Garmin wearables buyer’s guide: Everything you need to know

If you want to learn about Garmin wearables and everything that goes into using one, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll walk you through which Garmin fitness watches you should buy, what they track, how they perform, and if they have any shortcomings. You also might learn something about Garmin Connect, Garmin Pay, and Garmin Coach along the way. Let’s get to it.

What is Garmin?

Garmin is a company that specializes in GPS technology as well as consumer-grade wearables. It primarily focuses on high-end multisport fitness watches, but also sells mid-range activity trackers. Its wearables are more specialized than what you’d get from Fitbit or Apple. Even so, if you’re a competitive athlete or are just starting on your fitness journey, Garmin likely has something for you.

The Kansas-based company is quite far behind Apple in terms of wearable market share on a global scale, although it did surpass Samsung as the second biggest wearable brand in the world for a brief time in 2020.

Why buy from Garmin?

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One of Garmin’s biggest strengths is choice. Take a look at Garmin’s website and you’ll quickly see that it has no shortage of options for all types of budgets. Looking for a mid-range watch to track your daily activity? Garmin has you covered. Want something high-end to track your running routes? You got it. What about watches that are geared towards mariners, golfers, or pilots? Yep, yep, and yep.

We recommend Garmin watches so frequently because they last a long time. And I mean a looong time. You might need to invest a little money on the initial purchase, but you can rest assured that your Garmin watch will last you for years on end. That’s at least been our experience.

Buy from Garmin if you want fewer compromises with your fitness watch.

The company also thrives with supporting each one of its devices for years on end. Not only that, Garmin is constantly rolling out new fitness tracking features to its new and legacy devices. Garmin watches that are years old at this point are still receiving substantial software updates.

Garmin Connect is one of the bright spots of the Garmin ecosystem. The company’s health tracking app is incredibly feature-dense — almost too dense for some people — and clearly displays the information you need front-and-center.

Garmin is the company you buy from if you want the least amount of compromises with your wearable.

Related: Fitbit vs Garmin: Which ecosystem is right for you?

What experts think of Garmin products

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We have reviewed many Garmin wearables over the years. The company is not shy about launching multiple products every year, so we do our best to keep up. We try to focus on the wearables that are targeted at a wide range of users, so we have not covered specialized devices like the Marq, D2, or Tactix series.

We said in our Garmin Venu review that this AMOLED-touting smartwatch is the best Garmin for most people. While Garmin has some work to do to optimize for the new AMOLED display, the Venu’s combination of fitness and smartwatch features make for an overall compelling package. If there was ever an Apple Watch competitor in the Garmin world, the Venu is it.

The Venu is followed closely by the Garmin Vivoactive 4, which is essentially the same watch with a lower-res display and longer battery life. It’s often found at a cheaper price, too.

The Garmin Venu is a fantastic fitness watch and likely the one most people should buy.

If you’re primarily focused on running, our pick for the best Garmin running watch is the Forerunner 745. It has most of the top-end Forerunner 945’s features but isn’t as pricey. Ray from DC Rainmaker also had good things to say about Garmin’s latest running watch: “[The Forerunner 745 is] a solid watch that does exactly what the FR945 has done over the last 18 months… just for $100 less and without maps.”

An even cheaper option is Garmin’s Forerunner 245 Music, which is currently one of our top picks for the best running watches you can buy right now. We said Garmin “struck the right balance between features and affordability,” although the removal of the barometric altimeter seemed like a cash grab.

Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention the Garmin Fenix 6 lineup. These are, hands down, the best multisport watches you can buy. If you’re willing to pay up, you’ll have access to tons of features suited for outdoor enthusiasts. Some models even feature solar charging!

