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This is the story of a watch that had everything going for it: best-in-class GPS accuracy, an extremely long battery life, deep insights into your health, your fitness, and your overall well-being, all packed in a nice lightweight modest watch body.
Garmin took a look at all of that goodness and decided to throw it out the window, or at least throw it out the window when it comes to the watch body itself. They actually did so quite quickly; this brand new Forerunner 965 came out a mere 39 weeks after Garmin announced the Forerunner 955. The new 965 had a new watch body, a new display size, a new display technology, a new user interface, and even the buttons are a little bit different.
But under the hood, under that glossy new UI, it is still pretty much the same brains, same features, same GPS chip, and even the way that the watch functions is the same as the previous Forerunner 955. So in this video, we'll go over what's different, we'll touch on data accuracy, and I'll talk about what I like as well as what I wish were different about the Garmin Forerunner 965 after having used it for a little over a month now, all with the simple goal of figuring out if this watch has really changed.
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Here between these two watches, the most obvious bit is the display and the watch body itself. The wider watch body is 47.5 millimeters in diameter, and what's interesting about that is that it houses a significantly bigger display than all of the previous 900 series Forerunner watches in the past. But it also did that without increasing the watch body a massive amount. The 965, which I have here in black, is only about half a millimeter wider than the Forerunner 955, which I actually have here in white.
With that tiny increase in width, the display size goes from 1.3 inches all the way up to 1.4 inches, or a gain of about two and a half millimeters. So to get that bigger screen without adding all that much width to the device, you can see that Garmin has shrunk that black bezel, or that black kind of screen bezel, around the edge here quite a bit. It's what we've all been wanting for years: more screen real estate without any of the consequences.
In that crisp AMOLED display, there's a higher pixel density—454 pixels by 454 pixels versus 260 by 260 pixels on the old 955—which makes graphics and icons look a lot crisper on this device. That's about three times as many pixels and about double the pixel density, so you do end up with sharper graphics, sharper icons, sharper imagery, and crisper text.
It's not just like a "make it look pretty" kind of thing; having a higher screen resolution means that mapping is going to be more detailed. Here, you're literally seeing more information on the map screens than you would from a watch with a different screen technology. Just as a side note, I also find it a little bit easier to actually see this watch when I'm swimming and I take a glance at my watch underwater.
Yeah, I know that I'm not supposed to be wearing a watch or looking at my watch while I'm swimming some sort of technical workout, but I lose track super easily. Even if I'm swimming something like 200 meters, I'm always kind of just glancing to see where I'm at. This new Forerunner 965, and the 265 for that matter, they've utilized that higher density display to update the graphics and the icons in the imagery, which I do think that most people will probably like about the new UI on these devices.
Personally, for me, the images feel like they're maybe one step too far. I don't know if I need a cup of steaming coffee for my morning report or some random swimmer for the start of my swim screen. I mean, that's just my personal take.
While the UI does look completely different, it performs functionally the same as all of the other Garmin sports and endurance watches that you might be used to. You still have the same widgets area; it's just a little bit nicer—nicer gradient, different font here, more colors, nice little animations as you go through it, and everything is brighter and more vibrant.
The 965 also has a very nice looking titanium bezel. Originally, I thought that Garmin might be adding that titanium bezel because it would allow them to give this watch that ECG functionality that they have with their Venue 2 Plus watch, but that's not the case. There's no ECG functionality on this watch, or at least there's not as of the time of the recording of this video.
That slim little bezel is just there to make the watch look better, and don't get me wrong, I think it works. I think this watch does look really good, but that bezel—I'd say it's not extremely protective. That's in part because this lens on this watch actually has a slight rise to it. It might be hard to see this on camera, but it has this ever-so-slight dome shape to it. My gut feeling is that this slightly raised lens over the bezel might actually make for a watch lens that's more prone to scratches.
It's hard to say at this point, but that lens is Corning Gorilla Glass 3.0, so it isn't as durable as something like Sapphire. However, it should hold up against light scratches, like if you accidentally have your keys in your pocket and your watch comes across it that way. I've been swimming, biking, and running with this watch for a while now, and I don't see too many issues currently.
But if you guys are interested, of course I'll do my usual review after 100 days where we can look a little bit more closely at some of those durability issues. What is interesting is that even with this massive display, somehow this watch doesn't really feel all that bulky, especially compared to some of the other watches that I own that have the exact same display size.
As I've mentioned many times on this channel, I think the bulkiness of watches is largely due to the thickness up and above the wrist. What's crazy is this 965 is actually thinner than almost all of the other comparable watches on the market. The 955, this watch here in white, was 15.5 millimeters, and the 965 is a full one millimeter slimmer. Again, I'm measuring that from the top of that slightly domed display, so it does feel like a nice slim watch.
