The working display actually shines on the Forerunner 265, however I used to be additionally a big fan of the energy display. You can customise that, too, however the default works nice for me: It exhibits your coronary heart fee, a graph of the place that falls in your coronary heart fee zones, time elapsed throughout your set, and reps. Once your first set is finished, 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 primarily based in your motion, although it’s not at all times correct) and fill within the quantity of weight you used. In between units, the time elapsed per set adjustments to time in your relaxation interval, which I discovered to be actually useful to be sure I’m taking sufficient of a breather. After your exercise, you may see within the app what number of units and reps you probably did at which weight for every train, making monitoring development very easy.
Accuracy
Accuracy is important in a working watch, and I discovered the distance-based GPS to be proper heading in the right direction: I used this watch a number of occasions at a in style path that’s labeled each half mile, and every time I handed these markers, my watch’s distance matched up completely. I typically run a set loop round my neighborhood, and my remaining distance by no means assorted greater than a hundredth or two of a mile.
I additionally discovered its coronary heart fee knowledge to be very correct. In a lot of watches I’ve tried, I’d typically discover bizarre coronary heart fee drops throughout intervals or brief occasions of tougher effort, however my Forerunner 265 by no means glitched like that.
Battery life
I’m spoiled by how hardy my Garmin Venu 2 is in regard to conserving a cost, so I anticipated no much less from the Forerunner 265, and it held up: I just about solely totally cost it twice a week or so, typically extra if I simply plop it onto the charger for a fast increase of juice whereas I’m preparing. A ten-minute top-off earlier than a run, as an illustration, introduced me from 42% all the best way to 60%. Activity doesn’t sap a entire lot of battery, both. I began a 35-minute indoor bike session at 11%, then after my exercise was over, it was simply down to 10%. A whole lot of health tracker smartwatches actually hemorrhage battery life—a lot so that you just virtually want to cost them each day—so Garmin’s resilience is a welcome break.
Comfort and magnificence
The Garmin Forerunner 265 is a workhorse, and, effectively, it form of appears to be like like one. Even although I attempted this within the smaller 42-mm-case dimension, it nonetheless has a rugged, useful silhouette—in case you’re trying primarily for a dainty, fairly health tracker to put on to work or whereas out working errands, this most likely isn’t going to be one of the best one for you.
As for consolation, although, I actually loved this watch. The silicone sports activities band shouldn’t be as stiff or arduous as among the others I attempted; it’s really fairly stretchy and has a lot of give.
Water resistance
The Forerunner 265 is made to face up to water strain up to 50 meters—greater than sufficient to monitor exercise for a lot of totally different sorts of off-land sports activities. I’m not a swimmer, I can’t touch upon the way it holds up throughout these exercises, however I did bathe in it each day and put on it whereas hanging out in each a pool and an ocean the place the gadget was submerged, and it dealt with it simply tremendous.
Special options
Along with monitoring exercise, the Forerunner additionally gives a bunch of well being metrics—and a few actually enjoyable extras:
Running knowledge
The Forerunner 265 permits you to create working exercises on the app—establishing your warm-up, interval length and goal tempo, variety of repeats, and cooldown—and sync it seamlessly to your watch. To me, that is a sport changer. I not too long ago did a exercise with brief one-minute sprints, and earlier than this I’d have to hold trying down at my watch to hold time, which might break my stride and stress me out. With this characteristic, my watch began to vibrate 5 seconds earlier than the interval was up, and alerted me by way of voice (it connects by way of Bluetooth to earbuds) when my interval was really completed. It additionally helpfully instructed me when my tempo was lagging outdoors my goal. (On the opposite hand, if the considered a literal voice in your ear telling you to hurry up is extra anxiety-inducing than motivating, you may skip together with tempo targets, which I’ll most likely do some occasions.)