It’s been nearly 5 years since Garmin’s last budget Forerunner came out, the Forerunner 55. And with its successor, the Forerunner 70, it’s arguably one of the biggest upgrades Garmin has ever made in its watch lineup. I can’t think of a single jump between two watch generations that pack as many new features, or foundational changes, as the jump from the Forerunner 55 to the Forerunner 70. All with keeping the price as long as you’re going to expect from Garmin, at $249 (which is virtually identical to the inflation-adjusted price of the Forerunner 55 some 5 years ago).
The Forerunner 70 packs in some 50+ new sport profiles, a new optical heart rate sensor, better GPS, new Quick Workout features (not seen on any other Garmin watch yet), and most critically: The same underlying software platform as seen on Garmin’s higher-end Fenix & Forerunner watches. This means that you’ll get the benefit of literally hundreds of tiny tweaks/updates in those watches, passed down to this budget watch.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you get every feature. Garmin still gatekeeps specific features (like ClimbPro or offline maps, and even certain sport modes), based on whatever complex spreadsheet they have for determining which models get which features enabled.
Nonetheless, both my wife and I have been putting both the Forerunner 70 & Forerunner 170 through their paces over the last little while, and in this in-depth review, I’ll dive into the least expensive unit first.
Lastly, this is a media loaner from Garmin. I’ve already ordered my own unit at the regular price, for long-term usage purposes. As always, I don’t accept advertising from any company I review, and no company sees my reviews before you do. So, if you found this review useful, consider becoming a DCR Supporter, which gets you an ad-free site, plus the behind-the-scenes video series between both myself and my wife on everything that happens in the DCR Sports Tech Cave/universe.
What’s new:
Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is not Garmin’s first Forerunner 70 watch (seen above in blue). In fact, the first one came 15 years ago, all the way back in 2011. You can read my review about it here. Obviously, though, things have changed a lot. That one had a coin-cell battery in it, and lacked GPS and most other features. It was basically designed to work with an ANT+ footpod. So, I’ll save you 12 reams of digital paper trying to compare that.
Instead, we’re going to compare it against its actual predecessor – the Forerunner 55 (the Forerunner 60 was from 2010, and basically the same watch as the Forerunner 70 except with a new band). The Forerunner 55 is shown above with the black band.
With that, all the differences compared to the Garmin Forerunner 55:
– Switched from 1” MIP display to 1.2” AMOLED Display
– Switched to a 43mm case size (was previously 42mm)
– Added Touchscreen (previously was buttons only)
– Upgraded from Garmin ELEVATE V3 HR sensor to ELEVATE V4 HR sensor (but V5 is latest)
– Completely revamped/changed user interface
– Added Watch Focus Modes (e.g., sleep, theater, activity, etc…)
– Added HRV Status/tracking support (at night)
– Added Smart Wake Alarm
– Added Sleep Coach feature, including sleep recommendation factors
– Added Nap detection support (new to Garmin, finally!)
– Added Morning Report feature
– Added Evening Report Feature
– Added Daily Summary report feature
– Added Daily Health Snapshot Feature
– Added Health Status tracking
– Added Lifestyle Logging (journaling, on-device & Garmin Connect)
– Added the ability to switch between small fonts and larger fonts for text
– Added quick-access Flashlight feature (using screen, not dedicated LED flashlight)
– Added photos in text messages (Android only)
– Added ‘Shortcuts’ feature (configuring buttons for quick access to features)
– Added Alternate/Secondary Time Zone Widget/Option
– Added the ability to create Widget/Glance Folders
– Added Battery Widget (shows what’s driving battery usage)
– Added Countdowns
– Added Calculator Widget
– Added Garmin Messenger integration
– Added Moon Phase Widget
– Added Pulse Ox Tracking
– Added Sleep Score
– Added Sports Score Widget
– Added Stocks Widget
– Added Sunrise & Sunset Widget
– Added Weight Tracking Widget
– Added Timers/Alarms/Stopwatch/etc Widget
– Added Connect IQ Store (on-device)
– Added Low Battery Alert (e.g., 1 day left)
– Added Color filter option (for color blindness accessibility)
– Added Hourly Alert/Chime
– Added Battery Saver Feature (and now battery life estimates)
– Added ~60+ new sport profiles/apps (see list below)