Here are a few other recent Garmin reviews for your consideration:

• Garmin Lily review: This wearable for women has all the basics
• Garmin Venu Sq review: What the Venu should’ve been all along
• Garmin Vivosmart 4 review: A good option without GPS
• Garmin Vivofit 4 review: Two steps forward, one step back
• Garmin Vivosport review: A powerful, but aging fitness tracker
• Garmin Fenix 5 review: 2017’s best multisport watch

Buying the right Garmin for your needs

Left to right: Garmin Vivoactive 4, Garmin Venu

When buying a fitness watch, it’s important to know your needs. You don’t want to spend extra cash on things you don’t need, but you also need to make sure the wearable as everything you want. If you’re a runner, consider buying a device with standalone GPS and long battery life. If you just want something to track your activity and don’t care about all the extra bells and whistles, a simple fitness tracker will be more up your alley.

We have a dedicated article about the best Garmin devices you can buy, which you can see here. Or you can check out a quick overview of the best Garmin watches below:

• The Garmin Fenix 6 series (specifically the Fenix 6 Pro) is the best multisport Garmin watch you can buy. These are Garmin’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink watches that boast many features for outdoor enthusiasts and runners.
• The Garmin Vivoactive 4 and 4S are the best multisport Garmin watches if you don’t have $700+ to spend on a Fenix 6 Pro.
• The Garmin Venu is the best Garmin smartwatch, thanks to its bright OLED display and onboard music storage.
• The Garmin Venu Sq is the best cheap Garmin smartwatch. It’s essentially the same thing as the Venu, only with a few cost-cutting measures thrown in.
• The Garmin Forerunner 745 is the best Garmin running watch. It has a good price point and plenty of running-specific features.
• The Garmin Forerunner 245 Music is the best cheap Garmin running watch, thanks to its sub-$400 price point and features made for runners.
• The Garmin Lily is the best Garmin fitness tracker for women. It’s made specifically for people with small wrists.

What do Garmin devices track?

Tracking features vary from device to device. Some Garmin watches only offer basic activity tracking details, while others keep track of everything on the list below.

• Steps: Every Garmin wearable will track your steps. You can also see how your step count reflects in your caloric burn metrics. Garmin Connect breaks down step counts into daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly timelines, too.
• Distance: Garmin wearables utilize a few ways to calculate distance. Most Garmin watches come with standalone GPS connectivity, as well as additional tracking systems like GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo. Other devices are able to track distance using connected GPS, which uses your phone’s GPS signal to track distance.
• Floors climbed: Most higher-end Garmin devices track your floors climbed with their built-in barometric altimeters. In Garmin Connect, you’ll see your weekly, monthly, and yearly floors metrics, as well as averages.
• Calories in/out: Garmin devices track your caloric burn throughout the day, and you can log your calorie consumption in Garmin Connect. The app does all the math for you and gives you a calorie burn goal for the day to help you stay on target. Additionally, you can log your calories in MyFitnessPal and have that data automatically uploaded to Garmin Connect.
• Intensity minutes: All Garmin wearables track your intensity minutes, or the number of minutes you spent with an elevated heart rate during activities. You can also fine-tune your intensity minutes by adjusting your heart rate zones in Garmin Connect.
• Heart rate: All Garmin watches come with Garmin’s Elevate optical heart rate sensor to keep track of your resting heart rate throughout the day and active heart rate during exercise. You can also see details on your heart rate zones.

Credit: Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority

• Sleep: Wear your Garmin device to bed and it’ll track your sleep quantity and quality. You’ll get metrics on your total time asleep, time spent in sleep stages (deep, light, and REM), time awake, and how much you moved throughout the night.
• Pulse ox (SpO2): Certain Garmin devices will measure your oxygen saturation with their built-in pulse oximeter. You’ll see an SpO2 graph every morning after wearing your Garmin device to bed. The graph shows your overall blood oxygen percentage as well as weekly and monthly trends.
• Respiration: Garmin devices also track your respiration rate, or the amount of breaths you take per minute throughout the day. This metric is tracked all day and night.
• Stress: Most Garmin watches will automatically record your stress levels throughout the day on a scale from 1-100. Garmin uses heart rate variability to determine your stress score.
• Guided breathing: Most recent Garmin wearables allow you to use guided breathing exercises if you sense yourself becoming too stressed out. 
• Menstrual cycles and pregnancies: Garmin rolled out menstrual cycle tracking to its devices in 2019, allowing women to keep track of their cycle phase and physical and emotional symptoms. The program can also be customized based on whether your cycle is regular, irregular, or transitioning into menopause. Furthermore, Garmin devices can also now keep track of pregnancies, allowing moms-to-be to track their daily symptoms, child’s movement, and more.
• Hydration: Garmin Connect lets you monitor your fluid intake each day. Your hydration details are presented in weekly, monthly, and yearly views in the Garmin Connect app.
• Body Battery: Garmin’s Body Battery metric assigns you a number from 1-100 for how much energy you should have based on your activity and recovery metrics. Body Battery is calculated with your heart rate variability, stress, sleep quality, and activity. On nights that you slept well, you might wake up with a Body Battery of 100. If you didn’t sleep well, you might start out with a score of 85 or so. That number will keep declining throughout the day based on the factors listed above.

