GarminForerunner® 955, GPS Running Smartwatch, Tailored to Triathletes, Long-Lasting Battery, Whitestone

I’ve been using this watch daily for 3 months now and have lots to say about it! This was my first Garmin/fitness watch, although I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch for many years. So this review is primarily a comparison of Apple Watch vs Garmin.First of all, the pros:*this thing is so powerful! The first time I did a run with it, the data blew me away. I’m currently obsessed with watch my VO2 max climb and seeing my HR and run power after every workout.*the Garmin Coach is SO COOL. I used one of the integrated plans to train for a 10k (I was already a competent runner and not slow) and managed to shave 30s off my pace. Knocked out a PR I was super proud of, with just a couple weeks of following a plan.*I love the training readiness score. I’m slowly learning that I generally like to push myself harder than I should and this thing keeps me from injury and over exertion. I’m often surprised at how slow it tells me to go on Z2 runs, and yet I keep getting faster.*I love this thing when following a plan or doing a race! It regularly tells me (via AirPods) when I’m going too fast or too slow. It helps me stay solidly in my training zone. Then, during a race, you can tell it what finish time you want to hit and it will keep you on track the whole time! I don’t think I would’ve hit my PR without that. Just a quick glance at my watch and I immediately knew how many seconds I was ahead or behind my plan.*i love the touch screen but will say that the majority of the time I’m using the buttons to navigate. Took me a minute to figure out what they all did.*the battery life!!! Coming from Apple Watch, I was floored that this thing lasts for literally over a week on one charge. Come on Apple, get it together with the battery life!A few cons:*this watch is not small. I actually kinda like the large size but as a woman on the smaller side of average, it’s pretty bulky. Which leads me to..*I never sleep with it (it’s too big to be comfortable) which means that my training readiness/body battery isn’t as accurate as it could be. I did try sleeping with it the first week but it did a terrible job of tracking my sleep. Seemed to only notice when I was sleeping from 6am on…??*the Garmin is definitely not a smart watch. Sure, it tells you when someone is calling or has texted but there’s no communication from the watch to the phone (no answering calls, responding to texts). I found myself constantly irritated that I couldn’t send a quick reaction to a text from my watch like usual. (I now only wear my garmin for workouts and put my Apple Watch back on for the rest of the day)*BEWARE the dreaded blue triangle. About a month after having this, a blue triangle showed up on screen and I couldn’t get it to turn off/on or go away. After some googling, I realized it’s a common software glitch. There is a way to reboot it, but I had to do it three times in just a few days and that was annoying. So far so good though, it hasn’t happened in a long time.Overall, I’m thoroughly pleased with this purchase and feel like a legit athlete. I bought it mainly for its triathlon capabilities but haven’t trained for another tri yet. Unfortunately, the integrated Garmin coach only has running and cycling plans, but I did read that you can get a triathlon plan directly from the Garmin website (just haven’t tried it yet).

I decided on the 955 for one reason and it was the screen. Owning 255 and Apple Watch I noticed even on bright days I could clearly see my screen on the 255 far better. While I had to cover or move around the Apple Watch in order to see the time and data. And for mountain biking you need a good second to glance at the watch. The 955 has perfect screen size, accuracy and ease of use. The durability and look is amazing. Had it for a couple of months with multiple trail rides and everything about it made me not regret the purchase. And about a week ago I’m still getting updates so they definitely still fine tuning and adding features. The amount of data you can get from this watch is a must for MTB like myself who feeds on data to better improve every week.

Best running watch you can get, really easy to use + great functions. Would recommend a lot for endurance runners.

Cinnamon and gravy, I have wanted to train by heart rate for almost 20 years. Battery life is strong, watch face is customizable (simple and efficient), and the watch gives me more data than I could ever ask for. I am pleasantly surprised and impressed. Garmin app has been fantastic.

my daughter is a triathlete and she is loving this!❤️👍

I run marathons, and I was excited that all the training features on this watch would help.Well after months of constantly being told I was overtraining and strained and unproductive in spite of training for and running two Boston qualifying marathons one of which I came first in my age group, all the while being told that my Vo2 max was getting worse, and the watch’s estimated for my second marathon I have run while wearing it, was more than thirty minutes over what I actually ran even though it had lots of data from long runs that was somehow just ignored. In the end I bought a heart rate monitor and realized that the heart rate had been way off, and I mean completely wrong, and all the scary spikes in my heart rate, especially during the first mile, where not really happening, the watch was just going haywire.At the start of every run it would tell me my heart rate was spiking into the highest maximal zone, but I felt totally relaxed, except that the red heart rate zone on my watch was stressing me out. Anyway, I am so over all the constant discouraging messages and being told that my fitness was not improving even though I was able to successfully train for two marathons and improve my speed and endurance. After 12 weeks of training the watch said my VO2 Max was lower than when I started training!!!If anything this watch has been the one thing that really hurt my moral and made me doubt myself.Update: I reached out to Garmin support and after explaining what was going on with the watch’s heart rate monitor spiking and consistently giving wildly inaccurate readings, compared the to Polar heart rate strap, they dismissed me saying that I had not explained the problem well enough, so they were not going to help me, that just blew my mind!Update: Today did a 10 min warm up and then ran with the Polar chest heart rate monitor strap so that I can get usable heart rate data, but after my run the Garmin 955 told me my maximum heart rate hade been increased, to 179, a number I cannot get even when going all out, running up hill at altitude!!! The thing is that my heart rate had not risen above 143, and it even said that on the watch summary after the run what my maximum heart rate had been 143. As a result of the false increase in my max heart rate, the watch took 3 points off my VO2 max. So I guess even with the heart rate strap the watch is still using the useless wrist heart rate monitor to collect data. So even if I try not to use the heart rate monitor on the watch, by using a heart rate strap, it somehow uses the watch’s defective heart rate monitor anyway, argh, which obviously is confusing my cadence for my heart rate.Update: One major underlying problem with this watch is that I have data from every run showing that the heart rate monitor is inaccurate and provides false reading during the first mile of any workout, and it is somewhat better after two or three miles of running, but it only updates all its performance stats, like “Performance Condition” and VO2 Max during the first mile, this results in the watch data relying for fundamental stats it provides, on wrist based heart rate readings that are only collected when the watch is functioning at its worst. I don’t get why the watch does not compare heart rate and cadence and if heart rate is the same as cadence then it resets the heart rate sensor, until they are different, because the likelihood that they are the same for any period of time is negligible. My basic intuition about the 955 is that it has not been tested with runners who actually train for races and run on a daily basis.