GoKawiil
Tech News
Amazon is selling the Garmin Instinct 3 Tactical Solar 45mm for $399.99, a $100 reduction from its $499.99 list price. This matches near the lowest price seen outside June's Prime Day sale, and the watch carries a 4.6-star rating from buyers.
Florida International University researchers tested the Apple Watch Series 8, Fitbit Sense 2, Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Garmin Forerunner 955 against a Cosmed K5 metabolic device and ECG chest strap during controlled workouts with 58 participants. All four smartwatches overstated calorie burn, with margins of error ranging from 15% to 25%, meaning a reported 200-calorie burn could really be closer to 160-174 calories. Apple Watch was the most accurate, while Samsung and Garmin overestimated more, and Fitbit had enough tracking glitches that some of its data had to be excluded.
Amazon has cut $50 off the Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro Smart Watch, bringing it from $449.99 to $399.99, an 11% reduction that marks the first recorded price drop for the device since its April 2026 launch. The running-focused smartwatch features a titanium-alloy case, dual-band GPS, a 1.32-inch AMOLED display, and up to 20 days of battery life in lighter use.
Smartwatches from Apple, Google and Samsung all include a basic flashlight feature that simply maxes out the display's brightness and turns it white. Despite mockery of the feature compared to a phone's dedicated camera flash, it proves genuinely useful for quick tasks like finding a dropped pill, precisely because the watch is already on your wrist rather than buried in a pocket or bag.
CNET's Scott Stein tested the new $225 Pebble Time 2, part of Pebble's relaunch that also includes an upcoming round model. The watch keeps the classic buttons and retro look but adds a touchscreen, color backlit display, heart-rate sensor, and access to a huge library of free legacy Pebble apps and watch faces via a redesigned companion app.
Some Samsung Galaxy Watch users, including owners of the Watch Ultra, Watch Ultra 2 and Watch 6 Classic, report their smartwatches fail to boot after a routine time zone update asks them to restart. Placing the watch on its charging puck has proven to revive it, according to reports from affected users and SamMobile's own testing.
Amazon has cut the price of the Garmin Vivoactive 5 to $173, down from its $299.99 list price, marking the lowest price the smartwatch has ever hit. The device offers a 1.2-inch AMOLED display, built-in GPS, extensive health tracking features, onboard music storage, and up to 11 days of battery life.
Garmin has launched the Fenix 9, 9 Pro and 9 Pro Solar smartwatches, arriving August 28th starting at $1,299 for the Pro model. The Fenix 9 Pro upgrades to a 1.5-inch AMOLED screen hitting 3,000 nits, roughly double the brightness of the Fenix 8 Pro's 1,500-nit panel, and adds a titanium watch case, 64GB storage and new ComfortFit woven bands.
Garmin has unveiled its Fenix 9 and Fenix 9 Pro smartwatches, featuring refreshed hardware and a new capability called Garmin Epic. This feature links together separate workouts or outdoor activities to give users a combined, more complete view of their overall physical exertion over a day or trip.
Costco has launched an early round of Labor Day 2026 promotions covering televisions, smartwatches, Apple devices and other electronics. The deals are being aggregated and vetted by outlets like ZDNET, which test and compare pricing across retailers before recommending items to shoppers.
The Pebble Time 2 requires initial setup time to pick a watch face from thousands available, drawing on Pebble's legacy library, but proves easy to use afterward thanks to its tall display suited for scrolling menus and reading text. It includes basic health tracking—steps, sleep, and heart rate via a PPG sensor—presented through simple graphs rather than computed scores. The device runs on PebbleOS, now fully open-source after Google released it and the Rebble community maintained it following Fitbit's earlier abandonment of the platform.
Apple, Samsung, and Google are ending update cycles for a number of their established smartwatch lines, meaning those devices will no longer receive the same software attention going forward. The move affects wearables many consumers still actively use, even if the hardware itself keeps functioning.