Garmin Forerunner 265 £429.99

Intuitive multi-sport watch that can go the distance – Tom Couzens reviews

You only have to scroll through the spec of the Forerunner 265 to see it has been designed with a broad range of users in mind. It can track your efforts whether you’re cycling on the road, indoors or along the trails, with the seemingly endless list of sporting activities extending to include the likes of paddleboarding and ice hockey. And it doesn’t stop there.

Every morning its bright AMOLED display shows your sleep score, Garmin’s overview of how well you slept, your training readiness and your current energy level. It even detects moments of stress and advises you to take some time to wind down, which, in a world where things can be so full on, I found to be very helpful.

Similar to the Forerunner 955, the 265 is highly adaptive, perfect for personalisation to suit you and your lifestyle. There are a host of different watch faces, so you can find and personalise the ones best suited to you.

It comes in a choice of two sizes, a 42mm face for smaller wrists and 46mm for slightly larger wrists like my own. The silicone band provided the perfect fit, with adjustment holes placed 2mm apart down the length of the strap. I was impressed by the overall comfort of the construction and it felt pleasant to wear, even when out on the bike under multiple layers. Weighing just 47g, from day to day, I almost forgot I was wearing it.

Health and fitness features

Arguably the most important aspect of a sports watch is its ability to track fitness and activities. As mentioned it has you covered for pretty much every sporting activity possible.

When out riding, I found the GPS tracking to be highly accurate. I compared it against my Garmin Edge bike computer, and both gave me the same readings for distance and time. The auto pausing also worked wonders: every time I came to a junction it would automatically stop and start up again without fail or excessive delay.

The one thing I found to be not quite so accurate was the heart-rate recording. Wrist based HRMS that measure light reflection from your blood vessels are known to be less accurate than chest straps, and that’s before you throw in road vibration.

During a VO2 max effort session, I would look down to check what my heart rate was and I found it to be all over the place. During the effort, it would be reading around 130bpm, whereas during the easy periods it would be far higher – even though I was hardly pedalling. However, during everyday life, I did find the readings far more accurate.

Mapping and battery life

The Garmin 265 will show a ‘breadcrumb trail’ – essentially a line on a blank background – rather than having detailed base maps with roads, streets and trails all clearly depicted. It can help to provide a sense of where you are relative to where you’ve been. But if you are interested in a smartwatch with detailed mapping, you’d be better off with a model like the Forerunner 955 or 965.

The watch impressed when it came to battery life. For context, my Apple Watch Series 8 requires charging every

VERDICT

day, whereas the Garmin Forerunner 265 watch went well over a week without the need to be charged. Garmin claims in smartwatch mode it only requires charging every 13 days and in GPS mode it can last up to 20 hours.

The Forerunner

265 goes above and beyond in terms of its capabilities, including the ability to store music. It can also give you recommendations on what training sessions to do each day. By taking into account your training readiness (factored by things such as your sleep score, acute load and stress over the past few days), this can be a great feature for those who want a little more structure to their training.

The Forerunner 265 left me seriously impressed; from the easy-to-navigate touchscreen design to the array of activities and widgets – the list goes on. The one thing I did find let me down was the inaccuracy of the heart-rate monitor. Light reflection technology is known to be buggy, and although I can train effectively without this info, inaccurate HR data can compromise all the other metrics this watch provides.

RATING

“It’s great for those who want more structured training”