Don’t miss: Garmin Index S2 smart scale review: Very good, very pricey

• VO2 max: Some Garmin devices will give you an estimation of your VO2 max, which is a good indicator of your cardiovascular fitness. Technically, it’s the maximum volume of oxygen (in milliliters) you can consume per minute per kilogram of body weight at your maximum performance. Garmin devices use your exercise and heart rate data to calculate VO2 max.
• Training status: Some Garmin wearables calculate your “training status based on your VO2 max and training load. If you’re training too hard, your Garmin might tell you you’re overreaching. If you’re at an acceptable level, you might fall into the “productive” or “maintaining” categories. It’s usually a good estimate as to how your training might be affecting your body. 
• Training effect: Compatible Garmin watches will give you a training effect score based on how each of your activities impact your overall training.
• Recovery time: After your workout, you’ll see an estimated recovery time displayed on your watch. Recovery time is calculated based on your training effect for your just-completed activity as well as any outstanding recovery time estimations when you start your next activity. So, if you go out for an intense run while Garmin thinks you should be taking it easy, your recovery time might be much longer than normal when you complete your activity.
• Running dynamics: Garmin groups seven different metrics together and calls the combination “running dynamics.” Those metrics are: ground contact time, ground contact time balance, cadence, stride length, vertical oscillation, vertical ratio, and running power. To track running dynamics with your Garmin watch, you’ll need a compatible watch as well as an HRM-Pro, HRM-Run, HRM-Tri, or Running Dynamics Pod.
• Performance condition: Select Garmin watches track your real-time performance condition, or your ability to perform compared to your average fitness level.
• Lactate threshold: Certain Garmin watches can track your lactate threshold. You’ll see one-month, six-month, and year-long lactate threshold graphs in the Performance Stats section of Garmin Connect.

And that’s not all. Some Garmin devices also allow you to create training plans, download maps for offline use, and utilize golf course maps. Garmin running watches feature PacePro, a running feature to help you stay on track when you’re trying to hit a certain training goal. TracBack (aka breadcrumb navigation) is another cool feature that lets certain watches navigate you back to your starting point by following previously recorded routes.

There are even more niche features available for some devices, but this list is getting quite long already.

Related: The best running watches you can buy

What smartwatch features do Garmin devices offer?

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Garmin watches offer basic smartwatch features. Some devices offer all of the features listed below, while others only offer a few.

• Smartphone notifications: Just about all Garmin watches will mirror your smartphone notifications. When you receive a WhatsApp message on your phone, for instance, that same message will show up on your Garmin watch. Unlike other smartwatch platforms, dismissing the notification on your watch does not dismiss it from your phone. However, you can set up canned messages in the Garmin Connect app and reply to messages from your wrist. It’s limited, but it works.
• Third-party apps and watch faces: There are hundreds of additional apps, widgets, and watch faces to download for your Garmin watch. You can find both first- and third-party options on the Garmin Connect IQ Store. If you’d rather browse on your smartphone, you can access Connect IQ from from the Android or iOS apps. Depending on the developer, you might need to pay a few dollars to download a certain app or watch face, though many of them are free.
• Offline music playback: Some Garmin watches allow you to store music for offline playback. If you don’t like taking your phone with you when you exercise, this feature is for you. Garmin watches are compatible with Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio. You can also store local music files on your Garmin watch. Learn more here.
• Incident detection: Garmin devices can notify your emergency contacts if something happens to you during your exercise. Using Garmin’s LiveTrack location tracking feature, your compatible Garmin watch will send your name and location to your pre-defined emergency contacts if it senses an incident. You can also trigger this feature manually.
• Garmin Pay: Garmin has its own contactless payment system called Garmin Pay. We’ll touch more on this later.

