Customer Ratings & Reviews

I had a Fossil Explorist Q gen 4 before this watch. The Fossil looked great but the crown and back plate would pop off when the weather got hot, so there was no water resistance (it never touched water, even before.) I've only had the Garmin for 2 weeks, but do far I love it. I've been swimming in it almost every day. I run in it every other day. Seems accurate in steps and mileage. Heartbeat is a little lagging, esp for weight training, but I think it averages out pretty accurately over time. I didn't need music, so I got the base model. It looks good and is light weight. It doesn't look as nice as my Fossil, but the build quality seems better. The battery has been lasting right at 6 days. I let it go from 100% down to about 8%. It charges up in a little over an hour, though I haven't timed it exactly. I didn't need altimeter or maps either. I think this can get maps, not sure, I don't need them on my watch. This model doesn't have WiFi, which would make music and adding apps easier, but again, it's not needed. The screen looks great in bright light, but only okay in the dark. The digital watch face look much better on this watch than 'analog' style faces. (Both look great on the Fossil.) The strap is nice and flexible. As comfortable as I could imagine silicone being, I guess. I replaced it with woven nylon bc it's more breathable on my skin. Best bang for your buck in my opinion.

Excellent battery life! Charge it once a week. Connecting it to my phone was super easy, I’m able to see when I receive emails or texts. Got it primarily for marathon training since I wanted something to track my progress without it dying during the run. I love the extra features it has and how I’m able to customize it for my own use. Would recommend for anyone! Fitness enthusiast or someone who wants a smartwatch that you don’t have to constantly worry about battery life!

Love this watch. I always want garmin watch but it was little pricey. When i walk into best buy i was just looking around then i saw the garmin was on sale and it was never on sale before and i got one and went to check out and sales person ask if i want 2 yrs warranty i was like yes please

One month - great and reliable watches. Works great for my running. Staying with Garmin! Was the best price at BB

Works great for everything you would expect from a fitness watch. Not so smart that I would distract you from exercising. Screen could be a little brighter but can be seen well enough in the sunlight. Overall I’m happy with it

Best Buy had the lowest price at the time and the watch was in stock in my local store. The watch is exactly what I was looking for when upgrading from a garmin vivioactive 3 now that I am getting much more serious about my running. I have a very small wrist so its a bit big but I prefer that as it is easier to read when running. The battery life so far is about 4 days.

Used it everyday for 2 years with no problems. Would happily buy again

Love the watch! Does exactly what i needed it for.

Great quality watch and serves all the right purpose of a fitness watch. Would recommend to anyone looking for a fitness watch, definitely top of the line

Excellent watch! Help reviewers!!!I would like to say this watch is a great investment! It's so great my wife's wear it more than me.

Love my Forerunner 245. It tracks everything I need, exercise, heart rate, sleep, and more. It seems accurate. Exercise options include outside and inside running, walking and cycling which is nice for the days I exercise inside. The connect app talks to my health app which I like. The only downside, which is important but not enough to take away a star, is the Garmin manual and other Garmin instructions are awful. There are a lot of You Tube videos and very helpful Facebook groups. The watch is east to use with good instruction, just don’t waste your time with the manual.

Bought this watch after using a Forerunner 235 for years (battery wouldn't keep charge anymore unfortunately). While this doesn't give me the 9 days of battery life that the 235 did, the enhancements and extra features I get with this model is fantastic for the price you are paying. The Garmin Ecosystem is so easy to navigate once you've done your homework and dabbled around with it. Highly recomend the Forerunner 245 to anyone looking for a solid running watch that has great extra features.

I love this watch. Tracks many different types of activities other than running too which is nice because I also ride my bike and walk. Tracks heartrate well and I love the performance indicators, health stats, and even race predictors based on training times. It is dependable and holds a charge for several days. Can't go wrong.

I think Garmin is really outstanding for making watches for exercise. This is a great watch for running. It is easy to use and really feels like a running exercise. I would rather use this than my Apple watch for running. Battery life is better too.

Was a great watch until I lost it. I had always had an Apple Watch up until this point, now I don’t think I can go back. The only downside is not being able to take calls or reply to texts on the watch. Other than that, I feel like all of the fitness tracking and heart rate tracking is much more accurate. Syncs up with the app great and provides a lot of data points.

