Tag: wearables

My Blood Pressure Is Finally Easing, and the Running Data Called It First

Disclosure: there are affiliate links below, to the Garmin Fenix 8 and to Beet It Sport. I bought both with my own money. If you buy through a link I might earn a small commission, which costs you nothing and does not change what I write.

It is 3am and I am cross-referencing a Garmin export against a Hilo blood pressure report. That sentence tells you most of what you need to know about how I spend the small hours. The monthly data dump landed today: two exports, two devices, one middle-aged body, thirteen months of history sitting in a spreadsheet. And for the first time since I did my knee last December, the lines are pointing the right way. The clearest of them is a fortnight of heat acclimation running that took ninety seconds a kilometre off my usual loop.

This is an interim report, not a victory lap. I am still heavier, slower and higher-pressured than I was in the summer of 2025. But something turned a corner in the last two weeks, and the receipts are clear enough that I am allowed to be quietly pleased. So I am going to be.

The run that felt like proof I was done

On 26 June I ran my usual loop around Flintshire, roughly eight kilometres, the same route I have plodded a hundred times. It took me 9:36 per kilometre. That is not a running pace. That is a brisk-shuffle-with-opinions pace. My average heart rate was 142 and it felt like 180. It was the peak of the hot spell, and I finished it genuinely wondering whether the knee injury had quietly ended me as a runner: six months on and still going backwards.

Here is what the export showed me at 3am. It hadn’t. That run was the bottom, not the trend.

Heat acclimation running: the fortnight in receipts

Same loop, same distance, tracked on the same watch. Here is the whole arc.

Date	Pace (min/km)	Avg HR	Max HR	What happened
22 Jun	8:56	137	170	Pre-heat baseline
24 Jun	8:58	141	160	Heat building
26 Jun	9:36	142	159	Worst day, peak-heat struggle
27 Jun	9:17	133	146	Capped and walked, on 4.3 h sleep
29 Jun	8:07	139	160	Turnaround, after 7.2 h sleep and a rest day
30 Jun	8:42	131	149	Efficiency landed, fastest for the heart rate
1 Jul	8:04	145	175	Fastest, pushing hard by choice

Read down the pace column, then read it again. From the 26 June low to 1 July I took roughly ninety seconds per kilometre off the same route, at a similar or lower heart rate. On a hilly eight-kilometre loop that is not a rounding error. That is the engine coming back.

The run I keep looking at is 30 June: 8:42 per kilometre at an average heart rate of 131. That was the lowest-HR run of the entire block, and one of the quickest. Same output, less cost. If you want the single clearest fingerprint of aerobic fitness returning, that is it.

By 1 July I ran 8:04, my fastest of the fortnight, and the difference was that I was pushing hard because I chose to, not shuffling because the heat was forcing me to. None of this is mysterious. It is textbook heat acclimation running, landing right on schedule at about day seven to ten.

Why the heat wrecks a run at a heart rate that should feel easy

When it is hot, your body has a problem of allocation. Running muscle wants blood for oxygen. Your skin wants blood at the surface to shed heat. Both are non-negotiable, and there is only so much blood to go round, so the two compete.

To cover the shortfall the heart simply beats faster for the same effort, which is the cardiac drift you feel as a steady run quietly turning into a grind. On top of that you sweat out plasma, so the actual volume of fluid the heart is pumping shrinks, and a smaller stroke volume means an even higher heart rate to move the same oxygen. That is why 26 June cost me 142 beats a minute to travel slower than a walk.

Acclimation fixes the plumbing. Over a week or so of heat exposure the body expands plasma volume, you start sweating earlier and more efficiently, and the cooling system stops stealing quite so much from the running. Same weather, less tax. The fortnight above is that adaptation happening in real time, written down. This is exactly the sort of thing you cannot feel reliably from the inside. On 1 July I felt strong, but I have also felt strong on runs the data later called mediocre. The watch keeps me honest.

The overnight numbers, and why two devices matter

The runs are the vivid part. The overnight data is the part I actually trust, because it comes from two devices that have never spoken to each other.

My seven-day HRV average on the Garmin Fenix 8 climbed from 41 to 65 milliseconds across the fortnight, the highest I have ever recorded. Resting heart rate fell from 58 to 52 over thirteen days. That alone would be encouraging, but easy to dismiss as one gadget flattering me.

So here is the cross-check. The Hilo, measuring at night by a completely different method, put my night-time heart rate at 51 to 56 in late June. Two independent devices, two different sensors, landing on the same recovering body at around 52 beats a minute. That agreement is the whole reason I bother measuring any of this. One device is a story. Two devices that agree is closer to evidence, though it is still a sample size of one man who cannot sleep.

A caveat on the Garmin, because honesty is the entire point of this blog. It reads heart rate from the wrist optically, and a few of my maximum figures this month look wrong. A 189 on a long run on 20 June, plus a 177 and a 175, are almost certainly cadence-lock artefacts: the watch mistaking footstrike for pulse. I have flagged them for a cardiology review I have coming up, and a chest strap would settle the true peak.

Read the wrist optical max HR with suspicion. Read the overnight resting trends with more confidence. The watch doing all of this is the Garmin Fenix 8. Mine is a specific DLC Sapphire variant that is genuinely hard to find in stock, so here is the standard Fenix 8, which does everything described above.

A word on the beetroot, before anyone asks

Partway through all this I started a proper little trial on beetroot: one shot of Beet It Sport a day, to see whether dietary nitrate does anything measurable to my blood pressure. I want to be completely clear, because this matters. It is far too early to say anything at all. The trial only just began, I am still locking the baseline, and none of the fitness improvement above should be pinned on it.

I am flagging it now rather than have anyone assume later that the beetroot did the heavy lifting. It didn’t. The running did. The beetroot is a separate question, with its own pre-registered experiment and its own reading of the evidence, and I will answer it with data when I have it. Not before.

The bigger picture: reversing a cascade

Long-time readers will know the shape of this. Last December I did my knee. Less running led to weight gain led to higher blood pressure: a slow run of dominoes I only spotted because I had the joined-up data to see it. This fortnight is the first real evidence of the dominoes falling back the other way. Rebuild the aerobic engine and the rest is supposed to follow.

Supposed to. The body-composition side is still lagging badly. I weighed 97.7 kilograms this month, the highest of the whole series, and the scales are not moving yet. VO2max is holding at 39 to 40, which at least means no further de-training, but it is not climbing either. Fitness is a faster-moving needle than weight, and weight is a faster-moving needle than the thing I actually care about, which is the pressure in my arteries.

The blood pressure, honestly

Which brings me to the number I really wanted from this dump. June daytime resting blood pressure came in at 133 over 85, averaged from something like 640 automatic Hilo readings. That 133 is the lowest daytime systolic of the entire post-injury plateau. Since December the number has sat stubbornly in a 134 to 137 band, month after month, and June is the first time it has dropped below it. After six months of a flat line, that genuinely made my week.

Now the discipline, because this is where people oversell. It is easing off the plateau, not a return to baseline. My fit-summer-2025 self sat around 121 to 130, and I am not there.

