If you’re at all familiar with Garmin’s wearables, you know that GPS-equipped running watches have always been the company’s primary strength. Garmin’s fitness watches have been a staple among athletes due to their features that aren’t found on Fitbits and Apple Watches. The Forerunner series is still where the company introduces some of its most innovative tracking and training features.
The Forerunner 955 continues that tradition. It sits atop the Forerunner series as the most feature-packed watch in the bunch, and this year it gains some modern touches like a touchscreen and daily exercise readiness assessments (à la Fitbit’s Daily Readiness feature, but free to users), while introducing new features not present on any other Garmin watch. That includes the higher-end Fenix series of watches, from which the Forerunner 955 is also starting to steal some cues, like solar-charging options and multi-band GPS.
Same OS, new touch-based interactions
Garmin hasn’t tweaked the aesthetics or mechanics of the OS much, instead focusing on refining and creating new tracking features. I don’t have any qualms with the UI—they get the job done—but it was nice to see the introduction of interactive watch faces on the platform. It’s not much, but the default face has a carousel of quick-view stats you can tap through that include VO₂ max, heart rate variability (HRV), training load, and activity minutes.
Garmin’s inexperience with touchscreen interfaces is apparent on the Forerunner 955. It’s not immediately intuitive what each icon is telling you, and it would be helpful if you could long-press each of them to see more information, much like how watch face complications on the Apple Watch work. Hopefully, this sort of touch-optimized interface expansion will come soon.
New Training Readiness scores and assessments
Garmin’s strong suit continues to be its free, in-depth health metrics and training analysis. The company is leagues ahead of its competitors in providing training improvement features and sport-specific assessments (particularly running, but also cycling and swimming to slightly lesser extents).
With the 955, Garmin further refined these metrics for accuracy while adding two more mainstream features: Training Readiness and Morning Report. Training Readiness uses your sleep score history, heart rate variability, stress history (based on HRV), recovery time since your last activity, and Garmin’s Acute Training Load feature to assess how ready you are to exercise every day.
Assessing your body’s recovery and readiness to take on stress (physically or mentally) is something that has gained steam in the wearables market over the past few years.
Garmin doesn’t reinvent the wheel here; none of the metrics that go into creating this score are new to Garmin’s suite. Your Training Readiness score, much like assessments from other trackers, is just a quick way to see how ready you are to work out. Garmin shows each factor’s rating (sleep score, HRV status, etc.) in a list on the watch and in the companion smartphone app. This is the first time you’ll be able to see discrete HRV data. Previously, that data was measured by Forerunner devices for the calculation of various proprietary metrics like its Body Battery, stress, and sleep assessments.
Perplexingly, Training Readiness gives you access to more data and context through the watch’s eponymous interface than the smartphone app, and I’d much prefer that Garmin make it possible to tap into more context for each factor directly from the Training Readiness menu in-app, as it does on the watch.
Morning Report
Morning Report is a straightforward feature designed to give you an overview of your day. It pops up on the watch screen every morning after you wake up and stays there for about an hour before dismissing itself if you don’t interact with it sooner. If you do click into it (via the watch’s button), you’ll get a brief rundown of your day, which can include your Training Readiness score, sleep assessment, a workout suggestion for the day, HRV status, weather, calendar events, body battery, intensity minutes, and steps.
