Garmin Forerunner® 255 Music, GPS Running Smartwatch with Music, Advanced Insights, Long-Lasting Battery, Black – 010-02641-20

Great training tool for runners.
I’ve owned Garmins before and find the ability to objectively gauge and plan your training is a powerful tool. This watch takes it to the next level compared to my old ones. You get essentially the Forerunner 265 here minus the Amoled screen and the training readiness metric. Here’s a hint, look at your body battery and recovery metric and you have pretty much training readiness nailed down. The biometric sensors of the 255 and 265 are the same.Activity tracking is light years beyond Fitbit and also stock Apple Watched. Hell, having 5 buttons blows any Apple Watch out of the water for running. You can just hit an activity and go, or take a recommended workout. You can also make your own routines and upload to to the watch. I had some workouts from when I last owned a Garmin that I designed 10 years ago, and was able to upload and run them. I principally use it for running and strength training. For running I can’t find any faults for me. For strength training my complaint is the list of strength exercises is missing common exercises, like any read deltoid exercises…. It has an exhaustive list of odd ones too. Worst of all, you can’t make new ones. You can just use an existing one that is close enough and make a note that exercise X is really the one you did…. The watch also does a good job tracking indoor runs and both indoor and outdoor walks. It is pretty accurate in automatically detecting activities like impromptu walks, as well. The MIPs screen is amazing outdoors and way better at night when you would don’t want to blast your face looking at the time. In mixed-level indoor lighting, it lacks compared to AMOLED. It doesn’t have the pretty colors nor the contrast indoors, but I like a more serious looking watch anyway and find AMOLED to look like a game. The battery life is amazing. To get this sort of life on the 265 you have to let face go dark when inactive and use gestures to wake it. Not a big deal, but nice to be able to see the watch with a side glimpse without having to raise hand all the time.Customization is great. I downloaded a watch face that allows me to put all the metrics I need and have the time highly visible. Data screens are also very customizable. I have downloaded a custom data screen for running and for strength training to supplement the default screens.This isn’t a Pixel watch or an Apple Watch. As a smart watch it has limited ability and that’s fine. It reliably shows notifications. If you have your phone with you, you can initiate contact with an emergency contact. For example, you can send a message to come get picked up. If you have a compatible bank or credit card, you can use Garmin pay. I do find my financial institutions don’t currently support it, though.The music functionality is flawless. I use it with Spotify and a pair of JBL earbuds. It’s nice to be able to run with just the watch and earbuds and not have to carry a phone for music.I was able to use my ANT heart rate strap and foot pod from 13 years ago with no issues. They sync quickly and stay synced. The onboard wrist heart rate and running dynamics functionality have been very good when I haven’t used my ANT accessories. So there is no need to get an HR strap, but if you have or want one, they work flawlessly.The Garmin ecosystem; the watch, Garmin Connect App, and the website are great. Highly customizable and reliable. I had most recently used Fitbit and found the experience with the app and its website to be headed in a negative direction this last year.Overall, I highly recommend this watch. If the price difference between this and the 265 is around $50, it’s a hard decision. It boils down to how you feel about AMOLED versus MIPS, and maybe the chance that 265 feature set continues to get updated a bit longer than the 255. When the price delta is above $50…. The 265 becomes hard to justify and the 255 is the obvious choice. To reiterate, training readiness isn’t worth much at all. It’s a combination of other metrics that are already on both watches. So the decision is simply AMOLED vs MIPS display versus price.

Perfect for MTB
I hated having to charge my Apple Watch every day and at times I would forget. Being new to Mountain Biking I needed a way to navigate trails other than using my phone and this solved it with the ease of use. The amount of data it collects is amazing and being able to route a new trail on the app then transferring it to the watch was simple. Being able to use multiple gps signals gives a far greater accuracy. The look is simple, especially being able to customize the screen to your liking. A big plus is being able to see the screen even with direct sunlight is awesome, far better than an Apple Watch. Clearly one of my top items I have purchased and it’s spot on value for the money.

Love this watch so much
I absolutely love my Garmin forerunner! It has great fitness features and is a little complex but over time has become more easy to use! This one specifically was a great price and the watch is so durable and functions well! The size is very similar to a large watch and I wear mine daily! Does great for all tried or training!

I prefer this LCD display over the later OLED model
This watch is awesome. It feels good to take a slight departure from the Apple ecosystem with a device like this. It’s too bad the forerunner 255 is being discontinued. It doesn’t have a touch screen, but still I prefer this LCD display style with an e-ink look over the OLED in the forerunner 265.

después de 2 Galaxy Watch a los cuales se les murió la pila después de un año decidí buscar opciones. Buscaba 3 cosas: que tuvieran Spotify, monitor de sueño y conteo de pasos. Este reloj cumple con lo que necesitaba y adicional tengo el conteo de pisos subidos, monitor de estres (ya me pasó que el reloj me avisara que estaba estresado y era verdad jajaja), monitoreo de mi pulso activado las 24 horas del día y la pila me dura mas de 1 semana llendo a correr 30 minutos de lunes a viernes escuchando música.También puedes tener las notificaciones del teléfono, en mi caso yo desactivé casi todas.Es muy preciso en cuanto al GPS y la calidad y los materiales se ve muy buenos, espero que me aguante algunos años. Lo recomiendo.

This is the BEST Smart watch I’ve had so far. The accuracy of it is incredible. What i love the most is the different functions. Love it! Definitely recommend this watch if you are focusing on your health/workouts.

So far all goods, only that cannot track indoor bike distance.