Garmin has posted an Alpha software update for several top watches, including the Garmin Fenix 7, Garmin Epix Gen 2 and the Garmin Enduro 2, and it adds some pretty tasty tweaks. The most eye-catching part of the Alpha 10.37 software update is an almost complete re-working of the Morning Report feature, which was first seen in the Garmin Forerunner 955 and Garmin Forerunner 255.
[A similar Alpha update is also available on Instinct 2 and Instinct 2S watches]
Morning Report is an info pop-up designed to appear each morning with, primarily, a summary of how you slept, as well as your recovery status and your HRV “score” achieved overnight. Garmin has added a calendar and step-count goal pages to this roster. And because Morning Report is now at risk of becoming more like an essay, you can choose which pages you want to appear on and their order.
Morning Report has been given the full Garmin treatment, in other words, packed with more options than most people need because the company is so committed to comprehensiveness. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for debate. The feature also gets backgrounds for its data pages, presumably to give them some of the visual pep seen in the initial Morning Report screen.
New updates are available to Fenix 7 and Epix Gen 2 watches
Running power gets closer
Other highlights of the Alpha 10.37 update relate to the running power feature. A couple of weeks ago, Garmin added pure wrist-based running power to its higher-end watches in a beta software update. It was a reaction to the Apple Watch Ultra, which makes such a fuss over this form of stat tracking.
This update sees running power built into something closer to the form we’ll see in the final consumer release. Garmin has added a “power chart” data field, and this chart will appear in the post-workout summary screens. There are additional fields for average watts/kg and lap watts/kg and “alerts” for running power. This may refer to workouts where you set reaching a certain running power as a goal.
Running power shows you the amount of work your body is currently doing in watts. It’s the running equivalent of the number one performance metric cyclists use, but it’s a bit trickier to calculate when your mechanisms for movement are constructed out of meat and bones. Still, running power appears to be this season’s hot fitness tracker story.
You can check out the full list of 29 stated fixes and improvements of the Alpha 10.37 update over at the Garmin forums, but we’ve covered the most interesting stuff. As this is an Alpha release, you’ll have to download it manually and transfer it to your watch to get it installed. We like to take these early releases as a taster of what’s coming, but If you’re feeling intrepid, you can download the package over at the Garmin forums.
