I'm not sure I understand. I have had an Instinct, Tactix Delta, and Tactix 7 Pro and have always been able to see the data without a phone or any network present.
I love these watches after moving from an Apple watch, primarily for two reasons:
1) the battery life - I cant stand having to charge my watch every day or so - my (current) Tactix 7 will go ~3-4 weeks depending on how much GPS I use.
2) (this may be out of date) when I would use the Strava or Run app on the Apple watch, it would not signal when it had a GPS fix, which resulted in a number of runs that had a "teleport" at the start, resulting in messed up metrics. Only a small thing, but it really frustrated me.
I'm assuming the parent poster is talking about using the Garmin Connect app, which does require connectivity. You are correct, the data is visible directly on the watch.
I love these watches after moving from an Apple watch, primarily for two reasons:
1) the battery life - I cant stand having to charge my watch every day or so - my (current) Tactix 7 will go ~3-4 weeks depending on how much GPS I use.
2) (this may be out of date) when I would use the Strava or Run app on the Apple watch, it would not signal when it had a GPS fix, which resulted in a number of runs that had a "teleport" at the start, resulting in messed up metrics. Only a small thing, but it really frustrated me.