartwatch like the Apple Watch daily was far too much hassle for a timekeeping device. During this lockdown though, I've been running more than I have ever been. For the past three months, running is one of the few activities that I can legally leave my house for, and I've been taking advantage of it since almost all forms of activities are now pretty much prohibited. I thought it'd be nice to have a fitness tracker which could keep track of my runs during this period. If there's one thing a traditional digital/mechanical watch can't do, it's tracking a run (or actually anything besides telling the time).
So with that, I was now in the market for a smartwatch. Most smartwatches these days can fulfill the role of tracking a run as long as it has GPS, and the range spans from a $150 Amazfit watch to the $500 Apple Watch to the Garmin MARQs which run over $1,000. I decided I wanted a watch more oriented towards fitness tracking, and not a general purpose smartwatch. The nice thing about fitness oriented smartwatches (Suunto, Polar, Garmin) is that they typically have longer battery lives up to two or so weeks as they use transflective displays (sort of like e-reader screens which consume far less battery than LCD/OLED screens) and also are easily readable under the sun. I suppose I could live with charging once a week. Other nice things to have would be maps for navigation so I could use them when I travel (whenever that will be) and wanted to navigate and explore the area. Of course, I eventually realized that only the flagship products of Garmin have offline maps available. That meant that I had to go for the highest end product, which is met with the highest end of prices too. I finally caved when I saw that Amazon had the Fenix 6 Pro for about $800 for Father's Day and went ahead with it.
Ten minutes after placing my order, I cancelled it. It really didn't feel right to be spending 800 bucks on a watch when the global economy was in a free fall. I was prepared to give up this venture of getting a smartwatch at that point, it's not worth feeling that I've done something so wrong just to have a new piece of shiny kit on my wrist; that money could instead have been given to my parents as allowance or I could've spent it on household items which my family could benefit from instead. As luck would have it, I then came across a used Forerunner 945 and the price was much more palatable than the price for the Fenix 6. Maps? Check. Battery life? Check. Price? Check. It was time to go ahead with it.
The Forerunner 945 is a watch with so many functions I don't think I could cover them all if I tried. It's a watch meant for triathletes and avid sportsmen. I'm just an average run-of-the-mill runner who has an interest in watches. With that, I shall try my best to review this watch including the functions that I don't use and how it has benefited me as a whole.
The Forerunner 945 comes in at 47mm in diameter, which may sound very big but given I was pleased to find out that it didn't hang over my wrists which are relatively small. <To be continued>
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