The new flagship Garmin Forerunner 970 raises the bar for endurance athletes

I’m of a vintage to remember when Garmin launched its first Forerunner, the 101, in 2003. It was transformative and arguably laid the foundations for where sports and triathlon watches are today. Garmin continues to innovate but, 22 years later, those advancements are baby steps compared to the giant leap of 2003.

That brings us to the FR970, which is the successor to the FR965 and features a number of upgrades, albeit are they enough to justify the price, which is £130 more than the FR965 on launch?

Design and features

One of the advancements is the Gen5 optical heart-rate sensor that proved impressively accurate. That was both for performance and health, as it also means you can now tap into its ECG capabilities. Simply switch into ECG mode, squeeze the outer ring of the bezel with your thumb and index finger, wait 30secs and voila – a brief summary of your health. And I’m pleased to say I wasn’t having a heart attack.

The 35mm AMOLED screen is more vivid than before, which really comes into its own with the excellent built-in turn-by-turn navigation and offline mapping. The downside is that this extra clarity comes at a cost to battery life. To extend it, you can turn off the ‘always-on’ display option, though I’m a fan of seeing the time whenever I wish without contorting my wrist.

Where the extra illumination is more appreciated is the flashlight that’s seen in the Forerunner range for the first time after lighting up recent Fenix and Instinct models. It’s strong – similar to a smartphone – and timely with winter trail runs on the horizon. It also features strobe and red settings if the need arises.

Metrics and coaching

The Garmin Triathlon Coach is brilliant. Via the usable Connect IQ app, you select your race, choose which days you want to train including your swim days, then Garmin will prescribe daily, workouts across the three disciplines up to your goal race. These workouts should progress and adapt based on your recent training history. On race day, it gives you pace- and course-specific guidance to (hopefully) reach your goals.

The FR970 also introduces a running economy feature that measures the efficiency of your stride, including the speed lost each time your foot strikes the ground. That’s an incredible amount of detail that is really for the 0.1%. It also requires Garmin’s latest HRM 600 strap (buy), which retails for £150/$169.99, bumping up this package to nearly £800/$920.

There’s an added speaker and microphone, so you can answer calls, but you’ll need your phone with you. The speaker offers voice command for things like opening apps. Some will find useful; some will feel it’s not needed.

Garmin Forerunner 970 specs

Price	$749.99/£629.99
Weight	2oz / 56g
Screen	1.4″ AMOLED display; 454 × 454 pixels
Dimensions	47 × 47 × 13 mm
Battery life	Up to 14 days in smartwatch mode; up to 26h in GPS mode
Tech	Multi-band GNSS location support (GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/QZSS/Beidou) with SatIQ technology
Storage	32GB
Connectivity	Bluetooth, ANT+, Wifi, contactless payments