Backside Line
There’s a cause it is a bestselling GPS watch. The Garmin Forerunner 165 has all the weather of a costlier watch with out the premium worth. Out of all of Garmin’s choices, it has the very best steadiness of worth and efficiency, making it an important look ahead to these simply stepping into the world of health monitoring. It’s a dependable and correct tracker and has shortly change into considered one of our favourite GPS watches.
The Forerunner 165 incorporates a 1.2-inch show with an amazingly vibrant AMOLED display. This high-performance show is nice for analyzing exercises, displaying messages, and rising the readability of small textual content. Nevertheless, this high-powered display leads to a middle-of-the-pack battery life. With a acknowledged battery lifetime of 11 days in smartwatch mode and 19 hours of GPS recording, it’s lower than different watches of comparable measurement and worth. Nevertheless, for a each day health tracker, that is greater than sufficient battery life for recording actions and recharging each few days.
How We Examined
From the paths to backcountry powder to only checking notifications all through the day, we put each GPS watch by way of its paces in every kind of situations to see the place each shines.
Over a pair months, we’ve utterly drained every watch’s battery repeatedly to essentially perceive what you’ll get out of it, tracked our routes throughout totally different landscapes to examine how correct the GPS truly is, and saved them strapped to our wrists for hours on finish to verify they’re comfy and user-friendly. We personal and use all this gear ourselves day in and day trip, so our critiques come from real expertise, not simply fast testing periods.
Fast Specs
Garmin Forerunner 165
Greatest Show GPS Watch
CleverHiker Ranking:
4.5/5.0
Value:
$250
Avg. Battery Life:
11 days smartwatch / 19 hours GPS
Weight:
40g
Show Measurement:
1.2″
Execs
- Excessive-quality show
- Nice health metrics
- Correct GPS
- Comfy
- Constructed-in sensible features and coaching plans
Cons
- Fewer exercise sorts
- AMOLED show lowers life
Accuracy
Whereas the Forerunner 165 doesn’t have dual-frequency GPS, its monitoring remains to be distinctive, and we’ve bother discovering any hiccups once we use it. When testing on our known-distance loop, it ranged from just a few hundredths of a mile brief to some hundredths lengthy, which isn’t sufficient for us to query its accuracy.
Whereas utilizing the watch in numerous terrains, we solely discover some monitor wobbling in very dense tree cowl. We recognize that we are able to simply select the extent of satellite tv for pc connectivity. This may both enhance accuracy or enhance battery life. The choices embody fully off, GPS solely, all programs, and UltraTrac. We typically use GPS solely or UltrTac for the very best mix of accuracy and battery efficiency.
Battery Life
The Forerunner 165 offers a acknowledged GPS battery lifetime of 19 hours and a smartwatch lifetime of 11 days. In comparison with our lineup, that is proper concerning the center of the street.
Whereas that is sufficient for each day use and health monitoring, it’s not sufficient for lengthy endurance occasions, multi-day journeys, or lengthy intervals between costs. The battery saver mode helps prohibit the GPS knowledge to enhance battery life, and we prolong the battery life by turning on don’t disturb and switch down the backlight. Even nonetheless, it’s a bit of decrease than others in the marketplace for the same worth.
Consolation & Wearability
Weighing in at 40 grams, the Forerunner 165 is light-weight and hardly noticeable on the wrist.
The watch has 5 buttons: begin, again, up, down, and light-weight. These are a few of the lowest profile buttons of any watch we’ve examined, and we love how out of the way in which they’re. We by no means by chance bump them and barely use the auto lock.
The general measurement is small at 43mm broad (1.69 inches) whereas sustaining a decent 1.2” show measurement. The Forerunner 165 doesn’t get in the way in which or catch on backpack straps or cuffs. We love its low profile and barely rounded edge, retaining it out of the way in which and modern.
Options
The Forerunner 165 is a devoted working and sports activities watch with many options good for each day use. Options like step rely, coronary heart charge, and sleep scores assist quantify your day, and a number of exercise sorts document and show particular metrics for every sport. Nevertheless, we discovered that the Forerunner 165 lacks many exercise sorts of widespread backcountry adventures like backcountry snowboarding, climbing, and cross-country snowboarding.
The watch is very customizable with the Garmin app, and customers should purchase third-party widgets or sync different free choices. It additionally has some options present in smartwatches, like a pockets, discover my cellphone, security alerts, and music. Route navigation, back-to-start route following, and breadcrumb mapping are all nice options that make the Forerunner 165 trail-ready.
Ease of Use
Garmin isn’t new to this sport, and it exhibits with its easy-to-use interface. The Garmin Forerunner 165’s AMOLED is extraordinarily vibrant and is among the strongest and easy-to-read of any we examined. The touchscreen features easily even when carrying gloves or when the display is moist.
In the event you favor to make use of the 5 navigation buttons as an alternative, merely disable the touchscreen. The watch shortly acquires satellites and the exercise screens are straightforward to navigate to show totally different features. The Forerunner 165 is an approachable and user-friendly watch with a transparent emphasis on usability.
Ought to You Purchase the Garmin Forerunner 165 GPS Watch?
The Forerunner 165 is a strong GPS watch at a worth beneath its rivals. It’s a wonderful budget-priced choice with sufficient options that may impress die-hard well being metric geeks.
Whereas its battery life is insufficient for recording full-day adventures, it prioritizes a extremely vibrant display. The 1.2-inch show is the very best in its class due to its AMOLED know-how. You might end up charging this watch extra usually, and it’s most at house as a each day health tracker for shorter-duration actions.
With loads of options for each backcountry navigation and each day smartwatch use, the Forerunner 165 is one other spectacular choice from Garmin that balances an reasonably priced worth with excessive efficiency.
What Different Watches Ought to You Take into account?
Right here’s extra of our favourite choices from our full GPS watch gear information:
Garmin Vivoactive 5 Evaluate: Nearly equivalent in battery life, the Vivoactive 5 is barely smaller and lighter for these with smaller wrists.
Coros Tempo 3 Evaluate: Barely cheaper and with an extended battery life than the Forerunner 165, the Tempo 3 is a superb entry-level watch.
Garmin Intuition 2 Photo voltaic Evaluate: With a few of the greatest battery lifetime of any Garmin product, the Intuition 2 Photo voltaic can monitor actions for days at a time.