– Added the ability to configure watch activity profiles and data fields from your phone
– Added Training Readiness (and all underlying metrics)
– Added Training Status (and all underlying metrics)
– Added Acute Load (including historical load trends/tunnel)
– Added VO2Max Trending
– Added Load Focus, Load Ratio
– Added Recovery Time (live widget/etc…)
– Added Running Dynamics support (Ground Contact Time, Vertical Oscillation, Vertical Ratio, Stride Length)
– Added Native Running Power (wrist-based, and native data fields)
– Added Running-power specific training zones
– Added Automatic Run/Walk/Stand detection within a workout
– Daily suggested workouts can now be seen into the future, configuration of long-workout days, more settings, etc…
– Daily suggested workouts can now be tied to future calendar race events, automatically creating workouts for that distance/course
– Added equipment tracking on-device (e.g., shoes, bikes, etc…)
– Added Primary Race Widget
– Added New Race Calendar & Race Details/Countdown Widgets
– Added Race Time prediction (within Race widget)
– Added Workout Benefit feature (tells you what the benefit of a given workout was)
– Added ability to create lap alerts on proximity (e.g., passing the same pace)
– Added Course/Route following
– Added ‘Up Ahead’ feature for distances to predefined markers like aid stations, climbs, etc…
– Added Aid Station/Rest Break Timer/Counter in Courses (e.g., Trail Runs)
– Added Time Cutoff Feature in Courses (e.g., Trail Runs)
– Added Garmin Share (to quickly share workouts/courses/etc…)
– Added ‘Workouts’ app/quick access menu
– Added Pack Weight Support (in Running/Hiking activities)
– Increased data fields per page from 4 to 8
– Increased number of custom data pages allowed
– Adds support for up to 4 CIQ data fields concurrently (versus 2 previously)
– Added muscle map feature in strength workouts
– Added Secure/Encrypted Bluetooth sensor pairing feature/option
– Added Cycling Lights, Cycling Radar, RD Pod, Tempe sensor support (ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart, see full list below)
– Increased GPS/GNSS types: Added Beidou & QZSS to multi-band list (but not dual frequency)
– Smartwatch battery life is 13 days (5-days always-on)
– GPS battery life per the chart below up to 23 hours
– Weight is 40g
– Waterproof rating is 5ATM/50-meters
Holy moly, that took a long time to put together/figure out (and yes, I literally manually go through every single item to come up with the above list – Garmin doesn’t provide any such list to me). Of course, the reality is there are still tons more features buried in sub-menus and such, but I think the above covers most of it.
When it comes to the full list of sport modes, it’s sprawling, and essentially lines up with most of Garmin’s other watches made in 2025/2026. For the most part, the only differences to a higher-end Fenix series watch is that those watches also have both high-speed watersports (e.g. surfing) due to increased water resistance designs, and low-speed underwater sports (e.g. diving) due to other increased water resistance as well. In any case, here’s the full list:
Forerunner 70 Sport Types: Run, Track Run, Treadmill, Road Bike, Walk, Cardio, Strength, Pool Swim, Trail Run, Bike (Outdoor), Bike Indoor, Virtual Run, Indoor Track, Obstacle Racing, Ultra Run, MTB, eBike, eMTB, Cyclocross, Gravel Bike, Bike Commute, Bike Tour, Mobility, HIIT, Yoga, Pilates, Elliptical, Stair Stepper, Row Indoor, Walk Indoor, Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Jump Rope, Hike, Rucking, Mountaineering, Disc Golf, Horseback, Archery, Inline Skating, Ski, Snowboard, XC Classic Ski, XC Classic Skate, Snowshoe, Ice Skating, Snowmobile, SUP, Kayak, Row, Snorkel, Soccer/Football, American Football, Basketball, Baseball, Softball, Volleyball, Cricket, Lacrosse, Rugby, Field Hockey, Ice Hockey, Ultimate Disc, Tennis, Pickleball, Padel, Racquetball, Squash, Badminton, Table Tennis, Platform Tennis, ATV, Snowmobile, Overland, Motocross, Motorcycle, Horseback, Breathwork
In case you’re wondering how it differs from the also-announced Forerunner 170, that watch has Floor Climb (because it has an altimeter), Openwater Swimming, and Meditation (guided). It does not have multisport/triathlon modes.
Lastly, when it comes to supported sensor types, it supports the following:
Sensor Supported: External HR (ANT+/Bluetooth), Footpod (ANT+/Bluetooth), Lights (ANT+), Cycling Radar (ANT+/Bluetooth), RD Pod (ANT+), Speed/Cadence Sensor (ANT+/Bluetooth), Tempe (ANT+)
The Forerunner 170 adds in cycling power meter and cycling smart trainer support.