And here is the caveat that matters most. The June report’s data window closed on 26 June, which is the exact day of my worst run, before the late-June surge had consolidated. In other words, the best fortnight of running I have had in half a year is barely represented in this month’s blood pressure at all. The easing is real, but it is mostly pre-improvement. The payoff from the surge, if it comes, has not shown up yet.

One more honesty note on the Hilo, since it is cuffless and people are rightly sceptical of that. You read the monthly means, not single readings. There is a lone 166 over 104 sitting in the June data from a hot run-day evening, and it is a transient, not the signal. Ignore the spikes. Watch the average of hundreds of readings move.

July is the real test

That is the honest cliffhanger. Blood pressure lags fitness. The fitness turned the corner in the last week of June, and the report that will actually capture it does not exist yet.

It arrives at the end of July, and it will either confirm that the recovering engine drags resting pressure down with it, or it will tell me the relationship is messier than my tidy cascade story would like. Either way I will write it up, because a number you only report when it flatters you is not a measurement. It is marketing.

My weakest lever, meanwhile, is not running or diet. It is sleep. I averaged 5.9 hours a night in June, under six even in my best-HRV week, which is faintly ridiculous given how much of this data I gather at 3am. If I fixed the sleep I suspect everything else would move faster. That is the next thing to chip at.

So: an interim report. Two weeks of heat acclimation running, and the engine is coming back. Two devices that have never met agree the recovery is real, the blood pressure has finally cracked off its plateau, and I am pleased. Cautiously, provisionally, with a July report hanging over me. But pleased.

This is the whole case for measuring your own metrics, by the way. Not the gadgets, and not the graphs for their own sake. It is that when something finally starts working, you can see it in numbers before you can feel it. And when it isn’t working, you find out early enough to do something about it.

About the author

I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict, and the real numbers, from someone who uses this stuff every day.

July 1, 2026

How to Build a Joined-Up Health Dashboard an AI Can Actually Coach You From

Nothing in this post is medical advice. I am not a doctor. Talk to your GP about anything health-related, especially blood pressure and medications. This guide is about organising data you are already collecting, not about diagnosing or treating anything.

Last week I wrote about what happened when I let an AI read all my health data at once. It found two things that no single gadget on its own could have seen: that my blood pressure tracked a knee injury with almost frightening precision, and that my body had been quietly recomposing in the wrong direction while the scale weight stayed flat.

Several people asked how I actually set up this AI health dashboard. This is that post.

The short version: it is simpler than it sounds, it costs nothing beyond what you already own, and the hardest part is doing it the first time. After that it runs itself.

Step one: map your AI health dashboard inputs

Before you touch any technology, write down what you are already measuring. The system only works if you know what each device actually owns.

Mine looks like this. The Garmin Fenix 8 owns heart rate, sleep, steps, VO2 max, Body Battery and HRV. The Hilo blood pressure monitor owns continuous daytime and night-time blood pressure. The Hume Health Pod owns weight and body composition. And Bluecrest Health Screening owns my clinical baseline: the ECG, the blood panel, the numbers a GP would care about.

Yours will be different. The principle is the same. Map out what you have before you start trying to connect it.

Step two: one source of truth per metric, no exceptions

This is the rule that matters most, and it is the one most people skip.

If two devices measure the same thing, pick one and ignore the other. The trap I learnt the hard way: my old Renpho scales and the Hume Pod gave me completely different body fat readings. Average them and you get garbage. Use both and you spend your time reconciling contradictions instead of acting on information.

My hierarchy: Garmin owns activity and sleep, Hilo owns blood pressure, Hume owns body composition and weight. For anything clinical it is the Bluecrest results. No metric has two masters. If your phone health app also tracks steps, turn off the phone steps and let Garmin own it. If your Garmin tracks blood oxygen, fine, but Hilo owns blood pressure. The hierarchy is absolute.

Tell Claude the hierarchy in your first session. Five minutes of clear instructions saves hours of confused analysis later.

Step three: get the data out of the walled gardens

Each device lives in its own app and does not naturally talk to the others. There are three routes out.

Garmin. Go to Garmin Connect data management on a browser, find your account settings, and request a full data export. Garmin will email you a download link. It contains your full history as a series of files. Keep the activity summary files. They are what the AI health dashboard needs.

Google Health Connect (Android). This is the cleanest route if you use Android. Go to Settings on your phone, find Health Connect, go to Manage Data, then Backup and Restore. Set a scheduled export to Google Drive. From that point your health data flows automatically into a folder without you doing anything. One caveat: the native export is a zip file aimed at restoring to a new phone, not at human reading. A simple CSV export app that reads Health Connect, and there are several free ones, gives cleaner files that Claude can actually parse easily. Worth the extra five minutes of setup.

Apple Health. The same principle applies on iOS. Go to your profile in the Health app and export all health data. It goes to a zip file which you can then upload to Google Drive. Or use a third-party app that exports to CSV directly. Again, cleaner and more useful.

Hume weekly reports. This is the lazy trick that works surprisingly well. When the Hume app generates your weekly health report, take a screenshot and drop the image in your Google Drive folder. Google automatically OCRs the image, meaning it reads the text and numbers from the picture, and Claude can then read those numbers directly from the screenshot without any additional work. No CSV, no export, no faff. Just a screenshot.

Clinical results. If you have Bluecrest or any other health screening, keep the PDF in the same folder. Claude reads PDFs. Your GP letters, your blood panel results, your ECG report, all of it can go in and all of it is readable.

Step four: wire it to Claude through Google Drive

Create a folder in Google Drive. Call it something obvious like Health Data or 3am Health Dashboard. This is your single source of truth.

In Claude, go to your connected tools and connect Google Drive if you have not already. Once it is connected, Claude can read any file in your Drive at the start of each session, no uploading, no re-attaching. You drop the Hume screenshot in the folder on Monday morning. On Tuesday when you open Claude and ask about your health data, it reads the screenshot directly from Drive and includes it in the analysis.

This is what turns a monthly snapshot into a living system. The data is always current because you are dropping files into a folder rather than going through an upload ritual.

Step five: give Claude the house rules

The first time you use the system, spend five minutes telling Claude how it works. I give it these rules at the start of any health session:

Source hierarchy: Garmin owns activity and sleep, Hilo owns blood pressure, Hume owns weight and body composition, Bluecrest owns clinical. If two sources conflict on the same metric, Bluecrest beats everyone, then Hilo beats Garmin for BP, then Hume beats any scales.

Fill blanks only: if a metric is missing from one source but present in another, use the other. Never average across sources for the same metric.

Lead vs lag: treat steps, hard effort minutes, sleep quality and HRV as leading indicators, the things I control today. Treat blood pressure, VO2 max, body fat and weight as lagging indicators, the results that follow 4 to 8 weeks later. When I ask what to do, focus on the leads. When I ask how I am doing, focus on the lags.

That is it. Three rules. They stop the analysis from becoming confused and keep the output genuinely useful.

