Garmin FENIX 8 || First look and #notsponsored opinion!

well everyone I got rid of all my devices except for two I'm down to the sunto race and the new Garmin Phoenix 8 47 mm AMOLED version this is obviously going to be my first impressions of the Phoenix 8 AMOLED just a little bit about background information I ordered this on launch day which turns out to be yesterday at about 7:30 in the morning it arrived at my home at just about noon today 28 hours approximately I thought that was just miraculous first of all because they're very hard to get they are located in the town of Cochran which is about 20 minutes from my home and I had it shipped by a CA post I got it basically within a day I also to mention that Garmin did not send me this watch and I paid for it with my own money and I'll talk more about that in a bit therefore I am in no way required to spit out any of the marketing jargon that is required by most of the big YouTubers who get product early that get to test it early and I understand where they're coming from because they want to still maintain their relationship with the different manufacturers but with me buying my own devices products anything like that I can kind of say whatever I want and tell you how I feel about something here are my initial thoughts number one what they did is took the Epic and the Phoenix 7 and they kind of merged both lines together to make it just one line still contains three different sizes but now you're dealing with two different display types the MIP and the AMOLED which is what I have Point number two they added a speaker they added die functionality to this watch and they changed up the user interface for workouts and widgets and whatnot as far as the built-in speaker microphone eh I could care less to be honest as far as the dive functionality I would say a majority people will not use the dive functionality but it makes it a little bit more waterproof even though in Prior Generations it was waterproof up to a certain depth the new interface is a welcome addition to workouts specifically for my use case and before I continue what also would be a welcome Edition is that by the end of this video if you find it useful or entertaining in any way maybe hitting that subscribe button would really help with my channel Point number three they kept them mapping which is awesome Garmin you can't be garming with mapping still has the sapphire screen which for me is a must titanium bezel which is another added bonus still has the torch which is awesome and the battery life is still very good especially when you get the 51 mm version Point number four Garmin has these listed all of their devices as SmartWatches unless I believe they put something like LT in a watch like this I really don't consider it a smartwatch it has Smartwatch features but I don't consider it a smartwatch much like Apple and Samsung when they call theirs Ultra until they get the battery life and a few other things I wouldn't put an Apple Watch Ultra or a Samsung watch Ultra whatever the heck it's called Galaxy watch Ultra I wouldn't consider that an ultra device and I know that's part of the whole marketing stick Point number five I purchased the 47 mm version the last few watches I have had have been a 51 mm version because I need a larger screen for my eyes getting older but I purchased the 47 mm because Garmin managed to cram a 1.4 in display in the 47 mm the same size display as in the 51 mm the biggest difference is that the 51 mm has a better battery life by a lot because there just more real estate to put in a bigger battery but for almost everyone out there the 47 mm battery life will be more than sufficient okay I'm going to keep this very short my last point is the price Garmin increased the price of the Phoenix lineup from anywhere from $1 to $200 US Canada I'm not exactly sure of the pricing differences between you're looking at about $200 difference for the larger variant and in my opinion adding a speaker and D functionality is not worth the $200 premium increase I know inflation but from basically year to year even though the Phoenix 7 came out two years ago but a year or so after the Epic Pro came out having that big of a price increase I don't think that's a cool move if I were to recommend anything if you have a phoenix 6 or a 7 7 Pro an Epix Pro I would not upgrade to the Phoenix 8 I am actually going to keep the Phoenix 8 I might have to sell a kidney or two no maybe not two maybe maybe just one but I'm going to keep my Phoenix 8 the AMOLED screen is beautiful having full-blown mapping functionality still going to hold on to my central r but this is going to be a keeper for me it's just it's just expensive as hell I want to hear your thoughts on it if you can drop them down in the comments below that would be awesome short and sweet everyone thanks for watching and remember to get outside s to jump in at the end I will come up with a full review after I've used it for a few months cheers