Finally, for battery life, here’s where things stand:
Smartwatch mode: Up to 13 days (5 days always-on display)
Battery Saver Smartwatch mode: Up to 28 days
GPS Only GNSS Mode: Up to 23 hours
All-Systems GNSS Mode: Up to 16 hours
Got all that? Good, let’s get into some of the bigger ticket items.
In the Box:
The Forerunner 70 box doesn’t contain a whole lot, so this section is pretty easy. Above is the outside of the box, and below are the box contents:
Inside, you’ll have the watch, a standard Garmin charging cable (USB-C on one end, Garmin charging connector on the other), and then some paper junk. It’s that simple.
See, the unboxing is done – told you it’s simple.
The Daily Usage Basics:
In this section, I’ll dive into the basics of using the watch day to day, including activity tracking, sleep tracking, smartwatch features, and more. Whereas the section after this dives into the sports and workout pieces.
The Forerunner 70 uses Garmin’s standard 5-button layout common on Forerunner, Fenix, and Instinct devices (whereas Venu/Vivoactive devices usually have 2-3 buttons). In addition to these buttons is a full touchscreen. Garmin’s general philosophy here is that you can use either touch or buttons to accomplish most tasks, depending on your preferences.
Some tasks, such as starting/stopping a workout, do require buttons, and inversely, if you want to disable the touchscreen, you can do so either on a per-sport profile basis, or entirely. There’s lots of flexibility there.
Speaking of which, being an AMOLED display, by default it’ll be in gesture-based mode. Which means when you put your wrist down, it turns off the display to save battery. However, I prefer always-on display mode, which burns more battery life, but means the display dims when I put my wrist down (so I can always see the time, no matter my wrist position). You can change this in the settings:
When it comes time to display visibility, like other AMOLED displays made in the last few years, there are no issues seeing it in bright sunlight. I live on a Mediterranean island, and there’s simply no problem seeing the display on the sunniest of days (or, inversely, this same display on a snowy mountain-top).
In any case, starting off with the watch face, you can customize this however you’d like. I actually like the default watch face here, but you can either choose from a slate of ones pre-loaded on the watch, or literally thousands from Garmin’s Connect IQ watch face app/store. You can even make your own watch face with photos/etc…
Additionally, each of the data bits on the watch face (called ‘complications’), can be customized. Though the definition of ‘each’ can vary a bit between the watch face itself. For the default Forerunner 70 one, not all of the data fields are customizable, but most other watch faces do allow it.
Tapping the down button brings you to the widgets/widget glances. These little snippets are the widget glances, and then you can tap into them to see full-size widgets. Like everything else you can customize these, the order, grouping, and download 3rd party ones too.
Each of them then expands into more details about that particular item, such as more details about your steps, or your sleep, or moon phases, sports teams, etc…
Again, there are lots of options here, and this is an area where Garmin has expanded the widget realm in the last year or so, focusing a bit more on general smartwatch-like widgets (such as ones for stocks, sports teams, etc…).
When it comes to sleep tracking, the watch will automatically track your sleep (including naps). There’s really nothing you need to do except fall asleep. When you wake up each morning you’ll see your sleep data on a slate of different sleep details:
One of the widgets you’ll have is the ‘Sleep Coach’ widget, which pretty much constantly reminds you to sleep more. Within that there’s also ‘Sleep Factors’ widget, which will list some of the reason why it says what it says. If you take a nap, that’ll show up in a few different places related to sleep/Body Battery, but also just on the dedicated ‘Nap’ widget, if you add it.
The Forerunner 70 has the Body Battery widget, which effectively tracks your body’s energy level throughout the day. I generally find it pretty accurate. It’s going to give you a starting value based on last night’s sleep, and then your day will decrease it (faster or slower, depending on what you’re doing and your stress levels). For example, going for a hard interval run will drain it faster, whereas you might actually recoup a bit sitting watching some TV.
Again, there’s a listing of the factors that impacted it within the widget.
In fact, stepping back towards sleep slightly, the watch will track your HRV (Heart Rate Variability) each night when you sleep. After 19 nights of sleep it’ll start to populate the color coding system you see here, which are personalized ranges for your normal baseline of a 90-day trailing/trended window. Every person is different (my wife’s numbers and my numbers are about 15-20ms apart on average), so don’t overthink my specific ranges too much.