What is Garmin Connect?

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Garmin Connect is Garmin’s fitness- and health-tracking app. It’s available on Android, iOS, and on desktop. You need access to Garmin Connect to pair your Garmin watch with your smartphone. It’s a necessary part of using a Garmin device.

Garmin Connect is where you can access all of your health and activity data. The mobile apps are quite detailed and should offer most of what you need, but we’d recommend using the desktop version if you really need to dig into your data.

The mobile app can be a little daunting if you’ve never used it. Garmin tries to pack a ton of information into its app, which can result in visual clutter and difficulties finding certain menus. It gets easier to use the more frequently you use it, but new users might struggle a bit.

Five different tabs (and a lengthy overflow menu) make up the Garmin Connect app: My Day, Challenges, Calendar, News Feed, and Notifications. My Day is essentially your home screen and contains all your health and fitness stats, insights, and more for your current day. Here, you’ll see heart rate data, training status, step counts, and even summaries for yesterday and the previous week. You can tap on any of these metrics to bring up more detailed overviews of each one.

The Challenges tab is pretty basic. You can join different challenges, browse your progress, and see how your connected friends are doing on their challenges.

The Calendar tab is our favorite part of Garmin Connect. This page lets you view historical data for any metric tracked on any date. You’re presented with a month-view calendar. Tap on a day of the week and you’ll see everything your Garmin tracked — exercise, heart rate, Body Battery, stress, sleep, steps, and more — for that particular day. It’s extremely useful when trying to find the last time you exercised or what your stress levels were like during a certain time. This is in contrast to many other fitness apps, which only let you browse historical data by the day.

News Feed shows you a rolling feed of activities completed by you and your connections in Garmin Connect. It’s presented as a slightly more basic version of the feed you’d see in an app like Strava.

Notifications is simply a notification hub for any new feature Garmin pushes to Garmin Connect. It likely won’t come in handy every day, but it’s there if you want to stay up to date.

Garmin Connect is still quite cluttered, especially for new users.

Everything else is found in the overflow menu. This menu contains activity data like steps, walking, running, and intensity minutes; health stats like sleep, pulse ox (SpO2), respiration, heart rate, and stress; performance stats like training status, VO2 max, training effect, and HRV stress; training plans, insights, and a settings menu.

The overflow menu is a lot. Even after years of using Garmin Connect, we still struggle to find certain things. However, those metrics need to be included somewhere. In some cases, companies offload features from the mobile app to the desktop version to provide a simpler experience for mobile users. If that’s the case, we’re happy Garmin includes so many options in its mobile app; we just wish things were a bit easier to find.

What is Garmin Pay?

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Garmin Pay is the company’s own contactless payment system. It allows you to pay for things in physical stores and transit systems using your Garmin watch’s NFC chip. Once it’s set up, you can simply hold your wrist to a compatible payment terminal to complete your purchase. It’s really that easy.

Garmin Pay is supported on most Garmin smartwatches from the last couple years. Here’s a definitive list of the watches that support the feature:

