Fenix 7 has eight different models. None of these Fenix 7 smartwatches have wireless charging.
In other words, the following Fenix 7 devices do not have wireless charging ability:
- Fenix 7 Standard edition
- Fenix 7S Standard edition
- Fenix 7 Solar edition
- Fenix 7S Solar edition
- Fenix 7X Solar edition
- Fenix 7S Sapphire Solar edition
- Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar edition
- Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar edition
Wireless charging makes use of a charging dock. The smartwatch gets connected to the charging dock for wireless charging. In most cases, a customer has to purchase the wireless charging dock separately.
For Fenix 7, Garmin supports a proprietary plug charger. The wired charging cable is shipped as an in-box accessory for Fenix 7 devices. One end of the cable has a USB connector. The other end has pins that correspond to the Fenix 7 smartwatch socket.
The plug charger is a standard offering across all the Garmin smartwatch models. This would include the Fenix 6 smartwatches, Vivoactive smartwatches, and the Venu 2 series smartwatches.
This is what the USB charging cable of Fenix 7 looks like.
This cable can be used to charge the Fenix 7 device fully. An empty battery of Fenix 7 can be charged up fully in less than 3 hours. The average time taken to fully top-up the battery of the Fenix 7 smartwatch is 2.5 hours. However, you can add up to 50% battery charge in an hour of charging on a Fenix 7 smartwatch.
Aside from the plug charger, the Solar edition of Fenix 7 smartwatches will use sunlight to charge the smartwatch. Fenix 7 Solar edition watches require at least 3 hours of exposure to sunlight with a brightness of 50000 lumens or more for effective solar charging. No separate steps need to be taken to charge a Fenix 7 solar edition watch using solar charging.
It may be pertinent to mention over here that even the Fenix 6 series smartwatches did not have wireless charging
We feel that wireless charging has not had a very high acceptability rate by customers. This can be explained on account of the following reasons:
- Wireless charging requires additional money to be spent for getting the wireless charging dock.
- The speed of wireless charging is lower that the speed of charging through a wired charger.
Due to the incremental expense of wireless chargers and the slower rate of charging, most smartwatch users prefer to make use of a wired charger or a magnetic charger.
Helen Kurt is a geeky nerd who loves to cover the wearables space. She has over 5 years of experience in the smartwatch domain. You can reach her on email at [email protected].