Garmin has been around for a while now, and their watches are not cheap.
Garmin
Garmin has been around for a while now, and their watches are not cheap. So, it was always fascinating to me why someone would spend so much money on a Garmin when they could, say, get an Apple Watch for a similar price. After using the Forerunner 945 for over a month now, I understand why.
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The Forerunner is a rather chunky watch which doesn't look all that great. It's not ugly, but I have seen better designs. That said, this thing is rugged, you can put it through the paces and it will survive, which is great for hiking as much as it is for running. The watch also operates entirely on five buttons with no touchscreen, making it very old school. I initially found it tedious to fumble through the menus.
The genius is that unlike a traditional smartwatch, this one is not a distraction. I have worn it for hours in a day without touching it even once and I can check the tracking any time I like from the
Connect app.
I tried installing some additional functionality to the watch, like a fasting tracker, but it was too annoying to use because of the buttons. The buttons work well when trying to track exercise and activity, a few pushes and you can start your routine very quickly. No need to fumble around on a phone.
On the Connect app, you can check your Pulse Oxygen levels, sleep patterns, heart rate, respiration, stress levels, exercise routines, GPS map and calories burned. The hero for this device is the app without which it would be hard to navigate.
I also love the fact that you can change watch faces-I found one that gave me all the data upfront on the screen. So, I didn't even need to look at my phone till probably the end of the day to see the results.
However, at Rs 63,000 you need to be serious about its utility. So, I can only recommend it to fitness enthusiasts who don't mind spending a little more for a wealth of usable metrics, all stuffed in a tiny watch.