• Garmin Forerunner 945, Forerunner 745, Forerunner 645, Forerunner 645 Music
• Garmin Fenix 6, Fenix 6 Pro series, Fenix 6S, Fenix 6S Pro series, Fenix 6X, Fenix 6X Pro series
• Garmin Fenix 5 Plus, Fenix 5S Plus, Fenix 5X Plus
• Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music, Vivoactive 3, Vivoactive 4, Vivoactive 4S
• Garmin Vivomove Style, Vivomove Luxe
• Garmin Venu, Venu Sq
• Garmin D2 Delta S, D2 Delta, D2 Delta PX
• Garmin Marq Driver, Marq Aviator, Marq Captain, Marq Expedition, Marq Athlete, Marq Commander, Marq Adventurer, Marq Golfer
• Garmin Legacy Saga and Legacy Hero series
• Garmin Approach S62
• Garmin Descent Mk2, Descent Mk2i
• Garmin D2 Delta, D2 Delta S, D2 Delta PX
• Garmin Quatix 6, Quatix 6X
• Garmin Tactix Delta series

You must also have a supported bank or card to use Garmin Pay. Hundreds of banks are supported in 66 countries around the world. The majority of supported banks are located in the US.

For more detailed info on the payment service, check out our dedicated guide about Garmin Pay.

Garmin Coach: What is it?

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One of the most underrated parts of the Garmin ecosystem is Garmin Coach. As long as you have a compatible Garmin wearable, you can train for a running or cycling race with the help of a professional athlete’s training program. Garmin Coach has programs for running a 5K, 10K, or half marathon and cycling programs for Century, Gran Fondo, and Metric Century races. There are generic race, time trial, and mountain biking programs for cycling, too.

Training plans are completely dynamic, so they change based on your performance. You select a coach and their custom training plan and do your best to stick with it over the coming months. If you skip workouts (hey, it happens) or exceed the plan’s expectations, your plan will adjust.

The best part? They’re completely free. Again, as long as you have a compatible Garmin device, you’ll have access to these plans. Here are all the Garmin devices compatible with Garmin Coach:

• Garmin D2 Air
• Garmin Descent MK1
• Garmin Fenix 5 series, Fenix 5 Plus series
• Garmin Fenix 6 series 
• Garmin Fenix Chronos
• Garmin Forerunner 45 / 45S, 245 series, 645 series, 745, 935, 945
• Garmin Instinct series
• Garmin Legacy Hero / Legacy Saga series
• Garmin MARQ series
• Garmin Quatix 6
• Garmin Tactix Delta
• Garmin Venu
• Garmin Vivoactive 3 series, Vivoactive 4 / 4S

Sure, you can find other training plans online, but it’s incredibly beneficial to have these plans baked into the Garmin watch you wear every day.

The Great Garmin Hack of 2020

Garmin experienced a massive outage on July 23, 2020 that affected its website, call centers, and Garmin Connect. Most people could not access any of Garmin’s services until later that week on July 27.

Why are we bringing this up here? For one, it affected nearly all Garmin users. But most importantly, the outage was caused by a ransomware attack that resulted in Garmin paying a reported “multi-million dollar” sum of money to the hackers. Notably, the company has not officially stated it was a ransomware attack, but multiple reports — including Garmin employees’ personal accounts — described the situation as such.

The company says it has no indication that any customer data — including Garmin Pay payment information — was accessed, lost, or stolen.

There’s no telling if Garmin will experience another attack of this scale in the future, but the company is likely making sure something like this never happens again.

What Garmin accessories are available?

It’s easy to add some flair to your Garmin wearable by way of a new strap. Garmin offers replacement straps for most of its wearables on its website. You can buy new quick release and QuickFit straps (Garmin’s proprietary connector) in multiple sizes.

A word of warning: they’re expensive. Silicone straps run anywhere from $30-$50, leather straps start at $60, metal straps are $150, and those fancy Jacquard-woven nylon straps are a whopping $200.

Replacement straps on Garmin.com

Good news! You can find replacement Garmin watch straps on other websites for far less. Buying a strap from a third-party seller can not only save you money, you’ll likely find a bigger variety of styles and colors if you buy from a website like Amazon.

• Garmin Fenix 6 replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Fenix 6S replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Fenix 6X replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Forerunner 45 / 45S replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Forerunner 245 / 245 Music replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Forerunner 645 / 645 Music replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Forerunner 745 replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Forerunner 945 replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Instinct replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Venu replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Venu Sq replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Vivoactive 4 replacement bands on Amazon
• Garmin Vivomove 3 replacement bands on Amazon

Common Garmin problems and solutions

Without going too in-depth on bugs that only affect certain Garmin devices, we’ll try to stick to common Garmin problems and solutions that affect the vast majority of users. A lot of those problems have to do with Garmin Connect syncing issues.

