Running Watch Review: Garmin V. Apple Watch
I have been running six days a week for almost four years now and have spent a great deal of time with both the Apple Watch and Garmin Forerunner watches. I started my journey with running watches around three years ago and my first watch was the Garmin Forerunner 25. It was a pretty decent watch, but also pretty old-fashioned. A year later I upgraded to the Garmin Forerunner 45 and then shortly after that I upgraded again to the Garmin Forerunner 245. My favorite watch out of the three was definitely the Garmin Forerunner 245 just because of all the different types of statistics and information it will tell its user.
Just recently I purchased my first ever Apple Watch. I was incredibly skeptical at first mainly because I had been a Garmin user all of my running career and was scared to trust any other brand. I watched numerous videos on the accuracy of the GPS of the Apple Watch, the effectiveness of the Apple Watch workout app, and so on. I definitely spent a great deal of time on YouTube researching the Apple Watch.
It appeared to me that the Apple Watch’s newest series, the series 6, was the way to go. I decided to leave my legacy at Garmin and switch over to Apple. While I made this decision for many reasons — one of which is because I wanted the functionality of the Apple Watch, which Garmin doesn’t offer — I knew that the Apple Watch would do me justice.
What I like About the Apple Watch:
I have been using the Apple Watch for a little over two months now and I am very pleased with it. In my opinion, the GPS is incredibly accurate. Although, I do not use the standard Apple Watch app to record my runs. I use an app called WorkoutDoors which gives you more statistics of your run with customizable screens and will upload automatically to Strava. I think the overall platform of WorkoutDoors is nice and the amount of data it gives the user makes the transition from Garmin to Apple quite easy.
The always-on display of the Apple Watch Series 6 is great when out on a run. Its brightness is also at the perfect level. The watch will buzz after a mile if that is your selected measurement, which is what my Garmin would always do.
The watch also has incident detection, which I have never had the need for, but if something were to happen on a run, the watch will call 911.
Apple Watch will measure your heart rate, heart rate zone, and your heart rate after 1–3 minutes when at a stop. Garmin can measure your heart rate and heart rate zone during a run but doesn’t usually tell you your recovery heart rate 1–3 minutes after your stop. This is a feature I find quite interesting.
You can also set up your Apple Watch to measure your VO2 Max. Garmin will always tell you after a run what your VO2 Max is. While Apple does not do this, it will measure your VO2 Max during the run and will send the information over to the app. It seems that Garmin and Apple may use different scales or ways to measure VO2 Max because Garmin has my VO2 Max at 56 while Apple has it at 52. Either way, it is still great that Apple has the VO2 Max feature.
What I Miss About My Garmin:
The biggest thing I miss about my Garmin Forerunner 245 is how easy it was to start and stop the watch. It was so nice to quickly start and stop the watch during the workout. Not to mention, the lap button. When doing intervals on the track, it was nice to quickly hit that lap button and then be able to quickly stop the watch.
On the Apple Watch, the user has to hold down the screen of the WorkoutDoors app and then select the pause button. There also is no feature to lap the watch. For this reason, I use my Garmin Forerunner for workouts. The nice thing about this is that my Garmin connects to Strava which will send the actual run over to the Apple Health app and sends the information over to my watch.
I am a big numbers and statistics person, so I want to close all my workout rings on my Apple Watch, and since Strava connected to Apple Health, all of my workouts also transfer to my rings on the Apple Watch.
I also miss the screen on the Garmin watch that will tell you your pace and time for your specific lap. This was most useful during workouts when I would do 400/800 repeats and would want to see what time I am running at the 200-meter mark. The Apple Watch only focuses on the total amount of miles ran.
Another quality that I miss of my Garmin is the recovery time statistics. Once again, I am a huge stats person. Although I often found that my suggested recovery time was incredibly overshot, I still enjoyed the stat, which is something Apple does not offer.
Overall:
Choosing one watch over the other comes down to how and when you will be using your watch. If you want something with more functionality, I would purchase the Apple Watch. If you are looking for something to wear only while running or to help you train, I would purchase the Garmin.
Either way, I don’t believe either watch is better than the other. It all comes down to personal opinion and how each watch is going to be used. I will always rave about Garmin because it has gotten me so far on my running journey.
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