30 days is asking a lot of any reasonably sized smartwatch, but if you set your sights a bit lower then a $250 Coros Pace 4 will do ~3 weeks with AOD off, ~1 week with AOD on, and 30-40 hours of continuous GPS recording. That's still a lot longer than any Apple Watch even if it's not hitting the 30 day milestone.
Yeah I don't need 30 days, but starting out at a week with AOD puts a pretty low ceiling on future battery life. Appreciate the pointer though.
In thinking further, I realized that the buttons are actually a pretty good moat against the big tech company competitors. Their UIs are all about touchscreens, so they'll never have as many/useful buttons as Pebbles do.
My Coros Pace 2 was my solution to my desire for a less smart watch. It cost $200 when I got it 3 years ago. I run a ton and the exercise features of the Pebble just didn’t do it for me (and I don’t want to keep swapping watches based on what I’m doing). I easily get 2+ weeks with 7-8 exercises with GPS on. The screen is some variation of those transflective LCDs or MIPs LCDs.
I can never go back to a 2 day battery life for a watch, even if my 5 year old iPhone technically can’t make it through half a day of use….