In general, when your HRV numbers plummet, it’s likely sign of fatigue or impending illness (typically my HRV numbers will drop from ~50ms down to ~30ms the day before I get/feel sick). That said, HRV numbers will also drop due to alcohol, drugs (good or bad), heavy training fatigue, lack of sleep, stress etc…. The key isn’t just numbers going up/down, but you understanding why they are going up/down.
You’ll see the HRV used in a variety of places, including Training Readiness I’ll cover in the next section. However, it’s also one of the metrics shown in the Morning Report each day when you wake-up.
The Morning Report is customizable, and essentially summarizes last night’s sleep, as well as the day ahead from a calendar (both your phones calendar and your workout schedule), as well as weather and other readiness tidbits.
You can customize the morning report in the settings, and likewise, also customize the evening report.
The Evening Report is basically a look back at your day from a workout/activity standpoint, as well as recommendations for sleep ahead.
Finally, shifting towards some general smart bits, the unit can display notifications from your smartphone (text and emoji). In the event of Android phones, it can also display photos and respond to text messages (Apple doesn’t permit either for non-Apple Watches at this time). But on both platforms you can read the message, as well as clear it.
Beyond that, the Forerunner 70 doesn’t have Garmin Pay or offline music, that’s on the Forerunner 170 (and other Garmin watches). So with that, let’s dive into the sports usage bits.
Sports Usage:
For most people, the reason you buy a Forerunner is to…well….run. But the reality is the Garmin Forerunner now supports basically just as many sports as any other Garmin series sport watch, with the only real exception being it lacks triathlon modes & openwater swimming support.
However, what it lacks there it gains in a slate of other sport profiles, and more specifically, Training Readiness, a feature I didn’t exactly expect to see on Garmin’s budget watch yet, which is a huge feature to help manage training fatigue. That said, I cover that in the next section, just since all the Training Load/Status/Recovery features, as well as calendar-type features ended up making this section a bit too big. Likewise, accuracy is the section after this.
First up, to start a sport/activity, you’ll tap the upper-right button, which opens up the sports/apps menu. You can customize the list of pinned/favorited sports, as well as the order of them.
Here’s a listing of all the sport profiles available on the Forerunner 70 as of writing. Generally speaking we see Garmin add a few sport profiles every quarter or so (in their quarterly updates), though it kinda comes in waves (none for a few quarters, then a pile, then none for a while). Here’s what’s available today though:
Forerunner 70 Sport Modes: Run, Track Run, Treadmill, Road Bike, Walk, Cardio, Strength, Pool Swim, Trail Run, Bike (Outdoor), Bike Indoor, Virtual Run, Indoor Track, Obstacle Racing, Ultra Run, MTB, eBike, eMTB, Cyclocross, Gravel Bike, Bike Commute, Bike Tour, Mobility, HIIT, Yoga, Pilates, Elliptical, Stair Stepper, Row Indoor, Walk Indoor, Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Jump Rope, Hike, Rucking, Mountaineering, Disc Golf, Horseback, Archery, Inline Skating, Ski, Snowboard, XC Classic Ski, XC Classic Skate, Snowshoe, Ice Skating, Snowmobile, SUP, Kayak, Row, Snorkel, Soccer/Football, American Football, Basketball, Baseball, Softball, Volleyball, Cricket, Lacrosse, Rugby, Field Hockey, Ice Hockey, Ultimate Disc, Tennis, Pickleball, Padel, Racquetball, Squash, Badminton, Table Tennis, Platform Tennis, ATV, Snowmobile, Overland, Motocross, Motorcycle, Horseback, Breathwork
You can check-out my full comparison to the Forerunner 170 below, but in short the there modes offered in that watch that aren’t in the Forerunner 70 are: Openwater Swimming, Floor Climb (needs altimeter), and Guided Meditation (Music only).
Once you tap a sport profile in the menu, it goes into a pending screen where you’re waiting for GPS (if outside), accessories (like cycling sensors), or heart rate lock. It’s here you can change settings, add structured workouts, courses to follow, etc…
You’ll notice you can now do equipment tracking (e.g. shoes, cycling gear, etc…) right from this screen.
Before we start an activity, note that each sport profile can be customized in more ways than you can count. It’s sorta Garmin’s jam in life, heavy customization. You can do this from either the Garmin Connect app, or the watch itself (again, some people prefer one way or the other).
