Garmin Forerunner 165 GPS Watch Evaluation

Backside Line

There’s a motive this can be a bestselling GPS watch. The Garmin Forerunner 165 has all the weather of a dearer watch with out the premium value. Out of all of Garmin’s choices, it has the most effective stability of value and efficiency, making it an incredible look ahead to these simply moving into the world of health monitoring. It’s a dependable and correct tracker and has shortly turn into one among our favourite GPS watches.

The Forerunner 165 includes a 1.2-inch show with an amazingly vibrant AMOLED display screen. This high-performance show is nice for analyzing exercises, displaying messages, and growing the readability of small textual content. Nevertheless, this high-powered display screen leads to a middle-of-the-pack battery life. With a acknowledged battery lifetime of 11 days in smartwatch mode and 19 hours of GPS recording, it’s lower than different watches of comparable measurement and value. Nevertheless, for a every day health tracker, that is greater than sufficient battery life for recording actions and recharging each few days.

How We Examined

From the paths to backcountry powder to simply checking notifications all through the day, we put each GPS watch by means of its paces in all types of circumstances to see the place each shines.

Over a pair months, we’ve utterly drained every watch’s battery many times to actually perceive what you’ll get out of it, tracked our routes throughout totally different landscapes to examine how correct the GPS truly is, and stored them strapped to our wrists for hours on finish to ensure they’re snug and user-friendly. We personal and use all this gear ourselves day in and time out, so our opinions come from real expertise, not simply fast testing classes.

Accuracy

Whereas the Forerunner 165 doesn’t have dual-frequency GPS, its monitoring remains to be distinctive, and we’ve got hassle discovering any hiccups after we use it. When testing on our known-distance loop, it ranged from a number of hundredths of a mile quick to some hundredths lengthy, which isn’t sufficient for us to query its accuracy. 

Whereas utilizing the watch in several terrains, we solely discover some observe wobbling in very dense tree cowl. We respect that we will simply select the extent of satellite tv for pc connectivity. This could both enhance accuracy or enhance battery life. The choices embrace totally off, GPS solely, all techniques, and UltraTrac. We typically use GPS solely or UltrTac for the most effective mix of accuracy and battery efficiency.

Battery Life

The Forerunner 165 gives a acknowledged GPS battery lifetime of 19 hours and a smartwatch lifetime of 11 days. In comparison with our lineup, that is proper in regards to the center of the highway. 

Whereas that is sufficient for every day use and health monitoring, it’s not sufficient for lengthy endurance occasions, multi-day journeys, or lengthy durations between costs. The battery saver mode helps limit the GPS knowledge to enhance battery life, and we prolong the battery life by turning on don’t disturb and switch down the backlight. Even nonetheless, it’s just a little decrease than others available on the market for the same value.

Consolation & Wearability

Weighing in at 40 grams, the Forerunner 165 is light-weight and hardly noticeable on the wrist.

The watch has 5 buttons: begin, again, up, down, and lightweight. These are a number of the lowest profile buttons of any watch we’ve examined, and we love how out of the best way they’re. We by no means unintentionally bump them and barely use the auto lock.

The general measurement is small at 43mm extensive (1.69 inches) whereas sustaining a decent 1.2” show measurement. The Forerunner 165 doesn’t get in the best way or catch on backpack straps or cuffs. We love its low profile and barely rounded edge, preserving it out of the best way and glossy.

Options

The Forerunner 165 is a devoted operating and sports activities watch with many options good for every day use. Options like step depend, coronary heart fee, and sleep scores assist quantify your day, and a number of exercise varieties report and show particular metrics for every sport. Nevertheless, we discovered that the Forerunner 165 lacks many exercise sorts of frequent backcountry adventures like backcountry snowboarding, climbing, and cross-country snowboarding. 

The watch is extremely customizable with the Garmin app, and customers should buy third-party widgets or sync different free choices. It additionally has some options present in smartwatches, like a pockets, discover my telephone, security alerts, and music. Route navigation, back-to-start route following, and breadcrumb mapping are all nice options that make the Forerunner 165 trail-ready.

Ease of Use

Garmin isn’t new to this sport, and it reveals with its easy-to-use interface. The Garmin Forerunner 165’s AMOLED is extraordinarily vibrant and is among the strongest and easy-to-read of any we examined. The touchscreen capabilities easily even when sporting gloves or when the display screen is moist. 

In case you choose to make use of the 5 navigation buttons as an alternative, merely disable the touchscreen. The watch shortly acquires satellites and the exercise screens are simple to navigate to show totally different capabilities. The Forerunner 165 is an approachable and user-friendly watch with a transparent emphasis on usability.

Ought to You Purchase the Garmin Forerunner 165 GPS Watch?

The Forerunner 165 is a robust GPS watch at a value beneath its rivals. It’s a wonderful budget-priced choice with sufficient options that may impress die-hard well being metric geeks.

Whereas its battery life is insufficient for recording full-day adventures, it prioritizes a extremely vibrant display screen. The 1.2-inch show is the most effective in its class due to its AMOLED know-how. You could end up charging this watch extra usually, and it’s most at house as a every day health tracker for shorter-duration actions.

With loads of options for each backcountry navigation and every day smartwatch use, the Forerunner 165 is one other spectacular choice from Garmin that balances an reasonably priced value with excessive efficiency.

What Different Watches Ought to You Contemplate?

Right here’s extra of our favourite choices from our full GPS watch gear information:

Garmin Vivoactive 5 Evaluation: Virtually equivalent in battery life, the Vivoactive 5 is barely smaller and lighter for these with smaller wrists.

Coros Tempo 3 Evaluation: Barely cheaper and with an extended battery life than the Forerunner 165, the Tempo 3 is a superb entry-level watch.

Garmin Intuition 2 Photo voltaic Evaluation: With a number of the finest battery lifetime of any Garmin product, the Intuition 2 Photo voltaic can observe actions for days at a time.