Step six: run a weekly loop with a recovery gate

Once a week, drop in the latest data and ask Claude for a short scorecard. I ask for three things: how the leading indicators look this week versus last, how the lagging indicators are trending over the past month, and one specific thing to change or focus on.

One change. Not five. One.

The recovery gate is the thing the Garmin Fenix 8 review touched on but this system makes into an actual rule: if HRV, sleep quality and Body Battery all decline for three consecutive days, that week is a recovery week. No hard efforts, no targets. I learnt this by ignoring it, pushing through what the data was clearly telling me was a system under stress and then being ill for a week. The data was right. I was wrong. Now I follow the gate.

Step seven: know what this is and is not

A few honest caveats before you get too excited about your new AI health system.

It is n=1 data. Everything the AI tells you is about you, based on your data, with all the noise and error that comes with consumer devices. The correlations I found between my knee injury and my blood pressure are real and consistent, but they are not a controlled study. Association is not proof. The AI can spot patterns you cannot see by eye. It cannot tell you what caused what.

It is not your doctor. The best use of this system is walking into a GP appointment with a six-month trend instead of a single anxious clinic reading. Showing a doctor that your blood pressure tracked the exact months you were inactive is a different conversation from showing them a single number taken while you were worried about being there. Use it to have better conversations with professionals, not to replace them.

Mind the privacy trade-off. You are putting personal health data into a cloud folder. Use your own Google Drive under your own account. Know what you are sharing and with whom. For most people this is a reasonable trade for the insight it provides, but it is worth being conscious of it.

What this actually looks like in practice

My folder currently has: the Garmin CSV export from last month, this week’s Hume screenshot, the Hilo app screenshot showing my 13-month BP trend, and the Bluecrest PDF from May. That is four files. The whole setup took about an hour the first time. Now it takes five minutes a week to drop in the new Hume screenshot and a couple of minutes to run the weekly check with Claude.

What I get back is a short paragraph on where the leading indicators are, a one-line summary of the trend on BP and body composition, and one thing to do differently this week. Last week it was push the Tuesday climbing session from one hour to ninety minutes. The week before it was take Wednesday off because three days of declining HRV said the system was tired.

Small changes, directed by data. That is the whole system.

The thing I wish I had done earlier

I had all four of these devices for months before I connected them. Each one was useful on its own. Together they are a different thing entirely. Not just more data, but a coherent picture of a single body over time, with something intelligent reading the whole thing at once.

If you have a Garmin and a smart scale and a blood pressure monitor, you already have everything you need. The missing piece was never more gadgets. It was a brain joining them up.

Now you have one.

One practical note: the Hilo data in this post is now feeding a live experiment. I’m running a pre-registered 30-day beetroot trial for blood pressure, using the dashboard described here as the measurement infrastructure. The full protocol is published here if you want to see how the system gets put to use in practice.

About the author: I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

June 26, 2026
My Blood Pressure Didn’t Rise Because I Got Older. It Rose the Day I Did My Knee.

Nothing in this post is medical advice. I am not a doctor. Talk to your GP about anything health-related, especially blood pressure and medications.

I was awake at 3am again. Nothing unusual about that. But this particular session had a specific edge to it, the kind that comes when a question has been sitting unanswered for long enough that it starts to feel personal. My blood pressure was still elevated. I am on medication. I have been since 2005. And yet there it was, sitting stubbornly at 133/85, refusing to behave, and I was lying in the dark wondering the same thing I have wondered a hundred times: is this just what my fifties are?

The answer turned out to be no. It is not my age. It is my knee. And I only found that out because I stopped looking at my health gadgets one at a time and let an AI read them all at once.

The gadget problem

I have more health data than most GPs see in a year. A Garmin Fenix 8 on my wrist tracking heart rate, sleep, VO2 max, Body Battery and HRV around the clock. A Hilo blood pressure monitor on my other wrist giving me continuous BP readings, day and night. A Hume Health Pod on the bathroom floor measuring body composition, lean mass, body fat and metabolic age every morning. A Bluecrest medical screening with a 6-lead ECG, blood panel, the lot.

Garmin VO2 Max

Four devices. Each brilliant at what it does. None of them talking to each other. Each one a different sense, with no brain joining them up into a single coherent picture.

For a while I handled this the old way. I used to export everything once a month and hand it to Gemini as a sort of personal health assistant, upload the files, ask it to spot trends, read the output. Useful. But it was a snapshot of a moving thing. A monthly photograph when what I needed was a film.

Wiring it in properly

This time I did it differently. I set up a folder in Google Drive and connected Claude to it directly. The rule is simple: anything I drop in the folder, Claude reads live at the start of each session, no uploading, no monthly ritual. The Hume weekly report goes in as a screenshot and Google’s OCR picks up the numbers automatically. The Garmin data flows in too. For the first time, the whole picture sits in one place and updates itself.

Not great seeing this trend

Claude suited this better than Gemini for one specific reason: it integrates cleanly into the same ecosystem as my Garmin data through Google Drive, and I wanted something that could read across all the sources in a single session rather than requiring separate uploads to different tools. The result is less a monthly snapshot and more a living dashboard that I can interrogate in real time.

And the first thing it did was find two things that no single gadget on its own could have seen.

The blood pressure detective story

I gave Claude 13 months of data. Blood pressure from the Hilo, steps and fitness from the Garmin, body composition from the Hume, and the Bluecrest clinical numbers as a baseline. I asked it to look for patterns I had missed.

It found one immediately. My blood pressure did not drift upward gradually, the way you might expect from age or stress or the general accumulation of life. It moved on a date. And when Claude lined up the BP trend against everything else, the picture was almost uncomfortably clear.

August 2025 was my best month. Daytime blood pressure averaging 121/77. I was doing around 13,700 steps a day. Nearly 1,000 minutes of hard effort exercise a week. VO2 max at 44. Weight around 87kg. Everything pointing in the right direction.

Then in October and November I did my knee.

Steps roughly halved. Hard effort minutes roughly halved. Weight climbed about 10kg over the following months. VO2 max fell five points. And blood pressure marched up to 137/87 by December and parked there.

The correlations Claude pulled were almost comically tidy. Weight against BP: 0.84. Steps against BP: minus 0.85. Hard effort minutes against BP: minus 0.83. VO2 max against BP: minus 0.79. Every metric pulling in lockstep, all of it pointing back to a single event. It was not five problems. It was one event with five shadows.

Twenty years of wondering whether it was salt or stress or just bad luck. And the answer was sitting in the data the whole time, waiting for something to read the whole book at once.

The scale that was lying by omission

The second finding was quieter but stopped me just as sharply.

Between January and June 2026 my weight on the Hume scales went from 96.2kg to 97.3kg. Barely a kilo. If I had been using a bathroom scale, I would have shrugged and moved on. Not much happening, you would think.

But underneath that flat number, my body had been quietly recomposing in the wrong direction. Body fat up 3.3kg, from 18.3 to 21.6kg. Body fat percentage from 19 to 22.2. Lean mass down 0.9kg. Metabolic age drifting from 41 to 44. Health score from 697 to 662.

