“Stop this totally detrimental trend:” users refuse to pay extra for their smartwatches

Soon, we might ask, what’s a smartwatch without a subscription?

Garmin used to be one of the last fitness brands that didn’t offer a paid subscription. However, the company has recently announced its premium plan, a paid subscription that’s supposed to provide users with more personalized insights.

Predictably, Garmin users weren't too excited about the news.

One user on Reddit urged others to avoid the company’s subscription plan to “stop this totally detrimental trend of subscriptions everywhere.” The Redditor thinks that since users are already paying rather big money for devices that need replacing every few years, they shouldn’t be charged extra.

“Who wants to live in a world where we need 3+ subscriptions to plan a nice bike ride with equipment that we already paid for?” asked the user.

Their question made other users share their own thoughts about the new subscription plan.

Many Garmin consumers revealed that they won’t be paying for the additional features, with one stating: “I could justify the Garmin expense when I knew I was getting all the features with the watch, but we all know what happens to a service once a paid tier is introduced.”

“Yeah pretty soon we will have to watch a 30-second commercial before we can get our sleep data,” joked at the situation another Redditor with the original poster replying: “Don’t feed them ideas for free.”

One Redditor also shared that they exchanged their Fitbit for Garmin for this exact reason. “SaaS is ruining everything,” they said.

“[...] Garmin needs to learn that treating their customers like cows to be milked means they'll lose business,” wrote another user.

DO NOT sign up for Garmin Connect+. Unite to fight for our customers' right to software as a service for a thousand dollar watch. This is a slippery slope and will reduce the usability and ownership of our products in the future. Profits will increase and more and more will get behind paywalls!
byu/Narrow-Coyote-6257 inGarmin

With Garmin Connect+, users will receive personalized insights powered by AI, compare their fitness and health data from different periods of time, and see real-time activity data on their smartphones. Among other features, users will also receive “exclusive expert guidance from Garmin coaches” and use expanded Live Track features.

The premium subscription is $7 per month or $70 per year. Users can also try Garmin Connect+ for free for 30 days. The company shared that the current features and data on the Garmin Connect app will remain free.

At the beginning of this year, Garmin was under scrutiny for its “blue triangle” incident. Several users started reporting their watches shutting down and only showing a blue triangle. The company then witnessed a backlash after it failed to respond quickly enough to the outage.