Best Garmin smartwatches in 2024

Garmin has established itself as a perennial player in the smartwatch arena, especially when it comes to models that excel in tracking exercises at a higher level. Athletes training for marathons or to raise their game in whatever sport they play look for accuracy and reliability to know where they stand. Garmin has fantastic running watches, watches for endurance athletes, rugged watches, and even options catering to golfers and women to stay on top of any and all activity.

If you are even remotely into health tracking or fitness and are looking for an excellent smartwatch, then Garmin surely has a watch designed just for you. Their watches come in all shapes and sizes, a variety of colors, and ship with a wide variety of features. While they have many more than those listed here, this curated list includes only the best that Garmin offers.

Simply the best Garmin smartwatches in 2024

The Forerunner 265 is the perfect smartwatch for newer runners who take their training seriously. If you want a smartwatch to help you up your game and crush your goals, then the Forerunner 265 was built to be your best friend. This watch comes with Race Predictor which will give you an estimate of your best time based on your training and PacePro to help you develop a pacing strategy.

It also gives you a training readiness score which combines your sleep quality, recovery, training load, and heart rate variability (HRV) data to let you know exactly when you are ready to get the most out of your workouts.

The Forerunner 265 has a built-in dual-band GPS that can accurately track all of your runs. If you add CrossFit activities to your regimen, then there are over 30 additional activities you can choose from including triathlons, cycling, and swimming. The watch pairs with both Android and iOS devices, but you may just leave your phone at home with the ability to download music from Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer. This watch gives you up to two weeks of battery life or 24 hours of active GPS tracking.

The Epix Pro (Gen 2) smartwatch features a beautiful and bright 1.4-inch AMOLED display as well as physical buttons for easy navigation. This watch has multi-band GPS and built-in mapping capabilities to help guide you on just about any course. Garmin has even preloaded this watch with over 2,000 ski resort maps worldwide. It offers Garmin’s usual top-of-the-line activity tools for runners, cyclists, swimmers, and a host of other activities.

Garmin built a tough smartwatch with the Garmin Epix Pro thanks to its fiber-reinforced polymer case and steel bezels. This smartwatch meets U.S. military standards for shock, thermal, and water resistance. It may not have solar charging capabilities, but with up to 31 days in smartwatch mode or 58 hours in GPS mode, it probably won’t matter too much. The built-in LED flashlight is both convenient and perfect for those late night training sessions.

Getting into fitness can be a daunting task, even more so if you are winging it. Luckily, the Garmin Forerunner 55 is available to help guide you on your fitness journey. This smartwatch gives you daily suggested workouts, has PacerPro to help you stick to a planned pace, and free training plans from expert coaches with Garmin Coach. The Forerunner 55 has a wrist-based heart rate monitor and built-in GPS to accurately track all of your fitness activities.

To give you a clear picture of your overall health, you also get Fitness Age, Body Battery Energy Monitoring, and Respiration Tracking. Battery life isn’t a concern with up to two weeks of battery life. It may not have the full feature set of many of the watches on this list, but if you are new to fitness, overloading yourself with features can be a bit overwhelming.

If you are looking for more of a health tracker with smartwatch features and less of a running watch, then the Garmin Venu 3 will give you that. It’s a little more on the “flashy” side with its large AMOLED display and tighter phone integration. It doesn’t run Wear OS, so you won’t get the same level of third-party app support and other ancillary features associated with them, but things like Garmin Pay and a speaker/microphone combo make it feel more like a standard smartwatch.

What’s anything but standard is the way the Venu 3 handles health tracking, courtesy of options like Body Battery, Sleep Monitoring, Health Snapshot, Stess Tracking, Women’s Health Tracking, among other health metrics. The built-in heart rate monitor and SpO2 sensor can track your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation levels anytime. Sleep tracking is also more intuitive here, recognizing when slumber was neither restful nor restorative.

It can track over 30 different sports and fitness activities covering cardio, yoga, HIIT, Pilates, and more. Go through the Garmin Connect app and Garmin Coach, and you can expand on those significantly through workouts and training regimens. The downside is the lack of maps, despite the built-in GPS to accurately track outdoor sessions. It’s not an ideal running or cycling watch compared to a Forerunner or Fenix for that reason, though you can download your favorite tunes from Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer to listen phone-free during any workout. Battery life is also superb at up to 14 days, cutting down depending on how much you use the always-on display and GPS tracking.