If your Garmin watch is paired to your smartphone but not syncing with Garmin Connect, there are a few simple fixes for that. You can try closing Garmin Connect and removing it from your phone’s memory, then reopening the app to see if you can sync. If that doesn’t work, try turning off your phone’s Bluetooth, then turning it back on again. You can also try powering your Garmin watch off for a few seconds and turning it back on. Personally, I’ve found that last option to fix the issue, but your mileage may vary.

If you’re having trouble connecting your Bluetooth earbuds to your Garmin watch, the easiest way to fix it is to turn your Garmin watch off and on again, then try connecting again. If that doesn’t work, try unpairing your earbuds from your Garmin watch. To do so, navigate to the settings menu on your watch, select the Sensors & Accessories menu, select the earbuds you’d like to remove, then scroll down and select Remove. Then, try pairing them to your watch.

Of course, all of these issues could potentially be avoided if Garmin has already issued a fix. You’ll want to ensure your device’s software is up to date just in case.

We’ll have a dedicated article coming soon that goes into far more detail on bugs affecting Garmin wearables. In the meantime, check out Garmin’s support page for help with your issue.

Garmin and the competition

Garmin has many competitors that make comparable or sometimes better products for the money. Garmin’s main competitors are Polar, Apple, Suunto, Fitbit, and even Garmin itself! Read more below:

• If we’re being completely honest, Garmin’s last-gen multisport watches are the best Garmin Fenix 6 Pro alternatives. We’d recommend checking out the Fenix 5 Plus or even the Fenix 5 series. The Suunto 9 Baro comes close, but its software is lagging behind competitors like Garmin.
• The Apple Watch Series 6 and SE are the best Garmin Venu and Vivoactive 4 alternatives. They’re both accurate and fully featured smartwatches that have plenty of multisport tracking modes.
• The Polar Vantage V2 is the best Garmin Forerunner 745 and 945 alternative. This is Polar’s latest flagship running watch and comes with premium features like Recovery Pro, various performance tests, and much more.
• The Coros Pace 2 is the best Garmin Forerunner 245/Music alternative. This light-and-comfortable running watch can often be found cheaper than the Forerunner 245/Music and also supports on-device running power metrics.
• The Casio GBD-H1000 is the best Garmin Instinct alternative. It’s cheaper, offers solar charging with up to 66 hours of battery life in sports mode, and plenty of sports tracking features.
• The Fitbit Charge 4 is the best Garmin Lily alternative. Fitbit’s fitness tracker is customizable, offers standalone GPS, and fits well on most people’s wrists.

Read more: Fitbit buyer’s guide: Everything you need to know

Top Garmin-related questions and answers

Q: Why are Garmin watches so expensive?
A: There’s no doubt Garmin watches are expensive — sometimes too expensive. While most Garmin watches cost hundreds of dollars, Garmin has a great track record of updating watches over time and rolling out new and useful features to older devices. Plus, they’re made to last — you likely won’t need to upgrade your Garmin watch for years.

Q: Can Garmin connect to Strava?
A: Yes, Garmin can connect with Strava. To do so, open Garmin Connect, select settings, then connected apps. Select Strava, then sign into your Strava account.

Q: Can Garmin connect to iPhones?
A: Yes, Garmin watches can connect to iPhones. To do so, you’ll need the Garmin Connect app for iOS.

Q: Can Garmin watches answer calls?
A: No, Garmin watches cannot answer phone calls. They can, however, notify you that you have an incoming call.

Q: Are Garmin watches waterproof?
A: No device is completely waterproof, but most Garmin wearables are water resistant to 5ATM.

Q: Which Garmin watches have Spotify?
A: Every Garmin watch that supports onboard music storage also supports Spotify. You can see all the compatible devices here.

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