One of the notable things about the Forerunner 70 is that it’s basically adopting the same codebase a the higher-end Forerunner & Fenix watches, and there’s tons of little benefits to that, such as now being able to have up to 8 data fields per page, and nearly limitless custom data pages. Plus a boatload of graphical data pages.
Meanwhile, back on that pending page you can add a structured workout, add a course, create a structured workout, etc… Additionally, if you have Daily Suggested Workouts enabled, for running you’ll get a structured workout listed based on your current Training Readiness levels as well as any goals you might have listed. I dive into scheduling races and such, a bit more in the next section.
In any case, with that all set, you’ll tap start and off you go. It’ll show your data pages in realtime, and you can iterate through the data pages to see details as you run. All of this worked just fine for me, like any other Garmin watch, including pace stability and such.
Now, the Forerunner 70 did add the ability to follow a breadcrumb course/route. There’s no maps on the Forerunner 70, but instead, you’ll just follow a line (old-school style). It’s not ideal for super complex trails in the woods (because of junctions), but for city/street routes, as well as relatively simple trail following, it works pretty well. You can push routes from Garmin Connect to the watch (or load GPX/FIT/etc routes), including routes from Strava, Komoot, and others.
What’s notable, is that the Forerunner 70 actually supports Waypoints, including the Up Ahead feature, showing you exactly how far it is until the next waypoint (per the route distance, not as the crow flies).
Even moreso, it actually supports Garmin’s new rest timer and time cutoff features, which are aimed at the ultra running crowd. Again, this is kinda the trickle-down benefit of using the same platform as the higher-end Fenix/Forerunner watches. You can create these aide station timers and time/course cutoffs, and see them in real-time on the watch:
As for the navigation itself, if you go off-course, it’ll warn you of such, and also show where you are on the breadcrumb trail:
It’ll also show your elevation profile as well:
Lastly, for sensors, it does support pairing to various sensors, including chest straps, cycling speed/cadencee sensors and more. It does not however support cycling power meters or smart trainers (the Forerunner 170 and above does though). Here’s the sensor list:
Sensor Supported: External HR (ANT+/Bluetooth), Footpod (ANT+/Bluetooth), Lights (ANT+), Cycling Radar (ANT+/Bluetooth), RD Pod (ANT+), Speed/Cadence Sensor (ANT+/Bluetooth), Tempe (ANT+)
In any event, once you complete your run, you’ll see a summary of your workout displayed, such as below:
Likewise, you’ll also see all this information displayed in Garmin Connect (mobile app or desktop), like below:
And of course, if you’ve set up sync to 3rd parties like Strava, TrainingPeaks, and more, it’ll sync off to those instantly. All of this is done via Bluetooth to your phone, and then the interwebs to those platforms. You can also use USB with Garmin Express on a desktop computer too. The Forerunner 70 doesn’t have WiFi.
Now, I do want to separate out one new feature on the Forerunner 70 that’s entirely new to Garmin watches, introduced here on the budget watch but soon coming to other higher-end Garmin watches, which is Quick Workouts.
New Quick Workout Creator:
Garmin has always reigned supreme when it comes to ways you could do structured workouts. Garmin has a manual interval creator (on-device), the ability to import workouts from Garmin Connect (yours or training plans), workouts from 3rd parties and coaches (e.g., TrainingPeaks, etc…), pace/heart rate/etc targets, dynamic Daily Suggested Workouts, and many more options.
However, one thing it lacked was the ability to just request an on-demand workout of a given duration (time) and pain level, and then boom, give you a few options, and off you go. All on-device, without any AI-driven app or such behind the scenes. Now, it does.
Quick workouts is both simplistic, and frankly, awesome. You simply choose how hard you want to hurt (four different levels), then choose duration levels (30 mins, 45 mins, 60 mins). From there, it’ll spit out 1-4 structured workouts instantly that you can choose from.
As one who often decides what type of workout I’m going to do as I walk out the door, this is perfect.
Here, let’s take a quick look at how it works. First, you choose Run, then choose Training, then Quick Workout:
From there, you’ll choose the level of suffering. Again, super simplistic (if perhaps a touch bit stylistically dated):
Next, you’ll choose the duration. This doesn’t change, no matter how advanced you are. After all, any coach can make even the most elite athlete in the world hurt at any of these given levels.
