Customer Ratings & Reviews

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 the watch! Does exactly what i needed it for.

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.

I have tried a variety of running watches and I always find myself coming back to Garmin. The Forerunner 245 is the perfect balance between smart technology and simplicity. The Garmin app allows for me to be able to see more in-depth statistics and data from my exercise and daily habits and the watch even evaluates your fitness and tells you how long you should rest before doing another similar exercise. There is also the ability to customize your watch face and download a watch face that is pleasing to you and shows the data you want to see. The battery is great as well. I usually go 5-8 days between charges and it charges rather fast too, usually being full charge for me after an hour or so. My only gripe with the watch is that sometimes if I do not sync the watch to my phone often enough it will stop sending notifications to the watch, but this is only a minor inconvenience as syncing the app to the watch is a quick process and it is my own forgetfulness that causes that to happen. Overall I am extremely pleased with this watch and recommend it to anyone who wants to exercise casually or compete in amateur competitions. Garmin does have more advanced watches for more high-level competition or for people who want more data when they exercise.

For the past 5 years I have been a Fitbit user. I had the Alta HR for the last 3 years. When its battery began to die, I looked for something a little smarter and in a more traditional watch format. After looking at Fitbit, Samsung, and Apple's offerings, I settled on Garmin and the Forerunner 245 GPS, specifically. It had just enough smart features without things like a microphone, which I didn't need. For the first couple of days I wore it in parallel with the Fitbit. I averaged around 12,000 steps each day and the Garmin was about 500 steps behind the Fitbit. I used the default strides on both devices, so that could account for the differences. The sleep tracking on the Garmin is way off. The Fitbit was not always accurate, but it did seem to align with how I felt when waking up each morning. The Garmin rarely shows the times I'm awake in the middle of the night even when I specifically recall being awake for a few minutes. Even in the mornings, if I lay in bed for 15 or 20 minutes after waking up, the Garmin shows that extra time as sleep. I don't find the watch interface or app intuitive. Trying to do something as simple as setting an alarm requires going through multiple menus. It also took multiple attempts to get a display I liked with all of the pertinent info I wanted on the main watch screen to show up and in a large enough font for me to see. Those are all of the knocks. Here's the good news... The band feels like it is of a much higher quality than the Fitbit bands. In the 3 years I had the Alta HR, I went through three Fitbit bands and then 3 or 4 knock-off bands. The watch face is very easy to see in daylight. The notification screens are easy to scroll through and I like that it has canned responses you can select for replies from the watch. The GPS works well and is one of the simpler apps to use on the watch. I used the GPS for walking twice at an hour for each walk. I charged the watch after 5 days, but I still had more than 25% battery, which probably would have lasted me at least 2 more days. Having the weather app on there is also convenient. I haven't tried to tweak it, but it appears to update just once each morning. Having more up to date weather information would be nice, but it works for me as is. The big question is if this is worth it for the price of $299. There are certainly other watches that are easier to use and have more functions at that price range. The sturdiness of this watch leads me to believe it will probably last longer than those other watches. It's also possible one of the lower priced Garmins watches would have sufficed. For me, though, I'm happy enough with this watch.

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!

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

great watch for running! i switched from fitbit because my old watch would constantly lose GPS. this Garmin has so many cool features- very happy with my purchase! (-:

I got this for my son for his graduation… we love all features of fitness and also the gps and fall accidents. Watch is very light and very nice quality.

There is no better running watch than a Garmin, picks up gps faster than other two brands I owned, super accurate. Large easy to read numbers on the run, at dark they auto light up on the turn of your watch for a glance. Bright sunlight also very easy to read. The sync to the Garmin app is great. One down side is the sleep recognition isn’t as good as the Fitbit watch. All other functions are phenomenal.

For runners this a great watch to have to have. I really wnjoy how Gramin helps trake you SPM to really give you and idea on how well your running at a set pace and also graph it out for you in the app. Its a watch thag meets the needs of being a sport watch and not adding fluff to overall features. I also how water proof and durable the watch is. Taken the watch into sea water, fresh water, sand, mud, dirt, has been hit on corners andnother hard surfaces. I'd suggest the protection plan in case something does happen

I did a lot of researching and reading before I bought this. I was basically "tied" between this and the current Samsung smart watch, but ultimately went with this for multiple reasons, including (but not limited to) very readable in sunshine, "fall" notification to selected recipient, full-time GPA, good battery life, solid features, good support from Garmin, and more!

Works great. Easy to use, quickly connects to satellite. Indoor mode not as accurate but still ok

Works well for tracking running and viewing iPhone notifications. Screen is very configurable. Menus can be a little confusing. Battery lasts longer than specified.

Garmin is a great company and they make great watches. This was my second 245 (since I lost the first one). Overall I’d recommend this line of garmin to all runners looking for a more advanced budget friendly option. I no longer use this watch since I found a Fenix 6 solar for a really good price, but I would definitely still be using it if that never happened.

Garmin watch is very useful in my work out. Easy to sync with my airpods

Perfect run companion. Keeps good stats and syncs well with an iPhone or android. Make sure to activate the back up. Bought this as a second watch after losing my first one. Kept almost all the stats on the phone but only recent 3 months of data on the watch itself.

Excellent buy! My husband works out and he uses this daily for running and gym workouts.

This watch is great. It really nails how my energy level is with ‘body battery’ feature. Oh and that’s another great thing about the garmin watches in general is the app. I love all that data and graphs. I charge it about every 5 days. It would go a week if I wasn’t monitoring my blood oxygen while I sleep. Personally I believe it gives me good clues whether I really have sleep apnea or not. Love the course features and mark my position and backtrack. So even if you don’t have maps, you can’t get back. And there’s a free watch app you can get so you put individual maps. (Haven’t figured it out yet). I use it for walking, hiking, and bicycle so far.