Garmin forerunner 945 sports watch review: Does it still give its rivals a run for their money?

Buy now £499.99, Wiggle.co.uk

• Sports tracked: Running, cycling, swimming, cardio, strength training, golf, hiking, climbing, skiing and more
• Weight: 50g
• Dimensions: 47mm x 47mm x 13.7mm in size, screen is 30.4mm in diameter
• Screen: Corning gorilla glass DX Lens
• Display resolution: 240px x 240px
• Battery life: 2 weeks in smartwatch mode, 10 hours in GPS mode with music, 36 hours in GPS mode without music
• Bluetooth enabled: Yes
• GPS: Yes
• Strava compatible: Yes
• Smart phone notifications: Yes
• Rating: 9/10

Design and set-up

There’s no escaping from the fact that the forerunner 945 is predominantly plastic. With a price tag of more than £500, that might seem like quite an outlay for a relatively cheap and cheerful package. But it’s the forerunner 945’s brains and ability that your money is paying for, and we’d rather have a multi-sport watch that did everything you could possibly want and more rather than a watch that was simply style over substance.

It does have its design flourishes though. It doesn’t have a touch screen but its five side buttons are located in intuitive spots, making navigating the watch easy – even mid-activity. Its Corning gorilla glass DX screen remains scratch-free after vigorous testing and the wear and tear of everyday life, and we would expect it to hold its own against flailing limbs at the start of an open water swim.

Read more: 8 best running watches: GPS wristwear for tracking your workouts

Its all-black design is subtle too, and doesn’t scream “triathlon watch” – unlike some of its competitors. It is comfortable to wear and sits nicely on the wrist. The strap remains cosy even after a long day of activities, and was even bearable when worn at night to make the most of its sleep tracking features – something not all fitness watches are able to achieve.

Setting up was really straight forward. After connecting the watch to the Garmin Connect app on a smartphone and entering our details, we were all set. It also meant that the watch was paired with our phone, allowing us to read texts and emails and get notifications on our wrist every time our phone pinged. This feature can be disabled too, which is handy when you’re in a very active group chat.

Activity tracking and training plans

At its core, you want a multi-sport watch to be able to give you live feedback mid-exercise and lots of data to pour over on your return home. As you would expect for a top-of-the-line triathlon watch, the forerunner 945 does this extremely well.

During an activity, you can populate the watch’s screen with everything you could need – be it total duration and distance, current lap split time, heart rate or drill log (for swimming). The watch finds a GPS signal fairly quickly (and never took more than 10 seconds during testing), meaning it’s ready to go as soon as you are.

Read more: 14 best running shorts for women for track and gym sessions

While running and cycling, the screen was clear and easy to decipher with a quick glance. It was a bit harder to see when swimming, but that’s more because of the cut and thrust nature of your arms when doing front crawl.

One thing the forerunner 945 was able to do, that cheaper multi-sport watches we’ve tested previously weren’t, was track your heart rate when swimming – meaning you don’t need to have a separate, chest-mounted strap when hitting the water.

When it comes to recording a full triathlon (or even a brick training session where you will do two activities back-to-back), stopping one leg and starting another is as simple as pressing a button – one click simultaneously ending one activity and starting the transition phase.

Once you’ve finished your activity and synced to your Garmin Connect account, it’s possible to drill down into any metric you could possibly want. The most interesting is the training effect, which shows how that workout has benefitted your overall fitness. It also syncs seamlessly with the likes of Strava.

Read more: 9 best wetsuits for every type of watersport

If you’re new to running or cycling or simply want some guidance when it comes to training for a specific distance, it’s possible to opt in to a number of different Garmin Coach plans too. Once you’ve signed up, each training activity gets synced to the watch, providing guided sessions where you’re simply told what to do in a clear and detailed manner.

All-round smart watch

The Garmin forerunner 945 isn’t just a great triathlon watch, and has bucket loads of features that make it a worthy rival to most smart watches.

Training and competing is at the heart of what the forerunner 945 does, so it provides information such as training status, health stats (including resting heart rate, stress), steps walked and calories burned, and pulse oximeter metrics. All of these combined give you a good indication of the impact your training is having on your overall health, and whether you might be overdoing it.

The connected features mentioned above mean we ended up using the watch like a pager, and it was great to be able to just have a quick glance to see if a message or email was urgent.

Read more: 8 best sports face masks for running or working out in

The watch can store up to 1,000 songs and integrate with subscriptions to the likes of Spotify and Amazon music. To listen, you simply pair some Bluetooth headphones, allowing you to even go phone-free. It can also be used for contactless payments.