Samsung has just announced the launch of Galaxy Watch6 series and Apple already has a number of smartwatches in its arsenal (the company’s next offering is expected in September). There is a third brand that’s popular among fitness enthusiasts — Garmin. This is a brand that is known for offerings that make triathletes happy.
We had an opportunity to try one of Garmin’s recent offerings — Forerunner 265. It’s a smartwatch that brings about a major change in the way Garmin is perceived. The watch comes with a sharp AMOLED display while battery life keeps ticking around the seven-day mark. There are many things to love about the smartwatch but it also comes with a couple of quibbles.
Design, look and feel
One of the things I have always enjoyed about Garmin is how the user can access the interface. You can either use the five buttons along the chassis of the watch (three on the left side and two on the right). Sure, the touchscreen is highly responsive but I also like the option of having physical buttons. It’s helpful when the fingers are sweaty or when gloves are on.
From a hardware perspective, the 1.3-inch display can show a wide range of colours in their full glory. The touchscreen is comparable to an Apple Watch or a Samsung Galaxy Watch5. This is an always-on display and unless you raise your wrist, the display remains in a dim state to save battery. The other major benefit of having an AMOLED display is that it makes readings appear clear in dark conditions.
Even on the lowest setting it stands out clear as day and pops with its use of bright colours within all the widgets and menus. There is also a sleep mode. Turn it on and you’ll see the display dim quite a bit to ensure that you are not disturbed at night.
The watch face can be customised in a few ways. You can simply press a button on the watch and select from the many stock options. Once you choose a watch face, you can customise it to display the dataset that will be visible. All this can be done from the watch itself. Or, you can choose plenty more via the Garmin app.
While battery life may take a small hit with the AMOLED display, it is still pretty darn good. The battery is expected to last up to 13 days with regular use and up to five days if you have always-on mode in use.
What you can do with it
The smartwatch supports a wide variety of outdoor activities and it is packed with features that will appeal to both athletes and casual users. There is SatIQ and multi-band GPS support and an extremely accurate heart rate sensor.
The Garmin Forerunner 265 is very light, coming in at just 47g and is water resistant up to 50 metres, making it perfect for swimming but probably not ideal for deep diving.
Many may point to the missing ECG function, which is a big feature on the Apple Watch. You need to remember that Garmin makes its watches mainly for those who are interested in fitness and a majority of runners don’t care about the ECG function.
In terms of features, the Garmin Forerunner 265 is full of it. Some of the big standouts: First you have your morning report and this includes information like training readiness score which takes into account sleep, HRV, training volume, resting heart rate and more to give you an easy-to-understand number. It gives you an idea of how ready are you for a workout and the level of difficulty you can undertake.
There is excellent app support for the smartwatch
Sleep tracking and HRV (heart rate variability) are decently tracked. Your daily HRV score is very useful to analyse your habits and training over longer periods of time. You can also utilise what Garmin calls body battery feature to get a sense of your workout-to-recovery status. You can, of course, track steps and a cool feature that I really like is the health snapshot which takes about two minutes and will capture your heart rate, blood oxygen, breathing rate, stress response and HRV at any time.
You can also get your VO2 max, weather forecast, updates and notifications from your phone, all of which can be customised.
One great feature is that not only can you control music on your phone, but you can also download music and podcasts via, say, Spotify, so that you don’t always have to bring your phone with you.
Who is it for?
Garmin Forerunner 265 is primarily geared towards fitness enthusiasts. It offers a variety of sports profiles, from biking to swimming and strength yoga. The Apple Watch is more of a lifestyle device while Apple Watch Ultra — an expensive option — is for extreme fitness. If you are in the Samsung ecosystem then the Galaxy Watch does the trick. Each of the brands has a clear target audience. Garmin Forerunner 265 hits the sweet spot if you are solely chasing fitness goals.
The smartwatch is sleek and the strap is very comfortable
At a glance
Device: Garmin Forerunner 265
Price: Rs 50,490
High notes
Goes big on health metrics
Excellent OLED touchscreen
Accurate readings
Great battery life
Offline music support
Muffled notes
No offline maps support
The strap mechanism can be improved