It's also not all that heavy; it comes in at 36 grams, or 55 grams if you're weighing it with the watch band that's provided. So that's two grams heavier than the previous version, the Forerunner 955.
Now here's how the watch looks on my 175 millimeter wrist, and here's how it looks on my wife's wrist. Then here's how the 965 compares to the Garmin Epix, the Forerunner 955, the Apple Watch Ultra, and the massive Garmin Enduro 2. Here’s how it looks as far as thickness goes when we're comparing those watches.
The 965 is a touchscreen, but you can actually accomplish anything within the operating system with the buttons if that's what you prefer. By default, the touchscreen is disabled when you're performing an activity. So you know, don't hesitate to go out on a rainy day and go for a run. But the 965 has the same button functionality configuration as all of the previous models that you might be used to, that five button configuration.
They have increased the size of the selection button; it has this little Garmin triangle icon on it. I actually prefer it quite a bit to what they did to the 265, which was kind of engrave "run" into the selection button. I'm not exactly sure what they were thinking with that; it's a tough design choice by Garmin.
On the back of the Garmin Forerunner 965, you still have the Elevate 4.0 Optical heart rate monitor, and it’s still using Garmin's 4-pin charging port. It's the same cord for the most part, except for now the outlet side of that cord is USB-C. Again, maybe this is a good place for me to mention that when you guys do buy this watch for $600, you get the charging cord, you get the watch, you get the safety warranty details, information, the instruction manual, and you also get a little extra watch band keeper.
I went ahead and just doubled up on watch band keepers on mine, but you could just as easily keep that somewhere safe in case you lose one.
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I can tell a huge difference in charging times when using that fancy new USB-C cable between the 955 and charging up the 965. For me, it goes from very low to about 80-85 percent in about an hour. I have my watch set up really as bright as it'll go, and I have the timeout set too long. You can set it to short, medium, or long. Obviously, this is not a setting that I would recommend for you guys; I really only have it set this way because I'm trying to film the watch and I'm trying to make it look nice.
But I also have the display set to always on, and with all of that, with all of my poor judgment when it comes to settings, I'm still seeing about six days of battery life with this watch. I think some basic common sense settings, and you'd probably make it seven or eight days or so. Garmin actually says that if you set the display into gesture mode, so kind of raise to wake, you can actually get about 23 days of battery life with this watch, which actually sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Now when it comes to GPS battery life, you can expect about 22 hours when set into "stat IQ" mode, and that's the mode that I'm almost always recommending for people to use. If you're not familiar with this, this watch has kind of what's become standard now, which is a dual-band GPS chip. That means it can connect to multiple types of satellite frequencies at the same time to increase accuracy, but that does come at the cost of battery life.
In this new "stat IQ" mode, it's basically Garmin's fancy way of saying that it'll auto-select for you, only switching to that more intensive battery dual-frequency mode if it starts to notice a weak or distorted GPS signal.
Keep in mind that this watch does have onboard music, which means you can leave your smartphone at home and listen to your favorite podcast or music with your Bluetooth connected headphones. I don't use it all that frequently just because I'm lazy, I guess, when it comes to syncing my latest favorite podcast. But Garmin has made that syncing process a little bit easier by working with some of the major music streaming providers, such as Spotify, Amazon Music, or Deezer.
I don't know if I should really lump Deezer into popular music providers, but Spotify is what I use, and it works really well for me. However, streaming music will take a decent little hit on the battery life, so you can expect the GPS battery life to go from 22 hours all the way down to about nine and a half hours when you're playing music with this device.
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As you would probably guess, I'm seeing zero issues when it comes to data accuracy on this new 965, and it kind of makes sense. They've been flushing out any sort of issues or bugs with that 955, and the 965 is really a similar watch under the hood. When it comes to looking at GPS accuracy here, again, we're looking at the 955, the 965, and the Apple Watch Ultra, all of which have some of the best GPS accuracy that I've ever seen on any watches that I've tested on this channel.
There's really not much to complain about here. I guess if I'm being super picky about this particular run when going around this little loop here, it looks to me like the Apple Watch Ultra is a touch more accurate than the 955 and the 965, but again, we're probably splitting hairs here.
Here, this is basically the exact same run with the exact same watches just a couple of days later, and to me, it actually looks like the Garmin watches are doing a touch better this time around. If we switch over and we take a look at heart rate accuracy, I typically test watches by comparing whatever I'm testing to an ECG-style chest strap, which is the most accurate way to test heart rate data.