The scale weight was almost completely flat while the makeup of me was getting measurably worse. A standard bathroom scale would have told me nothing was happening. The Hume Pod already hinted at this in the review I wrote about it, the lean slightly low, the fat slightly above expected for my frame. But this was the moving picture version. Five months of quiet drift, invisible to a single number.

This is exactly why I wrote what I did in the Hume Health Pod review about ditching the Renpho. The cheap scale was not just inaccurate. It was lying by omission, because it only had one thing to tell me.

The reassuring part

I want to be honest about both sides of this, because the picture is not all bad and I do not want to write something that just sounds like doom.

The dangerous fat, the visceral kind that sits around your organs and drives cardiovascular risk, stayed low throughout. Index 8 to 9 the whole time. The gain was subcutaneous, the kind you can see, not the kind that quietly kills you. The Bluecrest ECG was clean. Sinus rhythm, 66 bpm, no ectopics. Blood sugar normal. HDL cholesterol at 1.8, which is elite. 59 green flags on the screening.

And the engine responds. Between 2017 and 2025 my resting heart rate fell from 71 bpm to 53 bpm as my training roughly tripled. The body knows what to do when you push it. What is happening in 2026 is that process running in reverse because I stopped pushing.

The plan, and why it is simpler than I expected

The good news about having one cause is that it points to one fix. Rebuild the aerobic base using what the knee will allow: the bike, incline walks, the rebounder, climbing. Get back toward summer 2025 activity levels. Push sleep from around six hours toward seven or more, because the Fenix data has repeatedly shown me what the Garmin Fenix 8 review touched on, that low HRV and poor sleep are the first signs of a system under stress, and the last things to recover.

Everything else, the blood pressure, the fitness, the body composition, is downstream of those two things. That is what the data says. That is what I am doing about it.

The green shoot

The morning I finished pulling this together, my VO2 max ticked from 39 to 40 for the first time in months. One point. It means nothing on its own. It means everything as a direction.

Update, July 2026: that green shoot turned into something. I have written up the first real evidence the recovery is actually underway, a fortnight of heat acclimation running that reclaimed ninety seconds a kilometre and a resting blood pressure finally easing off its six-month plateau, in my July interim report.

What I actually learnt at 3am

Your body keeps an honest ledger. The gadgets are not the point. They are pages. What changed is that something finally read the whole book at once, and the story it told was not that I am getting old. It was that I stopped moving, and here is exactly what it cost, now go and get it back.

The next post covers the practical side: how I set this up, how you can do the same thing with whatever devices you already have, and what to tell the AI so it actually gives you useful output rather than just repeating your numbers back at you.

About the author: I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

June 19, 2026
Two Giottivan Quick Wins I Figured Out at 3am (So You Don’t Have To)

I have no commercial relationship with any company mentioned in this post. Both products were bought with my own money after my own 3am research sessions.

These are two Giottivan quick wins I picked up the hard way over six weekends in the Giottiline Giottivan 60T. The first left a mark on my head. The second left a mark on my sleep. Here is what fixed both.

Problem one: the cab roof is at exactly the wrong height

The Giottivan is a remarkably liveable van. But there is one design quirk that nobody mentions in the brochure. When you walk from the living area into the cab, the roof drops. Not dramatically. Just enough that if you are 6 foot 2 and not paying full attention, you will catch the top of your head on the leading edge of the open storage shelf above the cab seats, the space where coats and rucksacks live.

I did this twice in the first week. Gently enough to feel stupid, hard enough to leave a graze that took ten days to heal. By week three it had become a persistent little wound because I kept catching it in exactly the same spot. It was, in the most mundane possible way, a problem that needed solving.

So at 3am, because that is when I solve these things, I went looking. I considered pipe lagging. I considered foam tape. I considered a small piece of carpet. None of them were right. Either they looked terrible or they would not stay put or they were too bulky.

What I eventually found was a set of children’s corner and edge guards. Specifically the Fairy Baby Safety Edge and Corner Guards. They are designed for sharp corners on coffee tables and furniture. They are self-adhesive, soft foam, and come in a colour scheme that is a remarkably close match to the Giottivan’s interior trim.

I fitted a length along the lower edge of the open storage shelf. It looks like it was designed to be there. Anyone who did not know would assume it was a factory-fitted trim piece. And if I do catch my head now, which occasionally still happens, there is absolutely nothing to feel. No pain, no mark, no week of wincing every morning.

It should be a factory fit. It genuinely should. If you have a Giottivan and you are over about 5 foot 10, go and order a pack now. Cost me a few pounds on Amazon and took about ten minutes to fit. One of the better tenners I have spent on this van.

Fairy Baby Safety Edge and Corner Guards on Amazon

Problem two: the bed and a bad back

I have had a bad back since I was 14. Not debilitating, just a permanent background presence that occasionally makes itself known when I sleep on an unfamiliar mattress. New hotel bed, first night always rough. New mattress at home, two weeks of adjustment. So it was entirely predictable that switching to the Giottivan’s fixed bed every weekend would cause me some issues.

The bed itself is fine. It is comfortable enough. But it is not my bed, and my back noticed immediately.

The obvious solution was a mattress topper. But here is where the Giottivan’s Modul’Space system, the clever wardrobe-swings-over-the-bed mechanism that makes the separate shower possible in a van this size, creates a specific constraint. The wardrobe needs to swing across and sit over the bed surface to allow access to the shower. If the topper is too thick, the wardrobe will not clear it and the system stops working.

Most quality mattress toppers start at about 7 or 8cm. Too thick. I needed something around 5cm that would still do a proper job on a bad back.

After a considerable amount of 3am research into memory foam densities, orthopaedic support ratings and temperature regulation claims, I bought the Panda Gel Infused Memory Foam Mattress Topper in UK Double at 5cm. Medium firm. Bamboo cover. Adjustable straps to keep it in place.

A few things worth knowing:

The Giottivan 60T bed is close to a UK double but not quite. I took a punt on the standard UK double size and it fits perfectly. There is a small amount of overhang at one side which tucks under easily and stays put.

The 5cm depth clears the Modul’Space wardrobe without any issue. When you want to access the shower, sweep the duvet to one side, which takes about two seconds, and the wardrobe swings over without touching the topper at all.

The gel infusion genuinely helps with temperature. I was half-expecting that claim to be marketing fluff, but sleeping on it in April in Wales, with temperatures dropping overnight, it did seem to regulate better than I expected. Not scientific. Just noticeably less of that overheating-then-cooling cycle you sometimes get with memory foam.

And the back? The first night I slept on it I woke up with no stiffness. The second night I forgot I was in the van. By weekend three Suzy pointed out that I was sleeping better in the van than I do at home. She was not wrong.

Panda Gel Infused Memory Foam Mattress Topper 5cm on Amazon

Two small things, big difference

Neither of these is glamorous. There are no interesting specs to read out. But this is what the 3am sessions are actually for: finding the unglamorous solutions to the small problems that nobody thinks to write about until they have lived with them for a few weeks.

