Garmin’s “Year in Review” Is Baffling, As Is Its Entire Subscription Service.
Garmin has published its final year-end user statistics report, in the style of Spotify Wrapped. But it’s only available to owners of Garmin Connect+, the new paid subscription Garmin has been offering since March. I’ll show you what’s inside the “Year in Review” and share my thoughts on how this subscription service fared in its first year. Spoiler alert: the more new features Garmin adds, the less they seem to know what they’re doing.
What does the year review contain?
Garmin’s Year in Review feature shows you a variety of interesting visuals of your activity over the course of a year. Each metric typically displays a summary or total value, followed by a graph showing that metric for each calendar month (January through December), with the “best” month for that metric highlighted. Sometimes, a specific workout, such as your longest run, was associated with that metric. Metrics included:
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Total steps
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Average sleep score
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Average daily maximum Body Battery
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Number of activities and the most common types
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Total active time
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Total activity distance
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General lifting activity
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Total calories consumed during activity (expressed in terms of “chocolate cake pieces” for some reason)
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Earned badges
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Personal records achieved
There are cards for each of them that can be shared, so it certainly serves as an annual report, but scrolling through it is a bit boring. I don’t see why I should care about my average Body Battery score, and it’s not that surprising that I spent more time at the gym than cycling. Perhaps this will be a more thoughtful feature in the future.
Your annual review says more about Garmin than about you.
This year, companies are publishing annual reports like never before, and it seems like each one is experiencing a bit of an identity crisis. Is this report meant to be free marketing, where you share screenshots with your friends? Is it meant to engage you more deeply with the algorithm, encouraging you to consume more content? Or is it simply a loyalty reward?
Garmin, having made its premium feature, doesn’t seem to prioritize any of the above. I see two things here: they’re competing with Strava and they’re trying to figure out what it means to exist as a hardware manufacturer in a subscription-based world.
Strava is the easiest to figure out. Strava offers a premium subscription, and its main advantage is its mapping tools and training analytics. While some people might not like having to pay to see their leaderboard position or build a route , the model works because people like and need these features. Strava’s Year in Sport is also paid, but people don’t subscribe just for the Year in Sport. It’s a small perk, not the main goal.
Compared to Garmin and Strava reviews, Strava feels more cohesive. The carousel has fewer cards, and they’re more relevant to what’s important to me. I see my workouts and distance covered on a single card, see how long I’ve maintained my weekly streak (over a year!), see days when I was active, get a reminder of one memorable run (definitely memorable), see my personal bests for all major distances, and get a mention of my one and only run in Koktebel and a couple of “Local Legend” titles. Strava handles this more easily because their platform is geared toward people with specific goals: running or cycling more and faster. Garmin tries to be everything to everyone.
This begs the question of what Garmin is doing . The company has always been a hardware maker, starting with GPS devices (back when “GPS devices” existed as a separate product category) and then expanding into sports watches and gadgets like bike computers and boat navigation systems. It seems the company is struggling to find its place in the modern world of subscriptions. I understand that the company isn’t cutting features from existing products, but it makes me wonder what the point of Connect+ is.
The Garmin Connect+ subscription doesn’t seem to be the paywall people fear (or the cash cow Garmin is probably hoping for).
Garmin has always been a hardware company, but that model is becoming increasingly difficult to adapt to the modern wearable market. Now that we all have smartphones, many of the features we expect from Garmin watches are actually available in the mobile app. So, to continue selling watches at different price points, Garmin is tying certain features to the device you purchase. For example, you’ll only get “workout status” in the app when paired with a watch that supports workout status. ( The Forerunner 265 counts, but not the 165. )
I can imagine Garmin’s management wishing they could start over, release just a few physical devices, and sell software features via subscription. It seems like in 2025, everything is sold via subscription or with paid access to certain features as part of a premium version. Of course, Garmin tried to enter this market.
Garmin has long sold subscriptions for some devices, but these have always been for specific services, such as satellite messaging or high-resolution marine charts, where the purpose and cost were justified. Garmin Connect+, launched this year, is essentially a subscription for the software features of the phone app , not the device itself.
This is good news for Garmin users—no watch features become a paid option. Whatever features your Forerunner 265 came with when you bought it, you’ll keep them. It seems the new watches haven’t (yet) lost any features—in fact, models like the Forerunner 570 and Venu 4 appear to be adding new features to justify the higher price.
But this deprives the Connect+ subscription of any significant benefits. I ‘ve listed all the available features , and in my opinion, the only truly worthwhile one is mirroring data to your phone, which Apple and Coros offer for free. The rest of the features are just “what?”, like unlocking special badges or access to the AI feature , which is certainly the least useful of all the AI features in fitness apps (and that’s saying something ).
Garmin seems to be hoping that users will switch to a subscription because of its amazing and attractive features, while carefully avoiding including anything useful or necessary. This seems like a limit they can’t push unless they come up with new app features that don’t fit their device models but are genuinely useful and engaging. Paid features are expensive, which explains why Garmin Trails is currently a dud —it’s just an empty shell of a service that, I believe, users will eventually have to fill with data.
The “Year in Review” should have been easy to create, but it doesn’t give us anything worth paying for. Garmin advertises the “Year in Review” to non-subscribers, asking us to pay a subscription to access it. Garmin, I don’t think that’s working.