Garmin Forerunner 165 Review: An ‘affordable’ option from the brand

Design

The Forerunner 165 sports the signature Garmin look and shares its DNA with other Forerunners in the range. It’s got that rugged look, has a plastic (fibre-reinforced polymer, technically) casing, with the signature five-button layout. Of course, there’s lack of premium materials like aluminium or titanium on the chassis, which is fair for the price, but it also makes the watch feel quite light and plasticky. That said, the lightness makes it more comfortable to wear, especially overnight.

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Last year, in its 20th anniversary year, the Garmin Forerunner series got a screen upgrade. For long, sports-focused watches had resisted the temptation of bright OLED screens sporting dimmer memory-in-pixel displays. I’m glad that AMOLED has now become the standard for the Forerunner range.

The vibrant AMOLED 1.2-inch display with a 390 x 390 resolution on the Forerunner 165 packs in a lot of information—the screen is bright during night runs and crisp while outdoors in the sun. There’s also an always-on mode where the display dims when not in active use and shows just the important information, like the time. And of course, you get the benefits of a touchscreen which is quite intuitive and even responsive with sweaty hands.

There are some corners cut here. The screen is a chemically strengthened glass unlike the Gorilla Glass on the Forerunner 265. But it's perfectly serviceable, really.

The five-button setup is great to interact with (especially during workouts), like my fellow Casio G-Shock aficionados will attest to. Garmin is clearly not reinventing the wheel here.

The soft silicone strap is quite comfortable—in fact, it is one of the most comfortable bundled straps that I’ve tried across several fitness trackers. There’s no sign of skin irritation from prolonged wear and it fits well, whether you’re going for a snug or a comfortable fit.

Features

A Garmin smartwatch is primarily a fitness companion. The Forerunner 165 made some compromises to hit a lower price, but most of the things you need are here. It’s a solid fitness smartwatch, even if limited.

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There’s the especially useful Morning Report feature which tells you how well-recovered you are with detailed scores across different attributes. And, of course, there’s Garmin Coach that allows you create and follow training plans depending on your fitness goals or marathon schedules. There’s also the efficient sleep tracking, nap detection, heart rate tracking, heart rate variability, and more.

As you might expect, some features are missing.

There's no Training Readiness score on the Forerunner 165 which tells you how well you’ve recovered from your last workout. There’s also no support for triathlons or multi-discipline sports – so it won’t automatically switch between workouts like more advanced models can. There’s also no built-in map support which makes it a little limiting as a companion on your hiking trails.

But there are quite a few personal safety features, including emergency assistance, automatic incident detection, and a real-time location-sharing tool.

The recent update to Garmin’s companion app—Garmin Connect—has upped the ante with an intuitive home screen where all your latest workouts and important stats are available at a quick glance. If you use other health and fitness apps like Strava, MyFitnessPal, or Adidas Running, you can connect your account, so your log from there is synced to Garmin Connect or vice versa.

It’s no surprise that Garmin puts more emphasis on fitness than on being a smartwatch. The Forerunner 165 skips a few things found elsewhere—like an ECG which is available on some other fitness smartwatches or support for voice assistants. No wireless charging either.

That said, the Forerunner is still a smartwatch running Garmin’s proprietary operating system and you can install music apps like Spotify or YouTube Music, weather apps like AccuWeather, or map apps like Komoot. Sure, there isn’t much to pick from, but the essentials are taken care of. There’s Garmin Pay for contactless payments, but it’s not available in India.

O the Music variant of the Forerunner 165, you can download songs via the Garmin Express desktop app—there’s a paltry 4GB of storage on board, which can fit about 500 songs.

Performance

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is a pleasure to wear and quite accurate in all it does. I know, I tested. I compared it to a couple of smartwatches as well as a Fitbit and a physical pedometer.

For basic step count—for all those who target 10,000 steps every day—the Forerunner 165 is quite accurate, with only the Fitbit Charge 6 matching its accuracy. For longer runs too, the accuracy is consistent.

I also tested, along with a fitter friend of mine, how well the Forerunner 165 handles rapid changes in heart rate. There’s minimum deviation from the actual rate and the tracking mostly keeps up when the heart rate is increasing while running on a steep incline and while catching my falling heart rate on downhill run. It does lag a bit for rapid heart rate changes but averages out to the correct result in the end. Interestingly, I didn’t find my more expensive Forerunner 265 any more accurate either.

For an entry level fitness smartwatch, it’s hard to find an issue with tracking of the steps, the elevation, and the GPS distance on the Forerunner 165. In its price range, there’s only Fitbit that can match the Garmin’s accuracy.

The AMOLED display that the Forerunner 165 flaunts makes the smartwatch climb down to a more middle-of-the-road battery life. It easily gives you more than seven days between charges with regular health tracking. This might not be great by Garmin standards but still far ahead by leaps and bounds compared to other mainstream smartwatches, mind you.

Is this for me?

The Garmin Forerunner 165 is a solid companion for anyone who wants to get up from the couch and go for that run they’ve been thinking about. It handles basic smartwatch features well, has class-leading accuracy for fitness tracking, and is head and shoulders better for coaching and guidance if you are looking for a great beginner's watch to take you from your first few runs to half-marathons and beyond.

That said, if you’re not a runner, the Forerunner 165 might not be the perfect choice, and you might look at the higher-end Forerunner models that are aimed at multisport athletes. Also, serious marathon and trail runners may want more navigation features as well as the missing Training Readiness score. And, of course, it isn’t for those who’d rather prefer a powerful smartwatch as a productive companion for their smartphone.

At ₹29,990, it doesn’t come cheap (there's a non-music variant too priced at ₹25,490), but balances between the cost-cutting measures and Garmin’s strength in sleep, health, and workout tracking features well.

Update: This story was updated at 9.30 am on 23 October to reflect the fact that Garmin had dropped the at-launch price of the Forerunner165 from ₹33,490 to ₹29,990