Garmin Forerunner 945 vs Apple Watch Series 6
About a month ago I decided to side-grade my apple watch to a garmin watch because those are said to be way better for running. I got lucky and scored a cheap used forerunner 945 for just 80 bucks. After wearing it for now exactly 3 weeks I want to now compare the two from the perspective of a beginner runner that owns an iphone.
The garmin forerunner 945 looks and feels much more like a proper digital watch with it's large round watch face and all black design. The 945 has no touch screen, which is more of a blessing than a curse since the 5 physical buttons make manual laps, pause and resume much easier to trigger. The non-velcro watch strap is also way better than the non-velcro watch strap for the apple watch.
These are nice, but not very well thought out. Training status and load focus are often contradicting each other and the daily suggested workout, contrary to online reports, does not take a race entered into the calendar into account. Why else would it suggest a 30 minute base run today, the day before a race?
By far its biggest strength when compared to the apple watch is the immense battery life. With both watches being bought used, they both are below their prime capacity, but the garmin still lasts several days to maybe even a full week.
The garmin app is called garmin connect and takes a similar role to what apple fitness and apple health would play. Garmin connect has a terrible UI with extra features being near impossible to discover without a guide. Garmin connect is also impossible to use offline, which I missed greatly compared to the apple watch. Viewing activities is also pretty terrible with graph legends having no dotted lines and not zooming in when the time axis is zoomed in.
GPS takes half a minute to find a signal sometimes. Pace gets updated like 3-4 times a minute. Heart rate lags behind and is not updated nearly frequently enough. And that is just while recording an exercise activity.
Yesterday I sprinted up 9 floors of stairs in my office building leaving me gasping for minutes, but when I reached the top and looked at my wrist garmin claimed I had a heart rate of 100. I could feel my heart pounding at probably around 180 +/- 10.
UI is superb, as expected for an Apple device
The Apple watch series 6 has a great oled screen with no visibility issues even on sunny days in late summer. It is a lot lighter than the Garmin watch as well, but I've not found a reliable source online to compare the two. I may update this post with the weights if I buy a scale for cooking.
When a friend gave me the advice to start my watch a minute before the race start for it to find gps in time I was a little confused, but after using the garmin I know what he was talking about. With the apple watch I always instantly had gps, even at a race.
Heart rate and pace also update at least every second and using the watch as a pacer is very easy to set up. Just press the 3 dots in the upper right of the running workout and you can select it, among previous races to race against and interval sessions.
Terrible battery life. I don't think it would last me a full marathon, but maybe that's their strategy for upselling me to the ultra. Or maybe the watch just bullies me to not run a marathon before I can confidently run a sub-4.
The non-velcro watch strap is also something to get used to, it's pretty bad because it opens itself when you close it so you gotta apply this weird technique.
What I didn't factor into the watches is that the apple watch of course has synergies with other apple devices and that garmin pay doesn't work with my bank.
Either way I can't be bothered to put up with garmins bullshit any longer. Back to the apple watch.