Instead, the workouts it’s creating for you will vary based on your ability, driven by your workouts. As with most things on the Garmin watch, the more data (runs) you give it, the better this gets. I find that for most Garmin features, you’ll reach that optimal level of data about 4 weeks in, though this totally works straight out of the box too.
In any case, if you select the easiest level, these are almost always basically just blocks at an easy intensity. Whereas once you start increasing intensity, they start getting more creative, and you get more options:
Again, these are taking into account your existing training and ability levels:
The ‘cool’ part is that, unlike Daily Suggested Workouts, which will refuse to give you really tough workouts if it thinks you’re likely to get injured, the Quick Workout Creator has zero effs to give. Like asking for “native-level-spicy” at a Chinese restaurant, it’s gonna deliver probably beyond what you want to accept.
In any case, once you’ve picked your suffering, it’ll load up just like any other Garmin structured workout. So you’ll get prompts and countdowns as you iterate through:
Meaning it’ll tell you the target pace and time left for each section automatically, chirping as it goes along. Then, at the end it’ll give you an execution score:
Ya know what I like best about this? It just works.
No faffing about with some app on your phone driven by wonky AI that can’t put together a coherent workout. Instead, this is driven by the coaching principles that we’ve seen the rest of the Garmin platform leverage on workouts for years. Generally speaking, most people agree that the running workouts it generates once it has enough data are pretty solid (albeit usually a bit conservative to avoid injury).
The point is, what I appreciate about this is that I can just decide how much I want to suffer as I walk out the door, without pulling out my phone, and then get right to business. Simple and effective.
Training Readiness & Planning:
In this section, I’m going to dig into some of the training features. At a high level, this includes:
– Race Planning/Calendaring
– Automatic coached workouts (for running and run/walk plans)
– Training Load (Training Status)
– Training Recovery
– Training Readiness
– Race Finish Time Prediction
– VO2Max Tracking
There’s lots of other aspects that tie into these, but that’s the general gist of the core features.
To start, I’ll quickly cover race calendaring, noting that you do not need to put an event on your calendar for any of these features to work. You can simply not list anything at all, and the watch will automatically suggest running workouts for you to make you more fit, it’s just that those workouts won’t be catered to a given distance/event. Meaning, if you don’t tell it you’re running a marathon, it’s not going to suggest the weekly long runs that you’d associate with a marathon event.
To add an event, you can go to your Garmin Connect app, and simply create an event, which can even search databases for the exact race (which is handy later as it pulls in the exact course/route, as well as weather conditions).
You can create multiple events, and prioritize events (e.g. A/B/C priority). These will then ultimately show up in your Race Calendar widget, which can predict your finish time (as of today). Note that Garmin’s higher-end watches can also do forward race time prediction (e.g. based on training what your result might be in 5 months), though the Forerunner 70 can’t do that.
Now regardless of what’s on your calendar (or not), Daily Suggested Workouts (DSW) will generate a workout daily to get you to that goal (or just to keep you fit). It does this based on looking at what it needs to do, while balancing your training readiness (e.g. sleep, other workouts, recovery times, etc…). In fact, it’ll even change in the middle of the day if you had exceptionally poor sleep, or went off and did some other high intensity activity instead.
You’ll see these automatically when you open the Run app, and you can look ahead at your schedule as well:
But you can also change various settings related to it, such as specifying the day you do your long run, days you can’t run, and so on. You can also see these workouts going forward.
In general, I find the Garmin Daily Suggested workouts fairly conservative, which means they’ll err more on the side of avoiding injury than pushing you to the edge. They’ll still delivery very hard workouts, but they won’t ramp-up mileage (or intensity) as hard as some coaches might.
Remember that Garmin’s coaching platform is just like any other coach and their coaching style, it has its preferences and quirks. I’ve had some coaches that are very aggressive in terms of ramping up mileage (because they know me as an athlete can typically handle that), and other coaches that are very conservative, preferring to avoid any injury at all (knowing that the fastest athlete is the one that gets to the start line).
In any case, one of the aspects that’s leaned heavily on here is Training Readiness, which looks at a few key metrics each day to figure out how ‘ready to train’ you are at any given minute in the day. This score shifts throughout the day, based on recovery time, if you just finished a workout, and so on. Meaning, you might wake-up with a Training Readiness score of 60, and it might slowly climb to 71 by early afternoon (because your recovery time from the previous workout has improved). However, once you complete that hard interval workout, it might drop down to 12, because now your literal “readiness to train” again is very low.