But on this one particular run, I am seeing a bit of a slip from the 965 early on, and then accurate for the rest of the run—and a huge slip from the Apple Watch Ultra over here. I'm not exactly sure what's going on with that; maybe I didn't have it tight enough or maybe it's not pushed up away from the joint of my wrist quite enough.
Looking at another run here, you can actually see that we have the standard minor issues at the beginning with each of the watches as they struggle a little bit early on to find a good signal and lock on. After that, we see tons of really consistent decent heart rate signals, so there’s not a ton of concern here when it comes to heart rate accuracy.
This optical heart rate monitor can also check your SpO2 levels, or your blood oxygen saturation levels. Garmin calls it their pulse ox feature. It's a bit of a battery suck, so I typically don't have mine turned on, but if you're traveling to altitude or maybe you're going skiing or something like that, it might be worth having a look at.
All of these watches now have running power as a metric. It's not something that I really consider a comparable metric only because we don't really have a true north; we don't have a way of saying this one's correct and this one's wrong. Remember that all of these different brands are using their own proprietary math to come up with an estimation of running force when it comes to running power, and we shouldn't expect them to match even in the slightest.
It doesn't mean that it's not a useful metric; it just means that we don't have a way to compare that number with anything else. I wasn't planning on diving too deeply into software on this review only because it really is the same as the previous model, but this watch will track your steps, it'll track your sleep, and will even track how you progress through the different stages of sleep.
It's hard to say exactly how accurate that stuff is, but it also has a customizable morning report where it'll share all of that data with you as soon as you wake up. Personally, I really like looking at it, but you can see things like your HRV, or heart rate variability, which is kind of a fantastic metric for judging just how ready you are for a strenuous workout on any particular given day.
It'll also give you a training readiness score, which is a score between 0 and 100 representing how ready you are to train, based on your sleep, your recovery time needed from the previous workout, that HRV score, your acute load, and even how much stress the watch thinks you're under.
There's also a new—I'd say somewhat new—stamina field, basically Garmin trying to determine just how much longer you could hold a given pace. It's interesting; I'd say I mostly find it useful when I'm biking as opposed to running. There are two metrics with it: there's stamina and there's stamina potential.
Stamina potential is trying to describe more generally long-term fatigue as opposed to a sprint or maybe a hill within a ride, so that would affect the stamina metric as opposed to stamina potential. That stamina metric you might actually see recover, whereas stamina potential really isn't going to recover; it's more of a slowly progressing downward metric over a longer period of time.
Anyway, those metrics are worth checking out, but these watches also have the ability to provide running dynamic information without the expensive chest strap, like the Garmin HRM Pro or Garmin's HRM Pro Plus. Those metrics used to come from the heart rate only and be displayed on the watch, so now you can actually get that information directly from the watch without purchasing the heart rate monitor.
That's stuff like ground contact time, vertical oscillation, and a couple of other metrics. They're interesting; I just don't personally know anyone that uses that information for anything. But as far as I know, every single software item that's on the 965 is also available on the previous 955 model.
That kind of brings us back to our original basic question: is the 965 a big change or not? I'm still not sure that we have an answer. When we look at it, to me, I'd say it's more like the 955 really just got a very nice facelift. The 955 went to see some sort of fancy super Hollywood plastic surgeon and had a really nice facelift. They did a hell of a job and they've come up with this particular watch, which kind of makes me think they could have just called this a 955 Plus because it is such a similar watch.
Because it is such a short release cycle between these two devices, they could have waited just a touch longer; use that time to implement a few more features that would have really put it over the top and justified that version bump. Again, I'm thinking of things like Qi wireless charging where you could just drop your watch on a little platform and have it charge itself, or I thought that ECG feature was just a no-brainer. I thought that would be on here for sure, but it's not.
Again, I'd love to see some better speakers on these devices, maybe a microphone so you could connect to your smartphone device and connect with that voice assistant that's on every smartphone we carry around with us all over the place. I think it's odd that the Venue 2 Plus is moving on, you know, all of these features so much faster than all of Garmin's other high-end endurance-focused devices.
I'll just remind you guys that these Garmin watches, most of them, aren't really much of a smartwatch. For example, you can get notifications, and you can clear those notifications if you're on an Android device. You can provide some canned responses, but you can't do any sort of long emails, or do any sort of text messaging or anything like that.
These are just some of my minor gripes with the Forerunner 965, and I'd much rather hear from you guys. Is the Forerunner 965 something that you would consider? Let me know in the comments. You guys know me; I'm always up for continuing the conversation down there.
As always, make sure you're getting out there—swimming, biking, running, rinsing, and repeating it all over again—and we will see you guys on the next one. Thank you.
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