Garmin Forerunner 245 Review & Rating – PCMag.com

The $349.99 Garmin Forerunner 245 Music is an excellent fitness tracker for runners looking to improve their performance. The successor to the Forerunner 235, it comes with a ton of new features including a pulse oximeter sensor, incident detection, and Garmin’s latest Elevate heart rate sensor, to name just a few. With onboard music storage, you can also upload up to 500 songs and pair the watch with Bluetooth headphones for comfortable, phone-free workouts. Factor in highly accurate fitness metrics and extensive performance analytics, and the Forerunner 245 Music is a strong option for runners who want to take their abilities to the next level.

Design and Display

The Forerunner 245 comes in a 42mm case size, which looks good on wrists of all sizes. At 1.35 ounces, it’s super lightweight and comfortable to wear during workouts or to bed. The textured silicone strap gives it a rugged look, but quick-release pins allow you to swap it out with any 20mm band if you want to soften its aesthetic. The watch comes in three different styles: a white case with a white silicone wristband, a black case with a black wristband, and an aqua case with an aqua wristband. If you opt for the standard Forerunner 245, which comes without music storage for $50 less, you have the choice of a black case with a black or berry wristband.

The 1.2-inch color display is surrounded by a black polymer bezel. It features transflective memory-in-pixel technology, which means it’s visible in direct sunlight regardless of how bright it is outside. With a resolution of 240 by 240 pixels, content looks crisp and clear.

Since the display isn’t a touch screen, the watch has two buttons on the right side and three on the left to navigate through menus and apps. The top left button triggers the backlight. If you hold it down, it brings you to the controls menu where you can lock, sync, or power off the watch. It’s also where you can access the timer, alarm, Do Not Disturb mode, Find My Phone, and more. Press the middle button once to scroll through widgets including health stats, training status, metrics for the day, weather, and notifications, among others. Hold it down to see battery life, manage settings, set alarms and watchfaces, and view activity history. The button in the lower left corner cycles through the same widgets as the middle key, but in the opposite direction. Hold it down to access music your music library.

On the right side, the top button starts and stops activities and also acts as the select control. On the bottom is the button to return to the previous screen or to record a lap during an activity. If you’ve never used a Garmin watch before, growing accustomed to the controls can be a little overwhelming—especially if you’re used to touch screens. But with some time and practice, it becomes a lot more intuitive.

Features and Battery Life

Under the hood is an accelerometer, a compass, a GPS with GLONASS and Galileo satellite systems, and an optical heart rate monitor. There’s also a Pulse Ox sensor that measures oxygen saturation in your blood. Unlike the Fitbit Versa Lite, it doesn’t have an altimeter to track floors climbed or a gyroscope for counting laps in the pool. But with a 5ATM water-resistance rating, it’s safe to wear during a shower or swim.

The watch runs Garmin OS and connects to your phone using the Garmin Connect app, which is compatible with Android and iOS. You can view text messages, app alerts, and accept or reject phone calls. Android owners can also send quick replies or create customized messages to send straight from the watch.

As mentioned, the watch stores up to 500 songs. To transfer your own music, you have to plug the watch into your computer with the included USB cable and use the Garmin Express app. If you use Spotify or Deezer, you can download the apps from the Garmin Connect IQ store and sync your playlists. I connected the Forerunner with a pair of AirPods, but you can connect it with any Bluetooth headphones.

In addition to Spotify and Deezer, the 245 is also compatible with other third-party apps including Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, and Strava. But unlike Apple’s watchOS and Google’s Wear OS, popular health and fitness apps such as Runtastic, Google Fit, Nike+ Run Club, and Map My Run aren’t available in Garmin’s app store.

The watch comes with Garmin’s signature safety features including Incident Detection & Assistance, which detects whether you’ve been been hit while biking, running, or walking, and notifies your emergency contacts who can then track your location. There’s also LiveTrack, which allows friends and family to follow your activity in real time. But since the watch doesn’t have cellular connectivity, these features only work if your phone is with you.