This is my first Garmin watch, which replaced my 5+ year old TomTom running watch and my 2 year old Samsung Galaxy Watch. As a regular runner, my primary intent with this was for running. And as far as that aspect goes, it's been fantastic. It fixes all of the major gripes I had with my old watches. The GPS acquires faster than my previous watches and is accurate throughout the run. The built-in run/walk alert timer is a vast improvement over my old watch's interval feature, the physical buttons are easier to use with sweaty hands than a touchscreen or capacitive touch display is, and having a designated backlight button is fantastic. The display is clear and easy to see, even in low light. The button layout and user interface aren't too tricky to get used to and are fairly intuitive after a couple of days of use. The heart rate monitoring is on par with what I've come to expect for wrist-based monitoring, the watch syncs fast and autonomously with the Garmin Connect smartphone app, and the battery life is phenomenal by comparison to other watches I've owned. I ran about 24 miles in the first week that I owned this watch, using GPS, heartrate monitoring, and a run/walk interval alert timer. With those 24 miles of running along with 7 full days and nights of consistent use, I still had about 25% battery left. I don't think that it's a stretch at all to say that I could get 9 or even 10 days out of this battery, and maybe even closer to 2 weeks if I wasn't using it for running 3-4 times a week. As a smartwatch, it's actually been pretty darn good, although I am going to have to get used to being tethered to my phone via Bluetooth once more (my previous Samsung was a standalone 4G device). I haven't installed any additional apps or widgets so far, but those which came installed on the watch have worked well. The Bluetooth range is fairly impressive, and I can get notifications on my watch with my phone multiple rooms away. I can get anything from call, text and email notifications, to calendar reminders and various social media notifications if I so wish, although I've turned most of that off due to the constant buzzing. As for some of the other gimmicky features, they are a bit more hit and miss. One feature that is kind of neat but I don't really put a lot of faith in is the body battery/stress feature. It supposedly tells you how your rest and activity charge/discharge your energy status, but as it doesn't take into account what you eat, one has to wonder how accurate it is. Also, I got the thing to bottom out at 5% after a 15 mile run one day, even though I felt fine, and it doesn't seem to go anywhere below that. The stress feature I think uses heart rate to estimate, but I've seen some suspicious looking values at unusual times on that particular chart. Sleep tracking seems a bit more reliable, as the time I'm asleep is pretty accurate, although I question how it claims to know what stage of sleep I'm in, when and for how long. One of the features I was very much looking forward to was the pulse ox sensor. As a runner who has a tendency to turn blue in the lips after extremely long runs, I have been known to clip a dedicated pulse oximeter onto my finger post-run just to monitor myself for a bit afterwards. So I was more than willing to pay the $100 upcharge for the Forerunner 245 over the less expense Forerunner 45 (which offers mostly the same features otherwise) for the pulse ox sensor feature. Unfortunately, that particular feature seems to be mostly garbage, as every single reading I've ever gotten with this device was 95%. Laying in bed, 95%. Just ran 13 miles, 95%. I have absolutely no faith in this being an accurate sensor. One other feature I was eager to try out was the pace alerts, as I figured this would give me a sort of virtual pacer during workouts and races when I didn't have a pace group to run with. I set a maximum and a minimum pace, and the watch did a good job of notifying me every 30 seconds that I was ahead of or behind my specified pace range. However, I was hoping that it would use an average pace rather than an instantaneous pace, because as I am a run/walk interval runner, I naturally run faster than my target pace, and I walk slower, so I'm apparently NEVER within my target range. As a result, that thing beeped at me EVERY 30 seconds throughout my entire run. Needless to say, I won't be using that feature very much! I haven't tried out any other workout features so far, nor have I had any reason to test out the incident detection safety monitoring system (I guess I just haven't fallen on my face yet since I got the watch). There's a lot more that the watch says it will do, either on its own or by use of the Garmin Connect app, but I either haven't gotten around to trying them out yet, or won't be able to due to lack of interest or biological hardware (here's looking at you, menstrual cycle tracking!) All in all, I am extremely happy with this watch, and it was definitely a good purchase. Other than being a bit disappointed in the pulse ox feature, I am very pleased overall. If you don't run with your phone and you like to listen to music on your workouts, spring for the music version of this watch. If you don't need music or if you carry your phone already, save yourself the $50 and get this one. Or... maybe just get the $200 Forerunner 45. I can't speak to the specifics of that one, but I can't imagine it's all that much different than this.

I owned an iwatch before this purchase and absolutely hated the battery life. I didn’t use all the unnecessary apps or to text/make calls. What I cared about was having GPS to track my runs, the pedometer, health trackers, and having it remind me of my appts or nudge me when I had an email/message. This Garmin watch absolutely crushed all of these requirements. I charge it maybe 1x every 5+ days, not because its low, but so that I don’t forget to and so I can wear it while sleeping and being active. The watch band and size is super comfortable to wear. I only wish that the display was a little brighter and would brighten when I look at it vs pushing the light button to see the time. Highly recommend!

A solid running watch like this will help you gather the data you need to improve your running ability. I’ve had several Garmin watches over the years and I’ve really benefited from them. They do pretty much everything I need for tracking my workout metrics. Many watch faces, widgets, and applications allow customization opportunities. I do recommend getting a tempered glass screen protector, which typically cost less than $10 for 2-3. It might just save your watch. Battery life is good but not great, while comfort of this light watch is excellent. The Garmin Forerunner 245 includes features like a VO2 Max estimator, a race predictor (which gives projected 5k, 10k, half marathon, and marathon times). Related features that might interest you are the recovery tracker (which estimates the number of hours until your body recovers after a given workout) and personal records for both cycling and running (1 mile, 5k, 10k, and longest run).

Purchased to use for tracking runs, and it works great. Syncs with my Strava account. Battery last for days and charges quickly. There was a little bit of a learning curve coming from a Galaxy Watch that had a touchscreen, but very happy with this product.

Great Watch! Very accurate! Easy to configure and spot on with GPS