#running watch

I finally got a garmin running watch, something I've been wanting for a few years, and I have been having so much fun with it on my runs!

So I go onto amazon to start looking for a present

which I find

and add to my basket

only for my eye to catch sight of a veerrrry good deal on a garmin watch that I’ve been lusting over for weeks

So anyway, it’s mine now

That happened

It arrives on Saturday

I can’t wait

The past few weeks I’ve been getting this bad rash on one of my arms from my garmin watch. I already switch my watch between arms during day and night, I also wash my watch and arm under my watch with antibacterial soap. And the rash only ever shows up on my left arm. I’ve been moisturizing the area, several times a day either with body lotion or this tee trea oil face cream I have that’s also anti bacterial. 

Polar M200 GPS Sports Watch

I tried to like the Coros. So many fun and useful features and data analysis. Crazy long battery life. But that’s about where it ended for me (us because I bought one for Steve too).

Reasons (offenses from least to most egregious):

1. Multiple times I bent my wrist during a run (to pop it, shush) or during a strength training workout and it hit the timer button and stopped my watch. Not cool. I shouldn’t have to worry about that.

2. The Wellness Check feature was so fun. Until neither Steve nor I could ever get an accurate blood oxygen reading. We both always logged numbers so low we should have been in the hospital.

3. It disconnected from my watch three times in the first week. Had to restart everything to get my notifications again.

4. It doesn’t give total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), i.e., total calories burned per day. Yikes. So that meant I had to add either my BMR or RMR (could not get a clear answer on this but I think it was BMR) to the burned number to get my TDEE. But I tried it both ways and could not get the math to make sense either way. Which means no tracking my total calories anymore. Not okay with me.

Even with all of the above, even with that fourth one, I thought I could live with it. But.

5. My activity heart rate was wildly inaccurate. Eight out of ten workouts showing walking rates in the 110s to 130s and running in the 160s to 190s when all my manual checks were a good 30 bpm lower. Way way off.

I thought maybe it could be fixed. Or adapted to. But it was so much effort trying to get it to work. And it wouldn’t stick.

The straw was my 5-mile run on Tuesday. See heart rate chart above. I decided not to look at my watch and just go slow and run by comfortable feel. I thought it was doing fine until I looked down at mile 2 and saw 188 and climbing. I stopped, walked a little, went back to running. Looked down again after mile 3 and saw all stats blanked out. Because according to my watch, my heart rate had gone over 220 and wouldn’t track anymore.

And when Steve got back from his run? Lo and behold the same thing had happened to him. That was only his second run but his first one the day before was almost just as bad.

The inaccuracy lasted beyond the workouts too. My heart rate would show as being in the 100s to 130s an hour or hours after my activity. Always far off from my manual checks - or anything I ever saw on my Garmin the last 5 years.

And unfortunately, heart rate inaccuracy affects every single other metric Steve and I care about - recovery time/status, running fitness, calories burned (which were *laughably* high), daily stress level, efficiency, training load, HRV.

Garmin has built a reputation as the go-to brand for athletes, adventurers, and anyone serious about tracking performance. While Apple Watch and Fitbit dominate the lifestyle smartwatch space, Garmin consistently leads when it comes to GPS accuracy, advanced training metrics, and battery life.

In 2025, Garmin’s lineup has something for everyone — from budget-friendly running watches to rugged outdoor companions designed to survive the toughest environments. In this guide, we’ll walk through the best Garmin watches available right now, compare them side by side, and help you choose the right model for your needs.

Why Choose Garmin Over Other Smartwatches?

Before diving into the best models, let’s answer the big question: Why Garmin?