The new Garmin Forerunner 165 drops into Garmin’s running watch line-up between the Forerunner 55 and the Forerunner 265 and is Garmin’s cheapest dedicated running watch to pack a bright AMOLED touchscreen.

The Garmin Forerunner 165 takes most of the useful tools and features you find on Garmin’s premium watches and distills them into a more compact, more basic, somewhat cheaper, model with that killer bright display.

AMOLED Excellence
At 30mm, the Forerunner 165 screen is slightly smaller than the Forerunner 265 (46mm) but there is still ample real estate for your important mid-run stats which are wonderfully customisable on the watch, too. The Forerunner 165’s screen is excellent. It’s bold, bright, snappy and responsive. Easy to read in all conditions it 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 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 training and racing requirements.

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 many of the same features as the Forerunner 265.

It’s a GPS smartwatch designed specifically for the run, so 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.

Battery Life
The new Forerunner 165’s punchy screen takes a little extra juice but still leaves you with an ample battery supply of 19-hours GPS runtime. You can expect between 5-8 days general training usage, with around 5-6 hours GPS run time.

Available now, the Forerunner 165  retails for R6499.00 while the Forerunner 165 Music is R7499.00.

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