Why I Think the Garmin Forerunner 265 Is the Best Running Watch | Lifehacker

If you know me, you know that I never get too attached to tech. I’ll happily run without a watch of any kind; I know my body is what really registers the miles. But I’ve been testing a Garmin Forerunner 265, and I’m not exaggerating when I say I think I’ve fallen in love.

I wore this watch for four months, during which time my opinion evolved from “nice watch, I guess” to “me and my BFF [this watch] are going to crush a race together.” I used its workout suggestions to train for a 5K race—not my first ever, but my first in a long time—and came shockingly close to setting an all-time PR. I found the metrics and the training suggestions helpful but not overbearing, and the watch itself is far more convenient to run with than your typical Apple or Pixel type of smartwatch.

The Forerunner 265, like many of its Garmin brethren, is designed for runners in a way that most smartwatches are not. It has physical buttons, so you can end your lap exactly at the right moment, without even looking at the screen. It has tools for creating detailed workouts. It automatically detects your max heart rate and your lactate threshold. It can suggest custom workouts for you, whether you’ve bothered to set up a coaching plan or not. And it’s customizable enough that all of this gets out of your way if you don’t want to use it. 

It’s rare for a gadget to walk the line of providing any data you want, without overwhelming you with all the data. Garmin is great at this, all across its ecosystem. The Forerunner 265 combines that philosophy with a feature set that will delight most runners, from casual to serious. It’s so built for runners that it has a feature—on by default—that when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, you can flick your finger upwards on the screen and see a prediction of how fast you could run a 5K, if you were to run one right now. 

How does the Forerunner 265 compare to other Garmin watches? 

Garmin makes a lot of watches, including multiple tiers of Forerunner. I’ll give you the basic rundown: the Venu and Vivoactive are what you might call lifestyle smartwatches. The Lily is in the same vein, but smaller and cuter. If you want a general fitness watch, these are fine; but if you’re a runner, you probably want something sportier. 

Runners will generally enjoy the Forerunner line, but if you do a lot of hiking and outdoorsy stuff, you might prefer the rugged (and, in some models, solar-powered) Instinct line. On the other hand, if you have a healthy budget and/or expensive hobbies, you may like the premium multisport watches in the Fenix line. These include extra features for mountain climbing and scuba diving, and also come in versions with solar panels and/or sapphire screens instead of glass. 

When it comes to the Forerunner, the sweet spot for most runners is going to be the 265. On the lower end there is a Forerunner 55 that can track your runs and your sleep, but doesn’t give much in the way of fancy analytics. There’s a new Forerunner 165 that is a great running watch, but is missing the Training Readiness and Training Status features that a lot of runners enjoy (I would miss it for sure if I didn’t have it). If you’d like something fancier there is a Forerunner 965 that has extra metrics and features, and is especially popular among triathletes. 

If you’ve narrowed down your choices to the Forerunner 265, there’s one more decision to make: large or small screen? Some Garmin watches only come in one size, but the 265 has a 46-millimeter screen; its little sister the 265S (S for Small, apparently) has a 42-millimeter screen. The only difference between the two, feature-wise, is that the S has a slightly longer battery life. Both have the same size battery, but the larger screen draws a smidge more power.

What are the best features of the Forerunner 265? 

• Physical buttons (including start/stop and lap buttons) in addition to a touchscreen

• Excellent location tracking (GPS, etc)

• Heart rate tracking, with or without a chest strap

• Daily suggested workouts, based on your goals and your recent training

• VO2max and predictions for race times

• Customizable data screens during workouts

• HRV and resting heart rate tracking

• Training readiness and training status scores

• Excellent battery life (almost two weeks on a charge)

• Bright, sharp AMOLED screen

What are the downsides of the Forerunner 265? 

• Chunky shape of the heart rate sensor will leave an indent on your wrist if the band is on tight

• Case exterior is plastic and may be colored, so you can’t get a more elegant look by swapping out bands

• Can’t control music that is playing on your phone, like you can on Apple Watch. (That said, you can store music directly on the watch and play from there.)

• Screenshots don’t show up on your phone—you need to connect your watch to a computer to download them. (Taking a photo of your watch is an easier way to share something you see.)

• No extensive app store—you do things Garmin’s way, or you don’t do them at all. (There is a ConnectIQ store, but it’s nothing like what Apple/Samsung/Pixel watches have, with matching name-brand apps on phone and watch.) 

Out of the box

The Forerunner 265 box comes with the watch, and a charging cable that plugs into the back (proprietary connector on that end, USB-C on the other).

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

It has five buttons. 

• The right top button (START) starts or stops an activity. Press this when you’re ready to go for a run.