As for battery life, Garmin says the Forerunner 245 should get up to seven days of use, which is fairly accurate. With continuous heart rate monitoring, nightly sleep tracking, app notifications turned on, and two hour-long workouts, the watch had 16 percent battery left by the afternoon of the sixth day I spent wearing it. While it didn’t last the full seven days, I was using it far more than I normally would. Regardless, I didn’t have to worry about charging it every night even after long workouts.

Fitness Features and Accuracy

The Forerunner automatically tracks steps, calories, and heart rate. It also tracks more intricate stats including stress levels and your Body Battery, which calculates your body’s energy levels based on factors like activity, sleep, stress, and your VO2 Max. For women, the Forerunner tracks menstrual cycles and fertility windows as well.

As for exercise, the Forerunner 245 offers 16 different exercise modes to choose from: cardio, elliptical, indoor bike, indoor row, indoor walk, outdoor row, outdoor run, outdoor bike, outdoor walk, pool swim, run, stair stepper, strength, trail run, treadmill, and yoga. There’s also an “other” category, allowing you to track unlisted activities.

While in workout mode, the watch displays stats such as distance, time, pace, and heart rate. Using GPS, the display also shows a full color map of your route in real time. Once you’ve completed your workout, you can see a summary of all your stats as well and your recovery time. Your workouts also sync to the mobile app where you can see more in-depth metrics like speed, timing, cadence, elevation, and calories burned. It also breaks down your aerobic and anaerobic training effects.

In terms of accuracy, the Forerunner 245 Music is excellent across the board. During a one-mile walk on the treadmill, the watch logged 2,331 steps to a 3DTriMax pedometer’s 2,321, for a negligible difference of only 10 steps. During a one-mile run on the treadmill, the watch logged 2,151 steps to the pedometer’s 2,349, as well as 1,941 steps on an outdoor run to the pedometer’s 1,966.

To measure distance, I wore a Stryd foot pod in addition to the Forerunner 245. When the watch hit one mile during a walk on the treadmill, the Stryd recorded 1.27. Results were closer during a one-mile run, where the watch logged 1.01 miles to the Stryd’s 0.96. I also took the Forerunner for a one-mile run outdoors, where it recorded one mile to the Stryd’s 1.03.

The Forerunner 245’s heart rate monitor is also highly accurate. I used a Polar H10 chest strap to compare results, and during a one-mile walk, the watch recorded 126bpm to the Polar’s 128bpm. After a one-mile run, the watch recorded 165bpm to the H10’s 163bpm. Results were just as accurate during a one-mile run outdoors, where the watch recorded 165bpm to the chest strap’s 166bpm.

Additionally, the heart rate monitor identifies heart rate zones during workouts. As your beats per minute increase, the display shows whether you’re in warm-up, easy, aerobic, threshold, or maximum mode. It also detects abnormal heart rates and triggers an alert if your beats per minute are unusually high after being inactive for ten minutes or more.

The Forerunner also does well tracking sleep. Each night it accurately recognized when I fell asleep and woke up, even when I would lay in bed on my phone for a little while or wake up to turn on my air conditioner in the middle of the night. In the app, you can view your Pulse Ox as well as your sleep stages throughout the night, including deep, light, and REM sleep.

Conclusions

If you’re a serious runner who trains daily, you can’t go wrong with the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music. It provides excellent accuracy, long battery life, and plenty of in-depth metrics that keep your body in check to reach peak performance levels. But with the absence of a barometric altimeter, it works best when tracking workouts on flat land. Those who like to run on trails or enjoy hikes are better off with the $449.99 Forerunner 645 Music for more accurate elevation readings. If you’re looking for a less data-heavy fitness tracker, the Fitbit Versa ($199.99) will do the trick. It’s not only less expensive, but its health and fitness tracking is a lot easier to digest. Or for more in the way of smartwatch features, the $399 Apple Watch Series 4 comes with automatic workout recognition, the ability to take ECG readings, and a far more extensive app ecosystem.