The working display actually shines on the Forerunner 265, however I used to be additionally an enormous fan of the energy display. You possibly can customise that, too, however the default works nice for me: It reveals your coronary heart price, a graph of the place that falls in your coronary heart price zones, time elapsed throughout your set, and reps. As soon as your first set is completed, 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 based mostly 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 modifications to time in your relaxation interval, which I discovered to be actually useful to ensure I’m taking sufficient of a breather. After your exercise, you possibly can 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 on track: I used this watch a number of occasions at a well-liked 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 closing distance by no means assorted greater than a hundredth or two of a mile.
I additionally discovered its coronary heart price information to be very correct. In quite a lot of watches I’ve tried, I’d typically discover bizarre coronary heart price drops throughout intervals or brief occasions of more durable 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 protecting a cost, so I anticipated no much less from the Forerunner 265, and it held up: I just about solely totally cost it twice per week or so, typically extra if I simply plop it onto the charger for a fast increase of juice whereas I’m preparing. A 10-minute top-off earlier than a run, as an illustration, introduced me from 42% all the best way to 60%. Exercise doesn’t sap an entire lot of battery, both. I began a 35-minute indoor bike session at 11%, then after my exercise was over, it was simply right down to 10%. Quite a lot of health tracker smartwatches actually hemorrhage battery life—a lot so that you just virtually have to cost them day by day—so Garmin’s resilience is a welcome break.
Consolation and magnificence
The Garmin Forerunner 265 is a workhorse, and, effectively, it form of seems like one. Though I attempted this within the smaller 42-mm-case dimension, it nonetheless has a rugged, purposeful silhouette—in the event 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 the perfect 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 a few of the others I attempted; it’s truly fairly stretchy and has quite a lot of give.
Water resistance
The Forerunner 265 is made to resist water stress as much as 50 meters—greater than sufficient to trace exercise for a lot of completely 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 day by day and put on it whereas hanging out in each a pool and an ocean the place the machine was submerged, and it dealt with it simply fantastic.
Particular options
Together with monitoring exercise, the Forerunner additionally supplies a bunch of well being metrics—and a few actually enjoyable extras:
Operating information
The Forerunner 265 means that you can create working exercises on the app—organising your warm-up, interval period and goal tempo, variety of repeats, and cooldown—and sync it seamlessly to your watch. To me, this can be a recreation changer. I just lately did a exercise with brief one-minute sprints, and earlier than this I’d should hold trying down at my watch to maintain 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 truly accomplished. It additionally helpfully informed me when my tempo was lagging outdoors my goal. (However, if the considered a literal voice in your ear telling you to rush up is extra anxiety-inducing than motivating, you possibly can skip together with tempo targets, which I’ll most likely do some occasions.)