ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Garmin Forerunner 165 is usually obtainable for $249, with the Music mannequin priced at $299.
- The watch is small and light-weight, has a vibrant AMOLED show, 19 hours of GPS battery life, and options in depth help for operating.
- I simply want there have been extra sports activities modes.
extra shopping for decisions
For a restricted time, Amazon has discounted the Garmin Forerunner 165 down to simply $191 ($59 off), making the already reasonably priced Garmin wearable extra so.
Garmin continues to modernize its numerous watch sequence with pretty and vibrant show choices, this time placing an AMOLED panel on certainly one of its entry-level operating watches, the Garmin Forerunner 165 and 165 Music.
With it, one of many firm’s most compact watches, very best for these with smaller wrists or preferring one thing lighter weight, now has a fair higher show to assist visualize your health monitoring, metrics, and extra
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The Forerunner 165 launches at $249.99, and the 165 Music is $50 extra at $299.99. I’ve spent the previous week utilizing each, and listed below are my largest takeaways, together with which of the 2 you can purchase.
To navigate the Forerunner 165, each a touchscreen interface and conventional five-button controls are offered. All the customizations I’ve seen on earlier Garmin watches, together with the costlier ones, are additionally obtainable, so it is relatively easy to arrange exercises and optimize your coaching plans.
Of all of the sports activities and health plans, the Forerunner 165 is most targeted on supporting runners, with options like adaptive coaching plans, wrist-based operating energy and dynamics monitoring, coaching impact, course help, and extra. 25 exercise profiles are additionally offered for actions like swimming, pickleball, yoga, and pilates, however I could not discover something for extra particular duties like indoor rowing, which is at the moment my main train. In that case, I wasn’t in a position to observe my exercises with the watch.
A function I actually loved utilizing was “Morning report,” which offered a abstract of my earlier day and night’s monitoring, together with the coaching plan for the day of. Sleep monitoring with sleep scores and nap detection had been additionally welcome options to have. Metrics akin to coaching impact and restoration time will enable you to perceive the entire image of your well being and wellness, and so they’re issues I like to remember as I plan my actions in the course of the day.
Garmin advertises as much as 19 hours of GPS monitoring, and within the couple of occasions I ran, I used to be in a position to get an identical estimate. In watch mode, you might even see as much as 11 days of battery life, however enabling the always-on show will seemingly reduce that quantity in half.
The Forerunner 165 Music mannequin I examined helps offline music storage from Spotify, Deezer, and Amazon Music, so you may stream to a Bluetooth headset with no telephone connection required. Audio prompts from guided exercises or efficiency alerts are additionally unique to the 165 Music mannequin, so it is value preserving in thoughts. I usually play Amazon Music by way of my Suunto bone conduction headset throughout exercises and have discovered the audio help invaluable.
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On each fashions, ladies’s well being monitoring options, together with menstrual cycle and being pregnant monitoring, can be found. Whereas the Forerunner 165 is just too small for my giant wrists, it is nice to see extra selection and choices for many who need a smaller watch with comparable functionalities as Garmin’s costlier wearables.
Lastly, I have been testing the Forerunner 165 with the redesigned Garmin Connect app and the software program seems to be nice, with customized look widgets, coaching plan standing up entrance and visual, and key information current on the house display.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
Garmin has a broad vary of wearables match for each buyer. The Forerunner 165 remains to be on that checklist, even after a yr since launch, with a give attention to runners and customers with smaller wrist sizes. Garmin’s huge ecosystem and all of its key well being and wellness options are supported on each variants, however that is not even the very best half. The $249 beginning value is aggressive, particularly contemplating all that Garmin has to supply in its smartphone app and ecosystem.