If you have just taken delivery of a Giottivan, or you are about to, both of these are worth sorting in week one. Your head and your back will thank you.

I am tracking everything else I am learning about the van, including accessories, campsites, what works and what does not, over in the Giottivan review. If you want to see where the van has actually taken us, I have written up six honest weekends in my North Wales campervan sites round-up, the good, the quiet and the one I would never repeat. More to come.

Both of these are about the van itself. If your back or neck is still complaining once you’re set up outside it, I’ve also written up the Vango Hampton DLX reclining camping chair, which solved a headrest problem two years of standard camp chairs never did.

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I write up every UK site we stay at in the Giottivan, the good ones and the ones I would never return to. Subscribe and I’ll send you the next honest review, plus the kit that actually earns its place on board.

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About the author: I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

June 18, 2026
Giottiline Giottivan 60T Review: The Campervan I Spent Three Years Looking For

I have no commercial relationship with Giottiline, Your Style Leisure or any other company mentioned in this post. I bought everything myself at full price.

I was awake at 3am again. Not unusual. But this particular 3am session had been going on for about three years, on and off, and it had a very specific subject: how do you fit a toilet, a shower, a fixed bed, a proper kitchen and a garage into a van that is still short enough to use as your only car?

Camping by the River Dee

This is my Giottiline Giottivan 60T review, written after taking delivery in late March 2026 and being away for the first six weekends straight. Mainly Wales. Rhuallt, Caernarfon, Brecon, Talacre, Denbigh, St Asaph. Two dogs. One very patient partner. Not a single problem with the van.

Why I replaced the VW Transporter

I had a VW Transporter on a 2014 plate, navy blue with a pop-top. I had it for five years and genuinely loved it. It was simple, it was reliable, and it went everywhere. But it had no toilet, no shower, and a bed that required converting every night and back every morning. Which is fine when you are 45. Less fine when you are pushing 55 and your back has an opinion about it.

My old VW Transporter

What I wanted was straightforward on paper: a fixed bed, a proper bathroom with a toilet and a separate shower, a garage underneath for deck chairs, cables, the BBQ and the hosepipe, captain seats up front, and an automatic gearbox. The Transporter was 5 metres. I did not want to go over 6 metres because it had to be my only car, which meant parking it at home and using it for everything.

The problem was budget. The big brands will sell you all of that, but at a price that made my eyes water. So the 3am sessions started in earnest.

How I found Giottiline

Giottiline is an Italian manufacturer founded in 2004 in Colle Val d’Elsa, Tuscany. They built a reputation for well-designed, good value campervans and motorhomes, and in 2016 they were acquired by the Rapido Group, one of the biggest names in the European RV industry. What that means in practice is Italian design flair with French group manufacturing quality behind it. The Giottivan range shares DNA with Rapido’s own vans and benefits from that group’s engineering and build standards.

In the UK they are not as well known as the German or French brands, which means you can get a lot of van for the money. That was what caught my attention at 3am when I first stumbled across them.

The 60T and where it sits in the range

The Giottivan range runs from the compact 54T up through the 60B, 60T, 60FT and 64G. The 60T is the sweet spot: 5.99 metres long, 2.05 metres wide, with a rear transverse double bed, a bathroom, a kitchen, and four approved seats. It is designed for two people who want to travel properly, not rough it. You can see the full range on the Giottiline website.

The genius of the 60T, and the thing that sold me on it during one particularly productive 3am session, is the Modul’Space bathroom system. The wardrobe lives in the shower. When you want a shower, the wardrobe unit swings across and parks over the bed, leaving the full shower space free. When you are done, it swings back. It sounds like a gimmick until you realise it means you get a genuine, separate shower and toilet in a van that is under six metres long. That is not a gimmick. That is genuinely clever engineering.

The Premiere Edition

I ordered the Premiere Edition, which is the top spec. On the Peugeot Boxer chassis with a 2.2 litre diesel and an 8-speed automatic gearbox. The automatic was non-negotiable for me. The Premiere pack adds the wind-out canopy, 16 inch alloy wheels, coordinated cabin upholstery and the full Privilege pack. Mine came in light grey and looks, if I am being honest, beautiful.

Suzy and Van

Key specs: 5.99m long, 2.05m wide, 2.61m high (with the roof vent), 3,500kg MTPLM, four approved seats, two sleeping berths, 100 litre fresh water tank, Dometic 130 litre compressor fridge, Truma Combi 4 diesel and electric heating with Truma CP Plus digital controller, LED lighting throughout, 7 inch reversing camera and monitor, electric step, flyscreen on the entrance door, captain seats that pivot for the living area.

I also added a lithium leisure battery, 200w of solar panels on the roof, and a tracker. Most insurers insist on the tracker at this price point, and I got excellent cover through NFU Mutual, who were not only the cheapest quote but have the best reputation for actually paying claims.

The dealer: Your Style Leisure in Northwich

I found a dealer an hour from home in Northwich called Your Style Leisure. I drove up one December day in 2025 to have a look, not expecting much. I came away having ordered one. The van looked stunning in the showroom, felt well put together, and the people there knew what they were talking about. I ordered in early January for a vehicle already coming into dealer stock and took delivery in late March. From order to keys, around ten weeks.

Full walkthrough of the Giottiline Giottivan 60T by Nick Whale Motorhomes. I watched this more times than I can count before taking delivery

Six weekends in: the honest verdict

I have not been home for a weekend since I took delivery. That should tell you most of what you need to know. If you want the full account of where we have actually stayed, I have written it all up in my North Wales campervan sites round-up, six honest weekends including the one site I would never repeat.

The first night away we parked up with the rear doors open, made coffee, and watched porpoise swim past. That is not something that happens often. But having a van that you can just go in, make coffee at 6am without waking anyone up, and sit with the doors open watching the sea is exactly what I bought it for.

By the sea near Caernafon

At 6 foot 2 I can just about stand up inside, which matters. The bed is genuinely comfortable. The fridge is massive by campervan standards. The heating is excellent. The Truma Combi runs off diesel or electric and keeps the van properly warm even on cold Welsh nights in April. The Truma CP Plus controller means you can set a temperature and forget it rather than fiddling with dials.

Driving it as a daily is fine. The Peugeot Boxer with the 8-speed automatic is smooth and relaxed on the motorway. It is not a sports car and it does not pretend to be, but it is easy to drive and the reversing camera makes parking manageable. I have had it in some tight spots in Wales and not embarrassed myself.

Meet Cujo and Blaze

No campervan review from me would be complete without the dogs. Cujo is a champagne-coloured long-haired chihuahua. Blaze is a black chorkie. Both rescues, both three years ago, both absolutely certain that the van was built for them. Since I wrote this, Cujo has been diagnosed with a heart condition, and I have written separately about how we finally get his tablets into him.

They travel brilliantly. For safety, they travel in a dog bed towards the back of the van with their harnesses secured to the bed, so everyone is properly contained. Cujo sleeps on the actual bed regardless of what anyone else thinks about it once we arrive. Blaze sits up in the front and watches the world go by when we stop. On our first morning away they were both sitting in the open back doors surveying a Welsh field at dawn. I will never get tired of that.

