2022 Sports Watch Year in Review: The 8 Releases That Mattered Most

Introduction

2022 was one of the busiest years the sports watch market has ever seen. Dual-band GPS went from a premium curiosity to something appearing on watches well under $400, smartwatch battery life finally improved, wrist-based running power spread across nearly every major platform, and buttons made a comeback on watches that had gone all-in on touchscreens.

This review walks through the releases from the past year that are most worth your attention, what each does well, and where each falls short.

2022 Trends Worth Knowing Before You Buy

Three threads ran through nearly every release this year. First, dual-band (multi-band) satellite positioning arrived in force, though plenty of watches without it still delivered impressively accurate tracks thanks to smart antenna and chipset design. Accuracy matters more than the marketing label.

Second, smartwatch-focused devices got dramatically better battery life, moving from roughly a day of standby toward the 50-hour range on some models. And third, buttons came back: several watches added an extra physical button, and most new sports watches let you disable the touchscreen entirely if you prefer button-only operation.

If you are shopping now, keep those trends in mind: a $300-plus sports watch without accurate positioning is hard to justify in 2026, no matter how it achieved that accuracy.

Garmin Venu 2 Plus

The Venu 2 Plus added a microphone, speaker, and a third button to the Venu lineup. That combination lets you trigger your phone’s voice assistant from the wrist and take calls, and the speaker quality turned out to be genuinely good, surprisingly so for a first effort. It can even play music out loud.

One clever detail: while most non-Apple watches cannot reply to text messages, this one can do it via the voice assistant, which is a neat workaround. The size sits between the Venu 2 and Venu 2S, with a stainless steel back, and it is best understood as Garmin checking off smartwatch boxes one at a time rather than one complete all-in-one product.

Garmin Fenix 7

The Fenix 7 was a long-awaited update, and the headline change is the touchscreen paired with full button operation. Every function on the watch can still be done with buttons, and you can disable the touchscreen entirely or enable it per sport profile. For maps, the touchscreen is a genuine step change: panning and zooming that previously required awkward button combinations is now quick and natural.

The lineup came in three sizes with fewer models than the previous generation, which made the range easier to navigate. The Fenix 7X stands out thanks to its built-in LED flashlight, a feature that sounds gimmicky until you use it nightly, complete with dimmer levels and a red light mode.

Garmin Epix Gen 2

The Epix Gen 2 is essentially a Fenix 7 with a bright, vibrant AMOLED display. You trade some battery life for that screen, but once you have used it, going back to a memory-in-pixel display is genuinely hard.

It shares the Fenix 7’s touchscreen-and-buttons approach and detailed maps, and it ships in a single size. That makes the missing flashlight feature the main gap versus the Fenix 7X, and it leaves open the question of whether future Epix versions will arrive in more sizes.

Garmin Instinct 2

The original Instinct became a surprise hit on the strength of its rugged retro design, but it lacked the training features of Garmin’s running watches. The Instinct 2 family fixed that: multisport support, open water swimming, training load and recovery feedback, VO2 max, sensor support for power meters and trainers, and more. It effectively became a mid-range Forerunner in a rugged Casio-inspired body.

Through the year, firmware updates added features like HRV status and even surf features to the base models, part of Garmin’s move toward matching feature sets across hardware lines so you choose on looks and fit rather than software gating.

Garmin Forerunner 255

The Forerunner 255 is arguably the best value of the year. It brings full multisport support plus nearly everything from the higher-end Forerunners, and it does so at around $300 while including dual-band GPS. That combination makes it the watch that set the price-accuracy benchmark for 2022.

The trade-off is that it made several older and pricier watches look overpriced by comparison, but for a runner or triathlete who wants modern features without a premium outlay, it is the obvious starting point.

Garmin Enduro 2

The Enduro 2 is essentially a Fenix 7X tuned for ultra endurance, with some of the most extreme battery life available and a brighter flashlight than its predecessor. Unlike the original Enduro, which gave up features to hit its battery numbers, the Enduro 2 skips nothing: full mapping, training features, and a nylon band instead of silicone.

It also introduced features like SatIQ, which automatically switches between dual-band and single-frequency positioning to save battery, plus PacePro and grade-adjusted pace refinements. It is expensive, but if you need multi-day battery for ultras or expedition use, nothing else quite matches it.

Apple Watch Ultra

The Apple Watch Ultra was the biggest smartwatch release of the year, and it sold accordingly, with pre-orders stretching out months within minutes. The hardware is genuinely impressive: a rugged titanium case, a larger crown and protected buttons for glove and dive use, a configurable Action button, around 50% more battery life than the Series 8, low-power modes, a depth gauge for diving, and an LED flashlight on the display side.

The software sport push is equally notable, with wrist-based running power, structured workouts, and triathlon support rolling out across recent Apple Watch generations. The rough edges are real, though: the Action button is easy to trigger accidentally, low-power modes are confusing, and some navigation features like Backtrack need refinement before you trust them in remote terrain.

COROS Apex 2 Pro

The Apex 2 and Apex 2 Pro refreshed COROS’s long-running lineup with sapphire lenses, titanium cases, and, on the Pro, dual-band GPS. Since COROS had already delivered much of the software value through updates to older watches, these were primarily hardware refreshes, executed well as always.

The pricing felt slightly high against Garmin’s aggressively positioned watches, and COROS’s rename of its grade-adjusted pace feature to “effort pace” added confusion without adding function. Still, wrist-based running power has been here for years, and the promise of music support, if COROS can crack the licensing problem, would make this lineup even more interesting.

Overall Buying Advice

If you want maximum sports capability per dollar, the Garmin Forerunner 255 and Instinct 2 are the standout values. If you want the best combination of mapping, display, and battery, choose between the Fenix 7 and Epix Gen 2 based on whether you prefer battery life or screen quality. Ultra runners should look at the Enduro 2.

On the smartwatch side, the Apple Watch Ultra is the pick if you are in the Apple ecosystem and want genuine outdoor capability, while cheaper Apple Watch models benefit enormously from the same software improvements. Whatever you buy in 2026, put GPS accuracy and button usability ahead of spec-sheet marketing.

Conclusion

The 2022 releases set a clear baseline: dual-band-class accuracy, wrist-based running power, and better battery life are now table stakes rather than luxuries. The watches above represent the strongest of a very crowded year, and any of them is a confident purchase if it matches the kind of training and everyday use you actually do.