Garmin Forerunner 970 review: The king of running smartwatches

What: Garmin Forerunner 970| Price: Rs 90,990

Garmin Forerunner 970 key specs:

-1.4-inch AMOLED touchscreen
-SatIQ multi-band GPS
-Up to 26 hours GPS battery life
-Built-in LED flashlight, microphone, speaker, ECG-capable sensor
-Color topo mapping with route creation
-Detailed running features, advanced metrics and deep training optimisation

Comfortable to wear and bright OLED screen

The Forerunner 970 has a rugged feel to it, and honestly, it looks quite different from the Apple Watch Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, though it doesn’t have the rough-and-tough aesthetic of a Casio G-Shock. I would say Garmin’s design language is more practical: simple, comfortable, and so lightweight that you often forget you’re even wearing a watch.

Swiping up from the watch face gives you access to “Quick Glance” widgets. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The watch is made of a plastic polymer and weighs only 56 grams, but it features a titanium bezel around the screen with a matte finish on its front-facing edge. All the buttons are metal as well, as is the small lime green Forerunner panel on the side, which adds a nice touch.

The watch only comes in 47mm size, but you can choose from three colour options: white with yellow, French gray with purple, and black with yellow. The strap is made of silicone and features a two-tone design: the main colour on the outside and a secondary colour on the inside.

Garmin’s use of a scratch-resistant sapphire glass screen, similar to those found on luxury watches, adds peace of mind, while also providing the toughness needed for challenging terrains, depending on the type of user.

This watch has a 5 ATM water resistance rating – not the 10 ATM offered by the high-end Fenix 8, which makes it clear that the Forerunner 970 is a runner-first series, although Garmin also recommends it for triathletes.

The Forerunner 970 features five physical buttons. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

A new addition to the hardware is a built-in LED flashlight. At first, it may not seem like a must-have feature, but it’s actually quite useful. I know many users who go on trail walks and camping trips, and having a flashlight built into the watch can come in handy whether it’s for finding glasses in a dark room before an early morning run or getting your way to the washroom at night while camping. In fact, the LED light offers four levels of white light and one level of red light.

The Forerunner 970 features a 1.4-inch AMOLED touchscreen display that is incredibly bright, making it easy to read activity stats even under direct sunlight. And because the screen is large enough, you can view up to eight data fields at once. Maps, in particular, look great, and the touch response is excellent. The screen lights up when the wrist is raised, and turns off when lowered. You can always customise the activation to “always-on” mode, though it consumers more battery.

A highly customisable watch

The Forerunner 970 features five physical buttons (three on the left and two on the right) along with a touchscreen. By default, touch input is disabled during activities to prevent accidental taps. However, the watch is highly customisable. The buttons support up to seven press combinations, and I set certain shortcuts for music and voice notes. You can also disable the touchscreen entirely, or enable it for all activities or only specific ones.

The strap is made of silicone and features a two-tone design. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

Swiping up from the watch face gives you access to “Quick Glance” widgets, which display information in a scrollable preview list. You can scroll vertically to view each widget such as weather, heart rate, or training status shown as a compact card. Tapping a card opens the full details.

Meanwhile, swiping down from the watch face opens the notification center, where you can view messages and alerts from both your phone and the watch itself. If you are using an iPhone, you can view and dismiss text-only notifications. However, when paired with an Android phone, you can also see images in notifications and reply to them directly from the watch. The interface has been revamped and is much improved, but it still doesn’t match the experience you get on the Apple Watch or Wear OS devices.

But I liked certain things about the interface. For example, every morning when I wake up and put on the watch before heading out for my run, I receive something called a morning report, a breakdown of the day’s information, including all the stats about my body, such as sleep data. There’s also an evening report, a detailed summary of the day I have just had, including your suggest workout for the next day.

I got about two weeks of battery life. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The watch now also features a microphone and a speaker, allowing you to use voice commands to control certain functions. You can start a run session, adjust screen brightness, use the Find My Phone feature, record voice notes, and even answer phone calls. The built-in speaker is quite good, and the microphone picks up my voice clearly. I was able to answer calls directly on the watch, which was convenient while on the go. You can store up to 2,000 songs on the watch or download and sync playlists from Spotify, Deezer, or Amazon Music. I recommend listing to music via a pair of Bluetooth headphones.

Solid performance and activity tracking

As I mentioned at the beginning, I treated the Garmin Forerunner 970 as a dedicated running watch – it’s a serious tool for runners, and I stand by that. Although I am not a professional runner, I did my best to test every possible feature. Garmin arguably has the best software of any sports watch I have used; it’s so advanced that regular users like me can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of features and the depth of data – some of which may not be useful for everyone. However, if you are a diver, triathlete, or seasoned trekker, the training metrics this watch offers are unmatched. That’s why the Forerunner 970 goes far beyond basic step counting, and why it may not be for everyone, but rather for serious athletes.

It measures nearly every performance metric, including your Running Tolerance score. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

To truly understand the Forerunner 970, you need to see how and why it stands apart from traditional smartwatches on the market. This is a full-fledged training companion, not just a device for counting steps or checking your heart rate, though it does offer 24/7 health monitoring, ECG (arrhythmia) readings, and the ability to track an extensive (around 30) range of activities. These include triathlon, pool and open-water swimming, cycling, Pilates, skiing, and much more.

I can imagine the type of user who would want the Forerunner 970, someone who logs 50 miles on city roads each month, maps tempo intervals, hits the trails, and truly values mapping and elevation features. This is the kind of person who puts the watch to the test on steep, rocky terrain, treks through dense forests in the mountainous regions of Himachal Pradesh, swims in the ocean, logs hundreds of hours on the treadmill, and follows weight-based training routines.

The Forerunner 970 also features full-colour TopoActive maps. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

The watch tracks all of that, from indoor gym sessions and weightlifting routines to automatic lap detection. It measures nearly every performance metric, including your Running Tolerance score, which takes into account your actual miles run over the past week, your Acute Impact Load miles, and newer metrics like Step Speed Loss and Running Economy. These indicate how much you slow down with each step- the lower the number, the better. It also includes race-specific features like Projected Race Finish Time, which estimates your race times based on your training.

The Forerunner 970 also features full-colour TopoActive maps and allows you to create routes, re-route on the go, and even share routes at the trailhead. The maps are bright and easy to navigate using pinch and tap gestures. That said, I must add that panning or zooming on larger maps can occasionally cause noticeable lag.

It has the ability to track an extensive range of activities, including pool and open-water swimming. (Image: Anuj Bhatia/The Indian Express)

There is also a built-in sleep coach, as well as running and triathlon coaches that suggest when to push hard based on your training and when to take it light and easy. The best part is that the data and insights are easily accessible but I am not sure what casual users would do with such pro-level analytics.

I got about two weeks of battery life, though it depends on how intense the activities are and how much GPS-tracked activity you are doing. According to Garmin, the watch offers up to 26 hours of GPS tracking per charge.

So, should you buy the Garmin Forerunner 970?

Garmin is perhaps the best brand when it comes to running watches, and the Forerunner 970 proves why no one comes close. At Rs 90,990, the Forerunner 970 is certainly expensive, which is why it’s a “pro” smartwatch built for data-driven racers and endurance athletes. This watch may not be for those who just want to track basic metrics, and that’s perfectly okay. But if you are a triathlete, a seasoned runner, or someone obsessed with performance data, the Forerunner 970 is the everyday running watch you can get but be ready for pay for it.