The van works well with dogs. The electric step means they can get in and out without having to be lifted every time. The wipe-clean floor in the living area is forgiving. The garage underneath is where their leads, food and water bowls live. It is a proper dog-friendly setup.

What I will cover in future posts

I bought a lot of accessories with this van and my wallet is still recovering. There will be future posts covering the specific kit I added and what I think of it, including the lithium battery setup, the solar, and various bits of camping kit that have made life easier. I have already written up two of them in the Giottivan quick wins post. The van itself is just the start.

Giottiline Giottivan 60T review verdict: would I buy it again?

Without any hesitation. It is the most expensive thing I have ever bought other than a house, and six weekends in I have not had a single moment of regret. The Modul’Space bathroom is as clever in real life as it looks on paper. The build quality is solid. The dealer was excellent. The Premiere Edition gives you everything you actually want without having to option-up endlessly.

If you are looking at campervans in this class and you have not looked at Giottiline, you are missing something. The brand does not have the same name recognition as the German alternatives, but the van is better value and, I think, better looking. I have no affiliation with them and I paid full price. That is just my honest view after six weekends and a lot of miles.

If you want to see the van parked up and actually put to use, I’ve written up a five-mile riverside walk from Chester’s Little Roodee car park, right next to the racecourse and a genuinely cheap overnight spot.
If you’re on the tall side too, I’ve also written up the Vango Hampton DLX reclining camping chair that finally fixed my headrest problem on site.

Get the next van write-up

I write up every UK site we stay at in the Giottivan, the good ones and the ones I would never return to. Subscribe and I’ll send you the next honest review, plus the kit that actually earns its place on board.

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About the author: I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

I track health data from all my trips using the Garmin Fenix 8 for activity and sleep, and the Hume Health Pod scales for body composition. Worth reading both if the health side of campervan life interests you.

June 16, 2026
Hume Health Pod Review: Is This the Smart Scale That Actually Tells You the Truth?

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

I was awake at 3am looking at body composition scales because I had just stepped off my old Renpho and watched the body fat reading drop in perfect proportion to my weight. I knew immediately it was useless. It was telling me nothing. All it was doing was applying a formula to my weight and calling it data. I wanted actual data.

This is my Hume Health Pod review, written after long-term daily use. The short version: it is the first scale I have owned that I actually trust.

Why I ditched the cheap smart scale

The Renpho was about £30 on Amazon. It looked impressive in the app. It showed me body fat, muscle mass, bone density, all the numbers. The problem was that every single metric moved in direct proportion to my weight. Lose a kilo, every number improved. Put it back on, every number worsened. That is not body composition analysis. That is just weight with extra steps.

I started reading about what actually separates a decent body composition scale from a cheap one. The answer, consistently, was how many electrodes it uses and how many frequencies it scans at. Most budget scales use two electrodes, foot to foot, measuring only through your lower body and estimating the rest. More expensive clinical equipment scans at multiple frequencies across multiple pathways simultaneously. The Hume Health Pod does the latter.

How the Hume Health Pod actually works

You stand on the platform and hold a bar. That bar matters. Most scales only measure from foot to foot, which means they are only looking at your lower body and extrapolating everything else. The Hume Pod uses eight electrodes, four in the platform and four in the handle, scanning across your arms, torso and legs separately. It runs at multiple frequencies from 20kHz to 100kHz, which allows it to distinguish between fluid inside and outside your cells, giving a much more accurate picture of fat versus muscle versus water.

The result is segmental analysis. Not just a single body fat percentage, but a breakdown by body part. This matters because you might have good overall numbers but be carrying fat in one area or lacking muscle in another. My data shows that clearly. My lean mass is slightly below expected for my height and weight, while my body fat is slightly above. Knowing that is actionable. A number on a bathroom scale is not.

The accuracy question, and what Bluecrest confirmed

I had a medical health check with Bluecrest Health Screening. One of the things they measured was body composition. When I compared their results to the Hume Health Pod readings from around the same period, they were remarkably close. That was the moment I stopped treating the scale as approximate and started treating it as a genuine data source.

Hume claim 98% accuracy and have had the device independently validated by Socotech against DEXA scan results, DEXA being the gold standard clinical measurement used in hospitals. That validation is what sets it apart from the dozens of scales that simply claim accuracy without any third-party testing behind it.

My Hume Health Pod stats, and what they actually mean

Here is where I am right now. I am 55. My health score is 662, rated High. My biological age comes out at 47, eight years younger than I actually am. My metabolic age is 42 to 44 depending on the reading, which is rated Excellent, 11 to 13 years below my chronological age. I weigh 95.9kg.

Body composition: lean mass 71kg, body fat mass 21kg, body fat percentage 22.1%, skeletal muscle mass 48kg, average water level 58%. Lean mass is Standard but 2kg below expected. Body fat is Standard but 7kg above expected for my frame.

What does that mean for someone trying to stay fit at 55? My aerobic fitness and metabolic health are in good shape. The Garmin Fenix 8 data backs this up with VO2 max and Body Battery metrics that have been consistently strong. But I am carrying more fat than I should be for my frame, and my lean mass is slightly lower than ideal. The practical implication is straightforward: prioritise protein and resistance work to protect and build muscle mass, while the fat comes down through activity and diet. I recently ran all of this data through Claude, the Hume numbers alongside the Hilo and Garmin, and what it found was revealing. The full story is in this post about what happens when you read all your health gadgets at once.

It also connects via Google Health Connect to import your Garmin data, so the Garmin Fenix 8 and the Hume Pod give you a joined-up picture of fitness and body composition in one place. Same works for Apple Health if you are in that ecosystem.

The app and what it is still developing

The Hume app is good and clearly being actively improved. There are sections, Activity and Sleep, currently showing a message saying they are being refined and will return shortly. That tells you the company is still building, and they would rather take something offline than leave it half-finished. I find that reassuring. The body composition data has always been there and has always been accurate. Everything else is a bonus.

The app remembers up to 30 users, making it genuinely family-friendly. Weekly health reports are well-designed and show the trend data over time. That longitudinal view is where the real value is. Not any single reading, but the direction of travel over weeks and months.

What about the Hume Band?

Hume also sell a wearable band that adds cardiovascular score, sleep architecture and recovery data. I have not bought it. I already have the Fenix 8 doing all of that, and I do not need to duplicate it. If you do not have a capable wearable, the band would round out the picture considerably. For me, the Pod alone is the right call.

Pricing: they never charge full price

They never charge full price. That is not cynicism. It is just how they operate. There is almost always a promotion running or a discount code available. If you see it at full price, wait a week. Or use my link which gets you money off straight away: humehealth.com/PETER22195. I would not pay full price and you do not need to.

Hume Health Pod review verdict: would I buy it again?

Yes, without hesitation. It is the first scale I have owned where I trust the data enough to make decisions based on it. The Bluecrest comparison confirmed it. The app is improving constantly. And the integration with Garmin via Google Health Connect means it sits neatly inside the same health picture I am already building with the Hilo blood pressure monitor and the Fenix 8.

