Garmin  Forerunner 170

I got the 170 to replace my 1 yr old fr165. It is better in that it has elevation & stairs and different way to view my data. The part that holds the end of the watch band from flopping around has a detent to keep it in place (a small but welcome feature). Battery life i slightly better. The newer software will hopefully get me new features in the future.

I want to put, at the top, my largest "complaint" and that is the battery does not come even close to the 10 day estimate for how I have been using the watch. This is not enough for me to remove a full star. This would be a 9/10, but it's out of 5 so I'm giving all five stars. The tl;dr is I am quite happy with this watch. I've had the watch for two weeks now and have been wearing it basically 24 hours a day. I've charged it 3 times in that time period with the watch going down to about 20% battery before charging. Realistically I am getting 4-5 days on the battery life, not 10. But I don't find that to be any kind of problem as the watch charges from 20% to full in only about 1.5 hours. I bought this watch primarily for the run distance functions. I run or hike every day and wanted to keep track of how far I am running and how fast as I set a goal for a 5k as an incentive to get in better shape as I move into my 40s. On that front the watch is excellent. The GPS is remarkably accurate. It takes about 1-2 minutes to become "GPS ready" at the beginning of a run, walk, or hike and has not lost sync for me yet after I have started exercising. The watch syncs exercises to the app where you can view multiple different metrics for your workout. I like that you can add notes to workouts so you can go back and see why one may have been slower than others (had to stop and pet a dog). There will also be a GPS map of where you ran, the distance down to the 100th of a mile, and other features like tracking what gear you used. I am a firefighter/EMS worker. One of the features that I did not buy the watch for, but I have really appreciated, is being able to send notifications from my phone to my watch. I have resisted getting a smartwatch because I see people whose notifications vibrate on their watch and they instantly turn into a robot and stare at their phone. I really really didn't want to be that person. This watch (maybe they all do, I only have had this one) allows you to customize which phone notifications are sent to the watch. I turned off all notifications, with the exception of the emergency alerts. This allows me to keep my notification volume setting low which allows me to feel less tethered to my phone. I greatly appreciate this feature. To circle back to the battery life "issue." I use the watch to track my runs, walks, and hikes. When using the watch like this, the display stays on. There is likely a way to turn off the watch face during an exercise, but I haven't found it yet, because I haven't looked. I like the watch on when I am running so I can quickly glance at my distance and time. I also am using the pulse ox setting at night while sleeping. I think if I turn that setting off the battery life will extend by a noticeable amount. I am going backpacking into the Montana wilderness in a couple days. I am curious how the watch will function in the back country. Will hikes sync to the app on my phone when there is no cell service? How does the battery hold up on a 4 day, 3 night backpacking trip? Are the distance measurements as accurate outside of cell range and not synced to a phone as frequently? I'll edit the answers to the end of this review.

The watch is nice. Getting adjusted to it after having a Fitbit for many years. So many more buttons. Not as intuitive. I appreciate the tracking on a higher level. The link to Strava is much improved and far more reliable. Wish fabric watch bands were available.

I did not think I would want to upgrade from the fenix 3 to this new tech! However, now I’m addicted to my VO2 max and sleep score so much that my wife complains and tells me she’s going to throw the thing out the window; she wears an Apple Watch. She doesn’t get it, but we love them anyways. I never realized how much of a tub I was until I unlocked a new algorithm called training readiness, but here we are. Would I go back? Absolutely not, but I’m pretty certain my chase for the perfect sleep score is causing my sleep score to be decrease

The bad: Overpriced forerunner. Sleep tracking varies significantly from FDA approved sleep study devices. Gym Mobility activity does an awful job of automatically detecting movement types (single or compound) and counting repetitions. If you do a mobility activity that combines 2 different movements , a crunch and a tricep extension, it gets neither nowhere near accurate. Would be better if the automatic movement type detection could be turned off. The good: display size of 43mm is a good compromise between older 41/42 and 45mm. Easy to use interface. Focus Modes allow you to configure timed alerts by activity type. Would have been better if they had still retained the 265/s and brought updates such as Rucking Activity to 265/s, thereby giving customer a choice of display size.

Purchased about a month ago, so far I really like it. It offers a lot of detailed information about your work outs and various workouts/coaching programs to help improve. Have experienced a little bit of connectivity issues where it shows connected to my phone and notifications are on, but it randomly stops receiving notifications for periods of time - but I am not sure if this is an issue on my phone end or even some type of operator error. The watch seems to function as expected!

While I do enjoy the features and stats that this watch collects, on my second and third workout the screen glitched and I could not view anything on my watch for the duration of the workout. I had to restart my watch to get it to work again. This was all in less than a week of owning the watch. It also connects and disconnects from my phone in a very short distance, such as a few rooms away in my own home or office.

Have used the watch for 3 weeks now. I bought it because my previous Garmin watch finally stopped working after 20+years. If has many new features which help me manage my health (sleep), and my level of exercise. It is very intuitive in tracking my habits. I am very pleased with the Forerunner 170.

After seven years of no exercise at all, I decided to start walking, and run/walking, again. The Forerunner 170 does exactly what I need it to do. The device, and the Connect app, show a lot of growth since I last used Garmin devices in the 2010s.

After doing research and comparing models, it does/operates just as expected. I am pleased so far and look forward to using it and looking at the data as it unlocks as I wear it longer.