• The right bottom button (BACK) is a lap button. You can also use it to exit out of any menu or screen.

• The left top button (LIGHT) turns the screen on or off with a quick press. Long press it, and you’ll get a menu of shortcuts. The ones I use most often are the wallet for payments and the flashlight, but you can also access tools like a stopwatch or the “find my phone” feature.

• The left middle (UP) and bottom (DOWN) buttons act as up and down arrows to scroll whatever is on the screen. Sometimes this is more convenient than using the touchscreen, and some workout modes lock the touchscreen anyway.

Long-press the left middle button, and you’ll get a menu that includes all your settings, and clock features like setting alarms or changing the watch face.

You can also set “hot key” shortcuts for other features. For example, I have it set so that long-pressing the left bottom button brings up the music controls.

Using the watch in everyday life

Watch faces

Like most smartwatches, you can choose a face with complications—little icons with data or shortcuts to tools. My favorite setup shows my weekly mileage and the time of the next sunrise or sunset, plus standard items like the date, battery level, and steps I’ve taken. This watch also predicts how many hours until I’m “recovered” from my last workout, so I have a complication for that too (even though I think it’s a slightly silly metric, I still like seeing it.) 

The watch comes with 15 built-in faces, and you can create simple faces yourself with an app. There is also a ConnectIQ store where you can download or buy faces that developers have created. All that said, the choice of watch faces is nowhere near as extensive or as fun as what you might get on, say, an Apple Watch.

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Glances

The most fun feature (in my opinion) is what you get when you scroll down from the main watch face: your “glances.” These are quick views of various stats. My VO2max and predicted 5K time are at the top of my stack of glances. Do I need to see these at any moment? Of course not. Do I think it’s fun to look at them? Absolutely. 

My other glances include the weather, upcoming events from my calendar, races I’ve scheduled for later in the year, upcoming workouts, training readiness, HRV status, and more. (You can customize this list; there are tons to choose from.) Glances are handy for things you might want to briefly check on, but that you don’t want cluttering up your watch face. For each glance, you can tap on it to see more details (for example, for each upcoming race, the detailed view will tell you the date of that race, the likely weather at the start time, and a prediction for your finish time based on how your training has been going.)

Comfort

I tested the full-size 265, and honestly the only thing I’d change about the comfort of this watch is the size. (If I were buying one for myself, I’d get the 265S). I do appreciate that it seems to get perfectly good readings without being super tight. Most of the time, I wear it pretty loose, and even then my data is consistent with what I get with a chest strap. (I do tighten it when running, though, just so that it doesn’t bounce around.)

The watch comes with a silicone strap, which isn’t as breathable as a fabric one, but I love that I can wash it with soap in the shower, leave it on the sink to dry, and by the time I’ve dried myself off, the watch is dry as well. 

Some people notice itching or irritation when wearing a watch 24/7. The watch even comes with instructions to consider switching wrists periodically. But even though I have sensitive skin, I never had an issue with this watch. I did notice some itching once, realized it had been a day or two since I’d washed it, and noticed some crud near the sensor. After a quick wash I was able to wear it again without any issues. And, like I said, I’ve worn this thing every day for four months. It gets my seal of approval.

Display

The Forerunner 265 has an AMOLED display. It’s bright, crisp, and colorful. Until recently, Garmin’s watches used MIP screens. On forums like Reddit, I keep seeing Garmin devotees say that MIP screens are great in sunlight and they never want to switch to AMOLED. 

But I don’t get it. I’ve done plenty of runs in blindingly sunny conditions, with and without sunglasses, and never once had an issue reading the screen. It was always bright and crisp, no matter what I was doing with it. One strange thing, though: I tried to take a photo of the screen one sunny day at the pool, and found that the photos came out looking dim. The screen was bright in real life, though. I wonder if the rumor of worse readability came about because of dim photos. 

Commonly used features

Besides starting workouts, or just using the watch as a timepiece, I don’t find myself using a ton of other features. I do use the alarms to wake up and for reminders (like when my kids have to get on the school bus), and I’ll change the color of the watch face from time to time, just for variety. 

The 265 can show some notifications from your phone, although you can’t reply back to texts unless you’re on Android. I don’t like to get notifications on my watch—I even have most notifications turned off on my phone—so this wasn’t an important feature for me.

To get the most out of the watch, you’ll want to install the Garmin Connect app. It gives you quick visuals and graphs of all your metrics, like your training readiness and status, how you slept last night, what workouts you have coming up, and more. This is also where you can view the results of your runs (maps, split times, etc) and where you can create workouts or sign yourself up for a training program. The analytics are good enough you may want to drop your Strava subscription—but plenty of runners use both. 