If you are over 50 and thinking seriously about your health, and by that I mean not just your weight but your actual body composition, your muscle mass and your fat distribution, then a decent scale is not a luxury. It is the starting point. The Hume Health Pod is the one I would recommend. Just make sure you get it with a discount. Use this link and you will.

About the author: I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

June 16, 2026
Hilo Blood Pressure Monitor Review: Two Years of Wearing It Every Day

This is my Hilo blood pressure monitor review, written after two years of wearing it every single day. I have had high blood pressure since 2005. That is twenty years of it sitting at the back of my mind, of GP appointments, of trying things that did not work, and of a lot of 3am reading trying to understand why my numbers would not come down. I have read the books, tried the supplements, been on four different medications at once, and spent more evenings than I can count down research rabbit holes wondering whether it was salt, stress, sleep, or just bad luck.

The Omron X7 upper arm cuff was my first serious piece of kit. It is genuinely excellent as a cuff monitor goes, and if you need a reliable home blood pressure monitor I would not argue with it. But the problem with a cuff monitor is the same as the problem with a bathroom scale. It only tells you what is happening at one moment in time, and only if you actually remember to use it. I am not great at either of those things.

What I wanted was something I could wear all day that would tell me what my blood pressure was actually doing across a normal life. Exercise, sleep, stress, that second glass of red wine on a Friday. Not a snapshot. A picture.

Omron X7 on Amazon

The problem with wearable blood pressure monitors

Most of them are enormous. If you look at the wrist-based BP monitors that were available a couple of years ago, they looked like something you would wear to measure your tyre pressure. Fine for occasional use at a desk, less fine if you sail, climb or run and need something that does not get in the way or look ridiculous.

Then I found the Aktiia. It has since been rebranded as the Hilo, but it is the same device with a better app. Small, slim, looks like a regular fitness band. Waterproof. FDA cleared. It measures blood pressure continuously using optical sensors rather than a cuff, taking readings throughout the day and night without you doing anything. That last bit matters more than it sounds.

The Amazon reviews at the time were mixed, which gave me pause. But the waterproof thing was a dealbreaker in the other direction. I sail a Nacra Inter 20 catamaran and I climb indoors. I do not want to be fussing with a watch every time I get in the water. So I took a punt.

That was two years ago. I still wear it every day.

Check the current price at Hilo

What it actually tells you

The app shows you time in target range, your average systolic and diastolic readings across different periods, and how your numbers change day to day. The screenshots I have included show my current data. My 7 day average is sitting at 130/82, which the app correctly categorises as elevated. My 6 month time in target range is 37 percent. Not where I want to be.

But here is the useful bit. I know exactly why. I have had a knee injury that has kept me off running for a few weeks. My weight has crept up, my fitness has dropped, and both of those things show up in the numbers. I later wired the Hilo data together with my Garmin and Hume scales and let Claude analyse the lot. What it found about the knee injury and my blood pressure was one of those moments where data tells you something you had been wondering about for months.

And that is the point of this device. Not that it makes your blood pressure better by itself. It gives you the feedback loop that was missing. Before the Hilo, I had a rough sense that exercise probably helped and cheese probably did not. Now I know it. I can see what a week of good running does to my readings versus a week on the sofa. I can see what happens after a night out. I can see that stopping eating cheese every day made a meaningful difference to my numbers, which I think is about the sodium content, though a book I found useful on this subject has a different theory about it being the sodium to potassium balance rather than sodium alone.

If you want to understand that side of it, The High Blood Pressure Solution is the best thing I have read on the subject. Not medical advice, just genuinely useful background for understanding what is going on.

On the potassium note: I have started having a banana every day again. Not a cure, not medical advice, but the sodium to potassium ratio argument made enough sense to me that I tried it, and my numbers have historically been better when I am consistent with it. Read the book and make your own mind up.

The medication story

I am not going to tell you what to take or not take. But I will tell you that at my worst I was on four medications simultaneously: lercanidipine, ramipril, bisoprolol and spironolactone. The bisoprolol was causing bradycardia, which meant my heart rate was too slow for my activity level. The spironolactone had diuretic effects that were genuinely incompatible with being active. I will leave it at that, except to say that having to stop a run to find a bush is not ideal when you are trying to get your numbers down through exercise.

With a lot of 3am reading, and with some help from Gemini to help me structure my thoughts before GP appointments, I worked through the medications one by one with my doctor and got down to lercanidipine and ramipril, which is where I am now. The Hilo data was part of those conversations. Being able to show a GP a six month trend rather than a single clinic reading changes the conversation.

None of this is medical advice. Talk to your GP. But continuous data is more useful than a cuff reading taken while you are already anxious about having a cuff reading taken.

The practical reality after two years

A few things worth knowing before you buy.

You need to calibrate it once a month using a standard upper arm cuff, which is included in the box. It takes about five minutes and is not a big deal, but it is a recurring task. Set a reminder and it becomes habit.

The strap does wear out. I bought a replacement after about 22 months, which cost around thirty pounds. Not nothing, but it is a consumable on a medical grade device and I did not find it unreasonable.

It is waterproof. Genuinely waterproof, not splash resistant. I sail, I sweat, I climb. It has not given me a moment of trouble with water.

The app has improved a lot since the Aktiia days. The rebranded Hilo app is cleaner, the insights are more useful, and the time in target range view in particular is something I check regularly.

It does not replace a cuff for one-off clinical readings. If your GP needs a number for your notes, use a cuff. What the Hilo gives you is the picture around that number, which a cuff cannot.

Hilo blood pressure monitor review verdict: would I buy it again?

Yes, without hesitation. Two years in, still wearing it every day. It did not fix my blood pressure. Nothing fixes blood pressure like a tablet or a lifestyle change fixes blood pressure. But it gave me the information I needed to understand what was happening and to have better conversations with my doctor about it.

If you have hypertension, or if you suspect you might, or if you are just the kind of person who wakes up at 3am wanting to understand their own body better, this is the most useful piece of kit I own. More useful than any supplement I tried. More useful than any single book. Because it shows you your own data, and your own data is the only data that actually matters. If you wear a Garmin Fenix, the two work well together as part of the same daily health picture.

Check the current price at Hilo
Also mentioned in this review: the Omron X7 cuff I used before, and The High Blood Pressure Solution.

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

I used the Hilo to run a pre-registered beetroot trial for blood pressure, and it is now finished. The answer was no change at all, across 824 readings. You can read the full results here, along with the protocol I set before I started.
I publish the ones that fail too
The beetroot trial is finished and the answer was no change at all. I set the threshold before I started and published it either way. Subscribe and I will send you the next thing I test, working or not.

