The best Garmin watches come equipped with a line-up of stock watch faces, and my favorite Garmin face ever was launched with the Garmin Fenix 8. It’s called Iron Grit and not only is it a colorful and attractive watch face, but it also allows you to see a lot of stats at a glance.
I love the face so much that when I stopped wearing the Fenix 8 as my go-to Garmin in favor of the Garmin Forerunner 970, I went looking in the Connect IQ app store to see if I could find a version of the Iron Grit face to use on other Garmin watches.
I wasn’t disappointed, with developer GreenBlack making the Fenix 8 V3 face available for a whole host of Garmin models. The face will cost you $5 if you get the full Pro version, but you can test it out with the free version to see if you like it before upgrading.
I’ve used the face on the Garmin Venu X1 along with the Forerunner 970, and while it’s not quite as aesthetically appealing as the official Garmin Iron Grit face, it does offer the benefit of more customization. Here’s four reasons why I think it’s worth the $5 outlay.
It shows a lot of stats without feeling cluttered
The Iron Grit watch face works so well on the Fenix 8 because the stats are well-positioned so it doesn’t feel too busy, even when showing eight or nine stats along with the time, and that’s also true with the Fenix 8 Pro third-party face.
You can show three stats on either side of the watch face, plus one along the top and the seconds and day of the week at the bottom.
Even the most data obsessed among us will struggle to find that many stats they need to see at a glance, so you can show everything you want on one clear watch face.
You can customize everything
The Connect IQ watch face offers even more customization options than the standard Garmin face on the Fenix 8. This is mainly done in the Connect IQ app, but you can change some things like the color directly on the watch.
You can pick from a line-up of preset colors, or find the exact shade you want and install it. You can pick from a longer list of stats to show in each slot as well, and even customize the font and the text in the top half of the screen — I just went for FR970 on mine, but you can be more adventurous.
There’s so many customization options that it actually can be quite overwhelming, but if you give yourself 10 minutes to sit down and go through the options, you’ll get a set up that’s perfect for you.
You can change the always-on settings
One area of customization you get with the face that I like a lot and think is worth highlighting is the always-on settings. You can choose how much data to include on the always-on version of the watch face, and how bright each element is.
The more you show and the brighter it is, the more battery life will be consumed, so I prefer to just show the time as that’s the only stat I need at a glance without turning my wrist.
This means you can conserve a bit of battery life while having the screen always-on, and in general I haven’t found this watch face drains battery noticeably quicker than when I’m using a stock Garmin face.
It shows active calories
Garmin will show your overall calories burned on its stock faces, but this measurement is skewed for me by the set amount of resting calories on the watch.
This is 2,000 calories for me, which seems low as a fairly tall man, and when I’ve done metabolic testing in the past my resting calorie burn rate was higher.
As a result I mostly care about the active calories I burn each day, as measured by the watch, which seems more accurate. Using the Fenix 8 Pro Connect IQ watch face, I can see these at a glance, and it helps me ensure I’m eating enough to offset the calorie burn during heavy training periods like a marathon block.
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