May, which means it’s Garmin’s annual sales for their mostly outdoor-focused products ahead of the summer season. Each year the company tends to put this set of products on sale, roughly 3-4 weeks ahead of Father’s Day in the US and ending around then.
This year the products are the same basic category as last year: Fenix, Epix, Garmin inReach, and a side of a few Forerunners. However, they also put on all of their top-end Edge cycling products as well. It’s too soon to know when we’ll see refreshes of these, but I certainly wouldn’t expect a new Garmin Edge 550 or Edge 850 anytime soon. After all, the current versions came out barely a year ago. Garmin traditionally operates on a 2-3 year refresh cycle for their Edge lineup.
As for the Fenix & Epix lineups, I outlined my thoughts for those refresh cycles back in this post here, and those thoughts still hold true. I don’t see Garmin snapping to a 12-month refresh cycle for those products. Likewise, we saw the Forerunner 265 and Forerunner 965 announce a year ago, and it’d be a pretty big shift for Garmin to switch to 12-month release cycles for those watches, so I don’t expect that either. Remember that while it was one year from the Forerunner 955 to Forerunner 965, that was really only a display type change (the watches otherwise have the same features, and still both get updates). I do not expect any further mid-range or high-end Forerunner MIP-based display devices. It’s AMOLED from here on out.
Finally, with all the other releases lately (Polar Grit X2 Pro at $749+, COROS Vertix 2S at $699, and Hammerhead Karoo 3 at $474) – it’s these types of sales that are the hardest for their competitors to swallow. Prices for the non-Pro editions of Epix and Fenix were already low – but $449/$499 is insanely low. I mean, you basically get to decide if you want an Epix for $499 or a Forerunner 955 for $499. It’s nuts.
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