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Pete Harrison

I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

June 16, 2026
Garmin Fenix 8 47mm AMOLED Review: What Happened When I Needed Glasses for the First Time

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

This is my Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED review, written after six months of daily use. Twelve months ago I was awake at 3am, reading watch reviews in the dark, trying to work out whether there was a watch bright enough to solve a specific problem I had. I had recently had a cataract operation and, for the first time in my life, I needed glasses to read. Fine at a restaurant. Significantly less fine when I was running, climbing or sailing and needed to check my heart rate without stopping to fumble around for my specs. This is what I found, and six months on, whether I was right.

I had the cataract operation in 2024. Nobody really tells you what happens after. One of the side effects for me was needing reading glasses for the first time in my life at 55. Restaurant menus, small print, my old Fenix 7. Suddenly all a bit of a squint.

Which created an annoying problem. When you are running, cat sailing or halfway up an indoor climbing wall, you do not want to be fumbling for glasses just to check your heart rate.

My Fenix 7 was a watch I genuinely loved, but the screen was perfectly fine before the op and then just was not bright enough anymore. So when my girlfriend Suzy bought me the Garmin Fenix 8 47mm AMOLED Sapphire for my birthday last December, I was not just excited about a new watch. I was hoping it would solve a real, everyday problem.

Six months in. Here is the honest verdict and everything I have learnt about this watch since.

A bit of background on the Fenix

The Garmin Fenix line has been around since 2012, and it has always been built for one type of person: serious outdoor athletes who need a watch that will not die on them halfway up a mountain, across a lake or through a triathlon. Think climbers, trail runners, sailors, divers, triathletes. It is built to military grade durability standards and the price reflects that.

The Fenix 8 launched in August 2024 and brought the biggest changes in years: a built in speaker and microphone, a proper LED flashlight and, most importantly for me, a choice between an AMOLED display or solar charging.

I went for the 47mm AMOLED Sapphire in DLC titanium with the carbon grey strap. Two reasons. The AMOLED screen is the bright one, and given my eyesight that was the whole point. And the DLC titanium with sapphire glass is the tough one. Between climbing walls and salt water, my watches take a battering, so I wanted both the case and the glass to be as close to indestructible as money sensibly buys.

Garmin Fenix 8 47mm AMOLED Sapphire on Amazon

Did it solve the glasses problem? Yes.

This is the headline for anyone in the same boat as me. The AMOLED screen is bright, sharp and high contrast in a way the older transflective screens simply are not. I can read a restaurant menu only with my glasses on, but I can read this watch at a glance, in daylight, mid run, without them. For me that is not a nice to have. That is the entire reason I own it.

If your eyes have changed and you have been quietly struggling to read your current watch, this one detail is worth the upgrade on its own.

Sailing the Nacra Inter 20

This is where the Fenix 8 has genuinely surprised me. I sail a Nacra Inter 20 cat, and the watch has become part of the kit.

At a glance I can see how fast I am going and how far I have sailed, which sounds simple but is exactly what you want when both hands are busy and the boat is moving. For races it has been excellent. I can set up navigation for the longer distance stuff and use the countdown timer for the starts, which takes a surprising amount of faff out of race day.

Salt water, spray, the odd capsize. Six months in and the DLC case and sapphire glass have shrugged all of it off without a mark.

Indoor climbing: good, not perfect

I will be honest here, because honest is the whole point of this blog. For indoor climbing the Fenix 8 is fine, but it is actually a small step back from my old Fenix 7 for the way I like to log climbs.

If I want to record the difficulty of each climb, I have to stop the activity, save it, and start a new one every single time. That is more stopping and starting than I can be bothered with mid session. So I have stopped fussing. I start one activity at the beginning of a climbing session and let it run, and treat it as a record of calories and number of climbs rather than a route by route log.

Fortunately it does not measure how much coffee I drink between climbs. I just let it run and enjoy the session.

Running: as good as you would expect

For running it is, predictably, bloody brilliant. I do not exploit even half of what it can do, and it is still the best running watch I have owned. Accurate GPS, a screen I can actually read without glasses, and battery life that means I am not thinking about charging it every five minutes.

I pair it with Komoot for planning and following routes when I am out walking and exploring new ground, and the two work together nicely. The watch handles the live navigation and Komoot handles the planning the night before, usually at 3am.

[AFFILIATE LINK: Komoot]

Sleep tracking and HRV: the bit I did not expect to care about

I bought this watch for the screen. The sleep tracking was not even on my list of reasons. Six months later it is the thing I check most mornings before I get out of bed.

The HRV data is the thing I find most genuinely useful. Mine drops noticeably before I come down with a cold. Not the morning I feel rough, but a day or two before, when I still feel fine. The watch knows something is brewing before I do. Once you have spotted that pattern a few times it becomes properly useful. I now treat a low HRV morning as a signal to take it easy rather than smash a run, and I am fairly sure that has shortened a few illnesses that would otherwise have floored me.

Diet shows up in it too. A takeaway or a night of eating badly will pull my HRV down the next morning just as clearly as a virus does. It is not a perfect instrument, because stress, alcohol, sleep quality and a hundred other things all affect it, but as a daily signal that tells you whether your body is in a good state to push hard or needs a recovery day, it is more useful than any subjective sense of whether you feel ready.

Garmin’s Body Battery metric rolls all of this together into a single number, which I find more actionable than looking at HRV on its own. A Body Battery of 90 in the morning means push it. A Body Battery of 40 means something is going on, even if you are not sure what yet. Over time you learn what your normal range looks like and what pulls it down.

For a genuine insomniac, having actual data about sleep rather than just a vague sense of having slept badly is worth something. I know how many hours I got, roughly what quality, and whether my body recovered overnight or is still running a deficit. That is not nothing at 3am when you are lying awake wondering if the four hours you got will be enough.

A note on the wider Garmin picture

The Fenix 8 feeds into the same Garmin Connect picture as the rest of my kit, and that is part of why I have stuck with the ecosystem. Alongside the watch I use a set of Hume Pod scales for weight and body composition, and a Hilo blood pressure monitor for continuous wrist BP readings. I recently wired all three into Claude to read them together. What it found is in this post about joined-up health data. It also comes with me in the Giottiline Giottivan on every trip.

I have reviewed the Hume Health Pod separately if you want the full detail on how it works alongside the Fenix 8.

Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED review verdict: should you buy one?

If you are an outdoor type in your fifties whose eyes have started to change, the AMOLED screen alone makes a genuine case for the upgrade. If you sail, the navigation and start timers are excellent. If you climb and you like a route by route log, just know that the activity switching is a minor faff.

It is not cheap. But I bought into it as a long term piece of kit, not a gadget, and six months in it has earned its place. I would buy it again tomorrow. You can find it on Amazon here. If you have managed blood pressure and want to pair the watch with continuous wrist readings, the Hilo blood pressure monitor works well alongside it as part of a joined-up daily health picture.

Pete Harrison

I’m Pete Harrison. I’m 55, I run a business, and I have a mild case of insomnia that means I spend a lot of time at 3am reading about gadgets, gear and ways to make life work better. Things I Learnt at 3am is where I write honestly about the things I’ve actually bought, tested and lived with. No fluff, no rehashing the spec sheet. Just the real verdict from someone who uses this stuff every day.

June 14, 2026