Is this the best budget Garmin watch you can buy right now?
If you’ve been casting longing looks at the bright, crisp smartwatch-eqsue displays on the Garmin Forerunner 265 and 965 but been put off by the the £400+ price tag, we’ve got news for you. The new Garmin Forerunner 165 drops into Garmin’s running watch line-up between the Forerunner 55 and the Forerunner 265 and it's Garmin’s cheapest dedicated running watch to pack a bright AMOLED touchscreen.
But are there brains behind that beautiful face? I’ve been testing Garmin’s newest addition for more than two months now. Keep reading for my full verdict.
Garmin Forerunner 165 vs 165 Music: What's the difference?
Garmin has launched two versions of its latest GPS running watch: the new Forerunner 165 and the Forerunner 165 Music. You get everything on the Forerunner 165 that you’ll find on the Forerunner 165 Music except for the additional offline music storage, playback and support for streaming services like Spotify and Deezer.
With the Forerunner 165 Music, you can connect your running headphones to your watch and listen to your tunes phone-free. The Forerunner 165 Music is also more expensive at £289.99 / $299.99 compared to £249.99 / $249.99 for the non-music option.
Garmin Forerunner 165: Tried and tested
I've tested the Garmin Forerunner 165 Music extensively for around two months while training for the Adidas Manchester Marathon. During this time, I've trained with it, raced a half-marathon and even clocked a couple of solo marathons – all the time putting it up against alternatives like the Forerunner 265, 965 and even the much pricier Garmin Enduro 2.
At 1.2-inches, the Forerunner 165 screen is slightly smaller than the Forerunner 265 (1.3-inches/46mm) but there’s still ample real estate for your important mid-run stats which are wonderfully customisable on the watch, too.
The Forerunner 165’s AMOLED screen is excellent. It’s bold, bright, snappy and responsive. Easy to read in all conditions, it definitely boosts the experience of swiping through your training stats and performance graphs.
Beyond the display, the design and build are pretty standard Garmin fare but with more basic materials and a more lightweight, plastic-feel than some of Garmin’s more premium watches.
That lighter build has its benefits, though. The Forerunner 165 is comfortable and compact — a good alternative to bulkier running watches and a watch you can happily wear 24-7 to unlock the daily insights around activity, stress and sleep.
Behind the Forerunner 165’s impressive display, you get a pretty comprehensive array of Garmin’s regular run-tracking tools. There’s plenty here to cater for most runners for training and racing.
All the usual Garmin suspects are featured: distance, pace, heart rate monitoring and zone training, plus performance condition estimates. In fact, while you’re running, the Forerunner 165 offers largely the same features, experience and performance as the much pricier Forerunner 265.
Beyond the run, you get training effect readouts, training load monitoring and recovery recommendations, plus tools like Suggested Workouts, adaptive Garmin Coach training plans tied to your target race, along with all the usual race time predictions, race pace tools and fitness benchmarking like VO2 Max estimates.
You also get Garmin’s handy morning report, stress tracking and breathing rate, blood oxygen measurements, sleep and nap detection.
What's missing?
There are a handful of key omissions, though. There’s no accuracy-boosting dual band GPS and triathlon sports mode is missing. You’ll also have to forego some of Garmin’s training insights: training status, training load and training readiness readouts have all been left out.
Under the hood, the Forerunner 165 pairs all-systems GPS with Garmin’s Elevate V4 optical heart rate sensor to do the heavy lifting run tracking.
Even in more built-up environments at the Barcelona Half Marathon and the London Winter 10km, the Forerunner 165 more than held its own against the Forerunner 265, Forerunner 965 and the Enduro 2, all of which offer accuracy-boosting dual-frequency GPS.
For overall distances, the Forerunner 165 always closely matched the rival devices. When you dig into the GPS tracks, it’s not infallible, there's the occasional digression into a building, river or the odd corner cut. But then the Forerunner 265, 965 and Enduro 2 can all fall foul of that.
The optical heart rate performance was relatively reliable, too. In my tests, it tracked well against the optical sensors on the pricier Forerunners on steady runs and interval sessions. Up against the Polar H10 chest strap, the Forerunner 165 wasn’t perfect with the odd rogue spike. But as optical heart rate goes, it’s as reliable as the pricier Garmin watches.
Garmin Forerunner 165: Battery life
One word of warning: you’ll sacrifice some staying power for the Forerunner 165’s punchy screen. The battery comes in at 19-hours of GPS runtime – that’s shorter than the Forerunner 55 (20 hrs), Forerunner 265 (20 hrs) and the Forerunner 255 (26 hrs).
In tests, without music, a 1:25 half-marathon burned 11% and a 4-hour marathon burned 21%, so there’s still plenty to cover most single-session distances. You can expect between 5-8 days general training usage, with around 5-6 hours GPS run time.
RW Verdict
The Garmin Forerunner 165 takes most of the more useful tools and features you find on Garmin’s premium watches and distils them into a more compact, more basic, somewhat cheaper model with that killer bright display.
There’s everything you might need here to conquer a marathon or a half-marathon. In short, you’re getting a happily reliable, largely fully featured run tracker at a price that represents good value, and a performance that rivals the pricier Forerunner 265.
The battery life could be better but if you’re mainly concerned with what happens during the run, the Forerunner 165 is definitely a good money-saving alternative to the Garmin Forerunner 265.
Garmin Forerunner 165: Alternatives
If you can live without the AMOLED touchscreen and want better battery life, the Forerunner 255 is worth a look, particularly if you can find a discount deal.
The same goes for the Coros Pace 3. There’s no AMOLED screen on COROS’ budget watch but you get a similar lightweight, fuss-free design but with dual-band GPS and a longer battery life.
You Might Also Like