Taking it for a run

When you want to run with the Forerunner 265, you hit the START button, and select the type of workout you’d like to start. That’s usually “Run” if you’re a runner, but Track Run, Treadmill Run, and Trail Run are all available as well. The watch can also track strength workouts, cycling, and more. 

When you’re on the Run screen, the watch will often suggest a workout for you to do. You can do the workout, view future workouts and choose one of those instead, or dismiss it and do whatever you want—either a “just run” kind of workout, or a workout you have programmed yourself. For example, I have the trendy Norwegian 4×4 programmed as one of the workouts I can select.

A suggested workout, my favorite run screen, and a screen showing the details of an upcoming run. (These are all different runs.)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Data fields

There is a ton of data you can have on your wrist when you run. You’ll want to choose your favorites ahead of time and create a screen that displays them. You can get anything from your current altitude to your predicted finish time, but most of us will choose some combination of time, distance, pace, and/or heart rate. 

My favorite screen for everyday runs has the time of day (so I know if I’m running late, literally, to a deadline or a family responsibility), my total distance (because I’m usually trying to hit a target mileage for the day), my current pace (some runners prefer an average lap pace, but I like the instantaneous one), and a colored gauge at the bottom with my heart rate zones.  

If I’m doing an interval workout, I often prefer a screen with more data fields, including the time and distance of the current lap and the previous lap. When you run a race, you might like to create a PacePro plan with custom splits for every mile that it coaches you through. You can even program a specific race course, for example to give you slower paces on hills.

Creating and following workouts

I found myself doing a lot of the daily suggested workouts. The watch will suggest these for you nearly every day (some days, it suggests a rest day) whether you’ve set up a training program or not. If you put a race, like a 5K, on your calendar in the app, it will keep that in mind when suggesting workouts. I wouldn’t trust major training decisions to anything automated, but it’s great for spicing up a workout routine. My weeks typically had two “base” runs at a steady pace, one or two tempo runs or medium-intensity intervals, and maybe a day with “anaerobic” work like short sprints. There might also be a two-mile, slow-paced “recovery” run in there somewhere. 

Because daily suggested workouts (DSW, in Garmin parlance) are a feature of the watch, not the app, you used to have to push buttons on the watch to see what workouts you had coming up. But Garmin recently added a “Garmin Coach” option to the Connect app, which is basically a way to get your DSW on the app instead. If you want to set up a training plan in the app, you can either choose this automated Garmin Coach plan, or a plan for a standard race distance (like a marathon or 5K) that is designed by Coach Jeff, Coach Greg, or Coach Amy. 

Some screens from the Garmin Connect app. Glances, Garmin Coach plan for this week, and pace and heart rate charts from a 4×4 run.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

You can also create your own workouts: Go to the Garmin Connect app on your phone, and select More, then Training & Planning, and Workouts. Remember to hit the button that sends the workout to your watch; that doesn’t happen automatically, for some reason. Once I got the hang of it, it was easy to create workouts. As I mentioned, I used a custom workout, complete with heart rate targets for each section, to do the Norwegian 4×4. I also created custom workouts for weightlifting. 

When you do a workout, the watch shows you a data screen specifically for whatever target you’re supposed to pay attention to, according to the way that workout is programmed. For example, if it wants me to run at a 10:20 pace for 39 minutes, the watch will tell me how many minutes I have left, and show my pace as being in the green zone if I’m close to 10:20, or in the red if I’m going too fast or too slow. It will give me an audio alert (via my headphones if they’re paired, or through my phone if not) telling me to speed up or slow down. My only gripe is that it’s not possible to turn these audio alerts off, since they are super disruptive if I’m trying to pay attention to a podcast or audiobook. 

Using laps

The physical lap button is one of the best things about using a Garmin rather than a phone-centric smartwatch. I can hit the button as soon as I want the lap to start or end, rather than flicking my wrist to turn on the display, visually locating the button I want to press, and then hoping that it registers my finger on the first tap. (This may sound easy, but when I’m sweaty and shaking at the end of a fast 400, I’ve had to poke my Apple Watch far too many times before it registered, meaning my lap time would be several seconds off.) 

You can also program a workout, or use a built-in workout. For example, to test my mile time, I can give myself a warmup and then tell it to start a 1-mile lap when I press the lap button. The watch keeps track of distance, and automatically ends the lap (and announces it is doing so) when I’ve covered exactly one mile. 

