Garmin Forerunner 945 Triathlon Review

At a Glance: Quicks Ratings

Design

92%

Accuracy

96%

Features

98%

Battery Life

93%

Overall

95%

Where To Get It

A Deep Dive Into Garmin Forerunner 945 Triathlon

This is Garmin’s premium Forerunner 945 smartwatch with the state of the art fitness monitoring systems, plus music and tracking ability. This is the watch Triathlon athletes check out most often, and comes in first on most lists of top five sports watches for a triathlon athlete.

  • Who Is It For?

  • Video Review

  • Pros

  • Cons

The person who is a professional or serious athlete who hits the trail no matter what, who pushes for the best in themselves, and uses the best tools to help get them there. Great for runners, swimmers, and cyclists, and was specifically designed for the triathlete in mind.

The Garmin Forerunner 945 is for the individual who has the patience to work through the button system and do the research to learn how to reap the benefits from this very smart smartwatch.

Your efforts will pay off once you learn how to access all the information this Forerunner 945 version has to give you.

What is in The Box?

Watch, Garmin charger, User Manual in many languages, watch clasp

Main Features and Functions

  • Syncs music and stores up to 1000 songs on your watch. Connect to Bluetooth headphones and you are ready to run, and maybe leave your smartphone behind. It can interface with Spotify and Deezer and other music streaming services as well.
  • High performance monitoring including VO2 Max and training adjustments for heat, altitude, checks out recovery time, training load focus and all the small adjustments to help you get the most out of your workout.
  • Colored map guides to help you stay on course during your run.
  • Safety features including incident detection. If you fall, you can use your watch to get help and have others locate you via predesignated emergency contacts.
  • The Garmin Forerunner 945 helps you train smarter. The Training status evaluates your training history and advises or tweaks your exercise plan so you are using your time wisely and productively.
  • The recovery time feature enables you to gauge when your body is ready for its next challenge. Athletes know that in order to do better there are times when you need to give your body an easier day before a more challenging one.
  • Garmin Forerunner 945 comes with an ELEVATE V3 Heart rate monitor.
  • Excellent Battery Life: Up to 14 days in smartwatch mode, 10 hours in GPS with music or 60 hours via UltraTrac mode.
  • Garmin Pay enables you to make your payments through your watch and leave your credit cards and cash at home.
  • Endurance levels can be monitored through the use of anaerobic and aerobic measurements,
  • Built-in accelerometers   for tracking your steps and elevation
  • Triathletes tend to take their training stats seriously. There is a ton of information about your performance you may want to track like, lap time, heart rate during a push interval, recovery heart rate, and much more.
  • You can pick your goals, chart your progress, know when to push and when to rest.

Your watch must:

  • Be fully waterproof especially since you will be in open water in your local lake or ocean and hitting laps in your local outdoor and indoor pools.
  • Have reliable GPS since you will be on the road, trail or open water outside.
  • Have training logs — it can be paper and pencil but who wants to lug along anything more than your watch? Your smartwatch should be able to keep all your training information and note in one convenient place until you get home and log it on your computer or notebook.
  • Have Heart Rate monitoring. This helps you stay in your prescribed training zones. Some days you will be doing lower aerobic sessions and others you want to push to your max, knowing the zone and limits will keep you working intensely or at maintenance level.
  • Have a Smartwatch Connection to be able to connect to a wireless device like a heart monitor chest strap or bike cadence sensor.
  • In addition, you need to make sure your Heart Rate monitor can work underwater. It's hard to check your pulse when swimming by a finger check to your carotid artery and water makes reading your wrist sensor less accurate.
  • This is why if you are serious about measuring your heart rate while swimming you should use a chest strap.

All these features are in a Garmin Forerunner 945.

Recommendations

You should definitely buy a Garmin Forerunner 945 if it fits with your budget because it is packed with sports and running features that you do need, and can easily add extras through Garmin CIQ for free if it's not there. When you are not working out, the Garmin Forerunner 945 has Garmin Pay, room for tons of your best music, colorful maps and longer battery life than the Garmin 935. The upgrade is worth it.

Andrew Wyatt

Andrew Wyatt

Andrew Wyatt has been a tech geek for as long as he can remember. Whether it's laptops, cameras, or projects, he's obsessed with it all. When he's not researching the latest tech products, he likes to go on long hikes with his dogs.

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