Garmin Forerunner 265 Review: It Isn’t Low cost, But Has a Lot to Offer Serious(ish) Runners

The running screen really shines on the Forerunner 265, but I used to be also an enormous fan of the strength screen. You possibly can customize that, too, however the default works great for me: It shows your heart rate, a graph of where that falls in your heart rate zones, time elapsed during your set, and reps. Once your first set is completed, you press a button to finish it, and also you’re given the choice to edit your variety of reps (your watch counts this for you based in your movement, though it’s not all the time accurate) and fill in the quantity of weight you used. In between sets, the time elapsed per set changes to time in your rest period, which I discovered to be really helpful to be sure that I’m taking enough of a breather. After your workout, you possibly can see within the app what number of sets and reps you probably did at which weight for every exercise, making tracking progression very easy.

Accuracy

Accuracy is significant in a running watch, and I discovered the distance-based GPS to be right heading in the right direction: I used this watch several times at a well-liked trail that’s labeled every half mile, and every time I passed these markers, my watch’s distance matched up perfectly. I often run a set loop around my neighborhood, and my final distance never varied greater than a hundredth or two of a mile.

I also found its heart rate data to be very accurate. In a variety of watches I’ve tried, I’d sometimes notice weird heart rate drops during intervals or short times of harder effort, but my Forerunner 265 never glitched like that.

Battery life

I’m spoiled by how hardy my Garmin Venu 2 is in regard to keeping a charge, so I expected no less from the Forerunner 265, and it held up: I just about only fully charge it twice every week or so, sometimes more if I just plop it onto the charger for a fast boost of juice while I’m preparing. A ten-minute top-off before a run, as an example, brought me from 42% all of the strategy to 60%. Activity doesn’t sap a complete lot of battery, either. I began a 35-minute indoor bike session at 11%, then after my workout was over, it was just all the way down to 10%. A number of fitness tracker smartwatches really hemorrhage battery life—a lot so that you simply almost have to charge them every day—so Garmin’s resilience is a welcome break.

Comfort and magnificence

The Garmin Forerunner 265 is a workhorse, and, well, it sort of looks like one. Regardless that I attempted this within the smaller 42-mm-case size, it still has a rugged, functional silhouette—for those who’re looking primarily for a dainty, pretty fitness tracker to wear to work or while out running errands, this probably isn’t going to be the very best one for you.

As for comfort, though, I actually enjoyed this watch. The silicone sports band is just not as stiff or hard as a number of the others I attempted; it’s actually quite stretchy and has a variety of give.

Water resistance

The Forerunner 265 is made to face up to water pressure as much as 50 meters—good enough to trace activity for many various sorts of off-land sports. I’m not a swimmer, I can’t comment on the way it holds up during those workouts, but I did shower in it every day and wear it while hanging out in each a pool and an ocean where the device was submerged, and it handled it just tremendous.

Special features

Together with tracking activity, the Forerunner also provides a bunch of health metrics—and a few really fun extras:

Running data

The Forerunner 265 means that you can create running workouts on the app—establishing your warm-up, interval duration and goal pace, variety of repeats, and cooldown—and sync it seamlessly to your watch. To me, it is a game changer. I recently did a workout with short one-minute sprints, and before this I’d must keep looking down at my watch to maintain time, which might break my stride and stress me out. With this feature, my watch began to vibrate five seconds before the period was up, and alerted me via voice (it connects via Bluetooth to earbuds) when my interval was actually done. It also helpfully told me when my pace was lagging outside my goal. (Alternatively, if the considered a literal voice in your ear telling you to rush up is more anxiety-inducing than motivating, you possibly can skip including pace targets, which I’ll probably do some times.)