Garmin’s Forerunner 955 assessment: Nonetheless king for runners and cyclists

In the event you’re in any respect accustomed to Garmin’s wearables, you already know that GPS-equipped working watches have all the time been the corporate’s major power. Garmin’s health watches have been a staple amongst athletes as a consequence of their options that are not discovered on Fitbits and Apple Watches. The Forerunner collection remains to be the place the corporate introduces a few of its most modern monitoring and coaching options.

The Forerunner 955 continues that custom. It sits atop the Forerunner collection as probably the most feature-packed watch within the bunch, and this 12 months it positive aspects some trendy touches like a touchscreen and every day train readiness assessments (à la Fitbit’s Every day Readiness characteristic, however free to customers), whereas introducing new options not current on every other Garmin watch. That features the higher-end Fenix collection of watches, from which the Forerunner 955 can also be beginning to steal some cues, like solar-charging choices and multi-band GPS.

We educated with the Forerunner 955 for a couple of weeks to see how its latest options enhance on a platform we already love and to find out simply how afraid Garmin must be about Apple or Fitbit catching up.

A brand new touchscreen, photo voltaic possibility, and multi-band GPS

The Forerunner 955 has the same design to the 945 earlier than it, however that is the primary Forerunner to include a touchscreen show you’ll be able to disable manually or robotically throughout actions. It is also the primary Forerunner to characteristic a photo voltaic charging possibility for a $100 premium, and it is the primary with multi-band GPS assist. Multi-band GPS offers extra correct location monitoring that’s extra dependable in difficult environments. The characteristic was beforehand reserved for Garmin’s highest-end trackers.

The 955’s face grew a tenth of an inch, widening the show to 1.3 mm and permitting for a brand new digitized second hand going across the edges of the display. The solar-charging model provides a neat reflective rim across the watch face the place it soaks in daylight for a bump in battery life. Altogether, this makes for a barely larger watch than its predecessor, nevertheless it would not bulge off your arm like Garmin’s Fenix or Epix watches may.

Below the hood, we nonetheless have sensors for coronary heart price, blood oxygen monitoring, GPS, and 32GB of storage for music. The Forerunner is rated for 5ATM water resistance, and it could actually function from -4º F to 140º F.

Similar OS, new touch-based interactions

Garmin hasn’t tweaked the aesthetics or mechanics of the OS a lot, as an alternative specializing in refining and creating new monitoring options. I don’t have any qualms with the UI—they get the job completed—nevertheless it was good to see the introduction of interactive watch faces on the platform. It’s not a lot, however the default face has a carousel of quick-view stats you’ll be able to faucet via that embrace VO₂ max, coronary heart price variability (HRV), coaching load, and exercise minutes.

Garmin’s inexperience with touchscreen interfaces is clear on the Forerunner 955. It’s not instantly intuitive what every icon is telling you, and it might be useful in the event you may long-press every of them to see extra data, very similar to how watch face issues on the Apple Watch work. Hopefully, this kind of touch-optimized interface enlargement will come quickly.

New Coaching Readiness scores and assessments

Garmin’s robust go well with continues to be its free, in-depth well being metrics and coaching evaluation. The corporate is leagues forward of its rivals in offering coaching enchancment options and sport-specific assessments (significantly working, but in addition biking and swimming to barely lesser extents).

With the 955, Garmin additional refined these metrics for accuracy whereas including two extra mainstream options: Coaching Readiness and Morning Report. Coaching Readiness makes use of your sleep rating historical past, coronary heart price variability, stress historical past (primarily based on HRV), restoration time since your final exercise, and Garmin’s Acute Coaching Load characteristic to evaluate how prepared you might be to train on daily basis.