A good activity tracker or smartwatch is need of the hour if you want to stay fit. Just for that, Garmin Forerunner 245 Music has a 1.2-inch screen with240 x 240-pixel resolution. It comes with a transflective display that repels sunlight making it more viewable while using outdoors along with a bright backlight. We did not face any problem while observing the display during the day as well as night.

However, Garmin Forerunner 245 Music lacks a touch screen, but we did not find any issues as it is easier to press a button while running than swiping and tapping a touch screen. While we were going through the various screen of the sophisticated smartwatch we found various widgets that let you view the weather, calendar, notifications, workout history, heart rate, steps, health stats and can be easily added, removed and rearranged as per the user’s liking and fit. This is our review of the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music.

Design

Garmin kept the watch simple. It comes with five metal buttons that seem durable. The first button lets you turn the device on, turn the backlight on and off and when held for a few seconds it lets you view the control menus that include a number of options. Such as power off, find my phone, timers, stopwatch, lock keys, do not disturb, sync, connected and assistance option. The middle button lets you fiddle with settings such as, widgets, data screen, options and holding it lets you view the menus.

However, it comes with so many menus and submenus that you can sometimes get easily confused about all of the watch’s features. The third select down button on the left lets the user scroll through the menu, holding the button controls the music on the Forerunner 245 music.

Now moving on to the right, here it comes with two buttons stacked. The first one is the start-stop button that can be used to start or stop the timer. It also lets you choose an option or to acknowledge a message. The straps are made of silicon rubber and there is a hint of metal on it as well. Yes, we are talking about the buckle which locks the straps together or loosens the grip.

 Performance

The Garmin Forerunner 245 Music smartwatch lets the user see notifications from the smartphone, but it does not give you the freedom to reply, make a phone call. It does not support any voice calling assistants like Siri or Google’s voice assistant either.

The device comes with run centric features along with training status analyzer like Training load that keeps a track on your previous seven days of workouts. The comes along with anaerobic and aerobic Training Effect that observes the efficiency of a person’s workouts.

In addition to this, the Forerunner 245 comes with another supportive feature called Incident Detection and Assistance. For this, you must have your smartphone with you that is connected to the smartwatch throughout the run. The assistance feature will send out a message to your emergency contact in the time of need or mishap.

The Garmin Forerunner 245 Music can be connected to your Wi-Fi networks in an iffy. That will sync your watch with your smartphone without any human intervention devoid of opening the Garmin Connect App.

Music, the key highlight of the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music lets you store your much-loved songs on the Forerunner 245 Music. It gives you an option to enjoy your preferred soundtrack while you are working out without needing to carry your smartphone or iPod.

It has an ability to download up to 500 songs from your laptop onto itself. You can also choose to download the music from music apps like Spotify or Deezer if you are premium subscribers of the available app’s service.

After you sign in into your account via Garmin Connect app on the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music, you can analyse as well as sync your playlists to the smartwatch. It also lets you sync podcasts through Spotify.

The music app suggests various work out the playlist to you such as160 BPM Runner’s Club,” “Power Workout,” and “Beast Mode”. But before accessing you need to first download the songs on the list.

Throughout the run the display was vivid, and we were fond of what we saw.  You can browse your overall run stats or see the metrics of the existent lap, easily.

The Garmin Forerunner 245 Music will also let you record your map run. However, you can only view the route and not a map with streets.

Over that, the device can be used to track your running, biking, treadmill, indoor track, walking, strength, cardio, yoga, elliptical, stair stepper, indoor biking, pool swimming, rowing indoors and outdoors, and much more. If you wish to add more applications you can obtain it from the provided Connect IQ Store.

The watch face comes into sight all the time while it comes included with a number of widgets namely steps, performance, health stats, My Day, Sp02, weather, notifications, calendar, heart rate, last run, last ride, music controls, calendar, Garmin Coach, body battery, stress, and more. More widgets can be downloaded as per your preference through the Connect IQ store.

The device is easy, lightweight, and well built. The battery will last for quite a lot of days, even if it is used on a regular basis, and it easily charges up.

When you initially connect it with the smartphone app you will find a screen called My Day. My day is the control panel on your smartphone that can be customized effortlessly. By scrolling down you can opt to Edit My Day. It lets you choose between different options like Heart rate, Pulse Ox acclimation, steps, intensity minutes, sleep Pulse Ox, hydration, floors, body battery, sleep, stress score, weight, and calories. This amazing device also tracks your sleep automatically. Yes, you can sleep while wearing the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music at night. It measures your sleep stages, movement, and Pulse Ox in detail that is stored in your Garmin connect app and online as well. It captures the sleep data as deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep, too.

As we mentioned earlier, it comes with an extreme number of settings along with available customizable options that we cannot cover in this review. For instance, in the running app, you can choose and customize data screens characterized under fields namely timer, distance, dynamics, cadence, temperature, elevation, pace, speed, heart rate, compass, navigation, muscle oxygen, etc. However, we advise you to spend a couple of hours to customize it as per your liking and needs.

Our most liked feature on Forerunner 245 Music is the stress readings that helped us to keep a track on our stress levels. Apart from that, the device also comes with a feature called body battery that measures your energy level just by studying your heart rate variability, stress and sleep. As soon as you wake up in the morning it displays your body battery meter charged up to 100% and at the end of the day when you are exhausted, it shows that your body battery is low after a hectic day.

Verdict

As the name suggests Garmin Forerunner 245 lets you store up to 500 songs either through your computer or music application like Spotify or Deezer.

There is no barometer in this watch so it does not measure the number of stairs you climb during the day. It also does not measure the running power if you are not connected to your smartphone. Advanced metrics such as cadence, stride length, the ground contact time of balance can also be analysed in order to improve running form.

It has a battery life of up to seven days in SmartWatch mode and up to 24 hours in GPS mode without music, six hours with music. It is lighter and also comfortable on the wrist. Since it uses Bluetooth, there were plenty of connectivity issues with the smartwatch, as we had to reconnect it multiple times during our time with it. At times connecting with GPS was also a problem. For the price Garmin is asking for this smartwatch, Rs 31,772, these things should have not cropped up. Overall the experience was good, barring the above issues, which play a spoilsport.

Pros:

• A lot of Good modes
• Good looks

Cons:

• Pricey
• Bluetooth and GPS connectivity was an issue at times

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