Training Readiness is based on the following factors:
– Sleep (last night)
– Recovery time (from last workout)
– HRV Status
– Acute Load (training load)
– Recent Sleep scores (over the past 7 days)
– Recent Stress (over the past 7 days)
The score is most heavily weighted based on recovery time and sleep, meaning if you go out and do a marathon, it’s going to show a low training readiness score, regardless of your acute load, HRV status, etc… That is, unless your effort was low-enough intensity that it didn’t make a dent because you do marathons every day or such. Again, it’s all based on what the norm is for you.
Garmin has had Training Readiness for a few years now, and generally speaking, I find it a very good indicator of how ready I am to train. Which doesn’t mean I always listen to it, but I’ll use it as one tool in my shed. If I wake up and it’s showing a score of ‘8’, and I feel rough, it’s probably time to do something easier. Whereas if I wake up and feel good and the score is 20 or 30, I’ll likely rally. Again, remember Garmin skews conservative when it comes to trying to keep you uninjured. This is a big piece of that.
One often metrics that make up Training Readiness is Acute Load, which is perhaps the best overall metric for looking at your Training Load. This metric shows your historical load range over the past 30 days as the green range, and then the last 7 days trending line atop that. It’s super helpful for figuring out how things compare to your baseline:
With that, you can see your Load Ratio, which shows whether you’re trending up or down. Generally speaking, you want to keep your upwards increase in training load at upwards of 1.2ish (meaning, you’re doing 20% more in the last 7-days, than the average 7-day period over the last 30 days).
When then carries into Training Status. Training Status more like a true coach that just focuses now whether the ‘type’ of training you’re doing is going to make you faster. Meaning, is it a balanced diet of easy workouts, hard workouts, etc… It mostly ignores factors like sleep/stress (except it does account for HRV). Whereas Training Readiness is looking at all those factors together.
Training Status is going to give you scores like Productive, Unproductive, Maintaining, Peaking, and Recovery. Generally speaking, I’d say that Training Status in the last few years (new devices in the past few years), it’s pretty hard to get into an Unproductive status unless you deserve it. However, I managed to, mostly because my zones were somehow set all wonky, and now getting out of this status has been near-impossible. In my case, it’s because it thinks every run is really hard, even really easy base runs. I’ve been having to fudge my HR zones temporarily the other direction to fix it, and I think I’m almost out of the woods.
You can see why it’s upset here, with my load skewed towards high-intensity, even though these were low intensity. This was because initially my zones were set incorrectly too high (and it was upset about that), so I lowered them, and it then made everything high intensity
In any case, generally speaking, for the last few years, I float between Productive or Maintaining most of the time, with occasional Peaking or Recovery if I’ve cut a lot of training load quickly (such as going on vacation, or before a race).
Of course, one really important thing to understand about Training Status (and correspondingly the VO2Max predictions) is that it’s heavily reliant on a varied diet of running, meaning longer runs, shorter-high-intensity runs, tempo runs, etc… If you’re only running a steady-state moderate intensity 30-minute run every other day, it’s going to struggle to be super accurate.
But I find when I have that varied diet of training run types, it really does a good job at figuring out life and my VO2Max more accurately. And further, as a benefit, that’s generally speaking how you should be training anyway.
Heart Rate & GPS Accuracy:
The heart rate sensor is a Garmin Elevate Gen4 optical HR sensor, which isn’t their latest generation (that’s Gen5), but is generally good in the vast majority of situations. The Gen5 typically has an advantage in certain cases (like intervals on a cool but not super-cold fall day), though the Gen4 beats almost all of Garmin’s competitors anyway.
Meanwhile, on the GPS side, it lacks multiband GNSS, but as you’ll see, that doesn’t seem to stop it from throwing down really good tracks.
First, a quick look at an interval workout (the one I selected above in the Quick Workout generator, in fact). Here are both the Forerunner 70 & Forerunner 170, on separate wrists, compared to a chest strap and other devices.
You can see some slight variations here and there, interestingly more on the FR70 than the FR170, though that’s likely just simply luck of the wrist rather than anything.
Meanwhile, here’s a trail run I did. Well, it started off as a trail run for the first 45 minutes, then I did some intervals for the last 45 minutes. You’ll see where I held up my camera to get a quick snippet of b-roll (while starting the interval going downhill), which caused the cadence lock you see. That’s a good example of an edge-case scenario that the Gen5 optical HR sensor can typically handle.