After the run

Three of the screens you might see after a run (these were from three different runs).
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

When you finish a run or workout, the watch will ask you how hard a workout it was, and how strong you felt. (You can turn this off if you don’t want it.) The watch then displays several screens of statistics: not just your pace and distance, but also a gauge of how much aerobic and anaerobic work it thinks you got from it, what type of training benefit (was it a base run or a tempo run?), and an update of your VO2max if appropriate. VO2max is measured based on your heart rate relative to how fast you were going according to GPS, so it won’t change after treadmill runs or other indoor work. You may want to turn off VO2max estimations for trail runs, so that when you slow down on hills it won’t think you suddenly got less fit. 

Treadmill runs

I loved the treadmill feature for steady runs, but found it infuriating if I had to follow any kind of interval program. At the end of a treadmill run you can “calibrate” by entering the exact distance displayed on the treadmill screen. So, for example, if the watch thinks you went 4.87 miles, but you actually ran 5.0, you can enter 5.0 and your paces and mileage will adjust. The watch also remembers this—basically, how the motion of your watch corresponded to your pace—and can use it to more accurately gauge your pace and distance next time. 

But this is just a band-aid fix for what’s really an unsolvable problem. A watch, riding on your wrist, cannot know how fast your feet are going. It can get a sense of how much wrist-bouncing correlates to an 11-minute-per-mile pace, but that doesn’t mean that it will understand what’s going on when you run an eight-minute pace or when you slow to a walk (or, worse yet, rest your hand on the handrail). I found that interval workouts were basically impossible to follow. The watch would think I was going too slow, so I’d exaggeratedly pump my arms and it would sometimes, maybe, believe me that I was actually going the programmed pace. 

I wish there were a way to turn off the “too slow”/ “too fast” alerts for the workouts the watch creates, but there isn’t. The best solution I found was to jot down the times and paces from the workout, and then create a new custom workout without any pace targets, and run that. 

Racing with the Forerunner 265

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

I’m an on-and-off runner, and when I first buckled into the Forerunner 265, I was only a few months into my latest “on” phase. Since I didn’t have any serious competitive goals, I ignored some of its suggested workouts but did others, whenever the mood struck me. And over time, I noticed its prediction of my 5K time was trending further and further downward. The paces it programmed for my “base” runs were going down, as well. Was I becoming a faster runner? It sure seemed like it! And while I should probably take most of the credit myself, I can’t help but acknowledge that the watch helped me by showing how much progress I’d been making. And the watch face complication that shows my weekly mileage was a constant reminder that I had the power to stay consistent in my training.

I do think I ran more miles, more consistently, and with more challenging workouts, than I likely would have done on my own. As my fitness improved, and the weather cooled down, I started to notice my predicted 5K time was dropping fast. It used to be over 30 minutes; then it was 29, 28, 27…

I know not to read too much into any kind of prediction. From what I’ve seen on forums, most people find the predictions a bit too optimistic. But I started to wonder how fast I could really run a 5K, so I ended up signing up for one. The day before the race, my watch told me I was capable of running 25:50. Could that be true?

I created a PacePro plan for 26 minutes, with negative splits, but on race morning I decided I was too skeptical of the prediction to put that much faith in it. Instead, I just hit the “run” button and used the same data screen as for my training runs. Shockingly, I found myself holding a faster pace, for longer, than I ever had during my entire season of training thus far. I finished in 26:04, just 14 seconds off the prediction.

Ironically, I forgot to pause my watch right away, and the GPS shaved off a bit of a corner that I had not actually cut in real life. So my watch thinks I ran 3.09 miles in 26:14, and did not credit me with a 5K PR. But I got a medal for being first in my age group, so it’s hard to be too mad.

Final thoughts

I’ll say it again: this is a great watch for runners. The Forerunner 2xx line is probably the most popular line of running watches out there, with mega-popular running app Strava reporting that the top running device among its users in 2023 was the Forerunner 235 worldwide, and the 245 Music in the U.S. (Among older Forerunners, music storage used to be an extra feature; as of the 265, it’s standard on all models.) Not only does this statistic tell you it’s a popular line of watches, but the popularity of the older models is a testament to the Forerunner’s durability and continued utility over time. 

I found that the 265 did everything I needed a running watch to do, plus it provided tons of interesting data unobtrusively. If you don’t care about your HRV, you can hide that glance. If you don’t want daily workout suggestions, you can turn those off. I find the way it presents its HRV scores to be the most useful and readable of any gadget out there (and I’ve tested a few!) 

Ultimately I feel I can recommend this watch to any runner or athlete. You can save money by going with the Forerunner 55, and still get most of the key features (no HRV or training readiness). Or you can splurge on a fancier watch. But the 265 is the sweet spot of the line, this line is the sweet spot (for runners) among Garmins, and Garmin is the gold standard for athletic smartwatches. This is the watch that every other running watch has to face off against. Good luck to them; it will be a tough competition.