If you need the ultimate smartwatch and don’t ever want to worry about battery life, then the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro may just be the watch to get. Thanks to its solar charging capabilities, three hours in direct sunlight can get you up to 22 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 73 hours in GPS mode. With battery life like this, it should have no trouble tackling days of being off the grid, or even your next ultra marathon.

In addition to the superb battery life, Garmin designed this watch to be rugged, making it perfect for all types of exercise. You can preload map data to keep you on a predetermined route, multi-band GPS, a hill score to see how well you can tackle running uphill, and an endurance score giving you insight into prolonged training efforts. It even has a built-in LED flashlight, letting you see or be seen when training in the dark.

The Forerunner 965 has a bright and beautiful 1.4-inch AMOLED display that is surrounded by a titanium bezel. That gorgeous display allows you to easily see the built-in maps to keep you on your route, and you can be confident that it will accurately track that route with its multi-band GPS. You also get up to 23 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 31 hours in GPS mode.

You also get just about every fitness-focused functionality with the Forerunner 965. This watch has training readiness, and daily suggested workouts based on the course that you put into the Garmin Connect app, it will then adjust that plan after every run based on performance and recovery needs.

Triathletes will love the ability to switch between sports with the press of a button and the training status to let you know when you are taking it too easy or pushing yourself too hard. This watch also lets you download your favorite music from Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer.

For golfers, the Garmin Approach S70 comes filled with a strong feature set that addresses so much of what goes into the game. With 42mm and 47mm sizes appealing to both smaller and larger wrists, the S70 borrows a little from other Garmin watches in that it’s the only Approach model with an AMOLED display and offers some of the health and fitness tracking capabilities seen in other lines. Golf is the primary focus, though, and with 43,000+ courses available to view on the watch from the Garmin Golf app, you can know every challenge each hole may present to you. Virtual caddie features like PlaysLike help figure out wind, elevation, flag distance, and hazards along the way.

The sheer breadth of golf-centric options serve to help you hone your game, giving you an impetus to improve both your form and score. Even some of the exercises available have golf in mind to improve your fitness, though general activity works just fine, too. The Approach S70 has the same Body Battery and sleep tracking metrics other Garmin watches do. That also goes for battery life, which can last up to a week based on how much you’re using the GPS to play rounds of golf.

The Lily 2 is the smallest on this list, as Garmin clearly made the svelte and petite smartwatch with women and smaller wrists in mind. Its 35mm frame will certainly look diminutive next to some of the larger models Garmin makes, but that doesn’t mean the Lily 2 is a slouch. It can track your heart rate, stress levels, blood oxygen, and sleep quality, along with specialized tracking for menstrual cycles or pregnancies. The 5ATM water resistance will keep it going anytime you want to go for a swim, and with built-in GPS, it has the ability to more accurately keep tabs on any activity you do outdoors.

You won’t get color on the vibrant display, nor the chance to store music (you can still control playback while paired with your phone), but the Lily 2 will still show you phone notifications, including who’s calling. The newer lugs are also much better suited to swapping out bands, making it a lot easier to go with a band made of different materials or colors. Battery life offers up to five days per charge, though you will likely have to recharge sooner if you use GPS tracking.

The best Garmin smartwatch for your needs

Garmin offers a wide variety of watches that come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but the Forerunner 265 offers the best blend of performance, style, and price. With dual-band GPS, tracking a ton of sports, Race Predictor, and PacePro, this smartwatch can help you achieve personal bests in no time. It can even download music directly to the device to let you ditch your smartphone during your workout.

If you have a bit more cash to spend and want the best money can buy, the Epix Pro (2nd Gen) steps it up a notch with its built-in mapping capabilities, fiber-reinforced case, and steel bezels. Not to mention the amazing battery life.

If you are on more of a budget but still want similar features as the previously mentioned devices, then the Forerunner 55 will check a lot of boxes. It will help anyone getting started on their fitness journey with its built-in health features, and look stylish doing it. Check out our favorite Garmin deals for other options at a lower price.

No matter your preference, Garmin surely has a watch for you. All that matters in the end is that you are getting a great watch, at a great price, with all the features you are looking for.