Still, there are other times where the FR70/170 varies a bit on the recovery, especially, which is semi-common for optical HR sensors that tend to delay catching up after dropping down).
Meanwhile, here’s a run my wife did yesterday, and you can see it’s virtually identical to the Garmin HRM-FIT chest strap she was wearing:
As for GPS, the Forerunner 70/170 doesn’t have a multi-band GPS/GNSS, but as I’ve said countless times, it’s not the size of your GPS, but how you use it. Garmin specifically has had industry-leading non-multi-band GPS antenna designs (and chipsets/firmware) for the last few years, and beats almost every other multi-band/dual-frequency unit on the market. Virtually every reviewer out there finds the same.
So, with that in mind, here’s some trail running, without any issues at all:
Likewise, here’s a downtown area with plenty of tall buildings, and even going under a swimming pool. No, really, I went under it (yes, that’s a man in the water looking down at me):
As you can see, it’s virtually identical to the Fenix 8 Pro with full multi-band enabled in that scenario:
And likewise for this gravel bike ride, no issues here, including next to cliffs, and fast single-track trails that are frankly mountain-bike trails. Here’s a zoomed-in snippet of one section:
If I look at the heart rate data from that ride, you can see most of the time it’s good, but equally, it missed one entire section/climb for no obvious reason. The fact that the FR170 managed that section (2nd interval, towards the end) is more likely just dumb luck than anything (identical sensors) – it could have easily been the other way around. That said, outdoor cycling, let alone gravel/MTB terrain as was the case here, is one of the most difficult things for most optical HR sensors, and that proved true here as well.
Across more and more trail runs, downtown building runs, and just general rides/runs, I continue to see virtually identical results between my Fenix 8 Pro and the Forerunner 70 when it comes to GPS.
For heart rate accuracy, as seen above, it’s generally very good, though there are minor moments on certain scenarios where the Gen5 optical heart rate sensor of a higher-end Garmin will outperform the Gen4 optical heart rate sensor seen on the Forerunner 70, but those are pretty few and far between.
(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy portions were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, running power, GPS tracks, and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.)
Comparison to Forerunner 170:
I’ve got an entire video & post covering all the differences to the Forerunner 170, as there’s more than meets the eye. Roughly 27 differences, some of them major, some of them minor. At a high level, the key differences are:
– The Forerunner 170 has a barometer altimeter, compass, and temperature sensor
– The Forerunner 170 has Garmin Pay
– The Forerunner 170 has a Music option (with offline music)
– The Forerunner 170 can pair cycling power meters and smart trainers
– The Forerunner 170 has an openwater swim mode
Again, there are a lot of nuanced features that spill out from the above, such as the altimeter gives you elevation and ascent data during activities as well as stairs climbed in daily live, and the cycling power meter gives you more cycling-focused metrics (like Cycling Performance & VO2Max predictions), and so on.
Check out my full Forerunner 70 vs Forerunner 170 post on that here.
Wrap-up:
I’m legit surprised that Garmin packed as much as they did into the Forerunner 70 as they did for $249. This is an incredibly competitive budget watch, even if the price of ‘budget’ has slowly shifted (by most brands) from $199 to $249. This watch is price-wise unlike anything else Garmin has released in the last few years, in any of their categories. It’s the first time in a long time that Garmin seems determined to not just win on pure features (or depth), but also compete against the COROS/Suunto/Polar’s of the world with price.
As I said in my video, I see this watch as the ‘easy-button’ pick for almost all road runners, or general fitness-focused people who want a Garmin watch without the Garmin price tag. It’s got all the health/lifestyle features of a higher-end Garmin watch, without compromising on the core running (or sports) features. Sure, it doesn’t have offline maps like an Amazfit unit would at this price, nor does it have music or contactless payments. But your phone does both of the last two, and for most road runners, maps aren’t a critical thing. Whereas if you shift over to trail running, then having offline maps (and features like ClimbPro) are much more valuable.
I have very few complaints about this watch, perhaps because almost all the features are already there in other watches and reasonably well-tuned. About the only ‘complaint’ I’d say is that the decision to exclude timing gates & race finish trimming is a bit quirky (given their inclusions of some ultra trail features), but honestly, that’s a pretty minor nit that most people won’t even notice (especially if you never load a route during a race).
It’ll be interesting to see in a few years if this unit turns out to be as popular as the existing Forerunner 55 was. With that – thanks for reading!
0 Commentaires