GarminForerunner® 255 Music, GPS Running Smartwatch with Music, Advanced Insights, Long-Lasting Battery, Black - 010-02641-20

Wanted a semi smart smart watch. This fits the bill! Love the vintage looking reflective LCD screen and king battery life. Go read some more in depth reviews, I'll concur with them- this is the one to get.

I’ve owned Garmins before and find the ability to objectively gauge and plan your training is a powerful tool. This watch takes it to the next level compared to my old ones. You get essentially the Forerunner 265 here minus the Amoled screen and the training readiness metric. Here’s a hint, look at your body battery and recovery metric and you have pretty much training readiness nailed down. The biometric sensors of the 255 and 265 are the same.Activity tracking is light years beyond Fitbit and also stock Apple Watched. Hell, having 5 buttons blows any Apple Watch out of the water for running. You can just hit an activity and go, or take a recommended workout. You can also make your own routines and upload to to the watch. I had some workouts from when I last owned a Garmin that I designed 10 years ago, and was able to upload and run them. I principally use it for running and strength training. For running I can’t find any faults for me. For strength training my complaint is the list of strength exercises is missing common exercises, like any read deltoid exercises…. It has an exhaustive list of odd ones too. Worst of all, you can’t make new ones. You can just use an existing one that is close enough and make a note that exercise X is really the one you did…. The watch also does a good job tracking indoor runs and both indoor and outdoor walks. It is pretty accurate in automatically detecting activities like impromptu walks, as well.The MIPs screen is amazing outdoors and way better at night when you would don’t want to blast your face looking at the time. In mixed-level indoor lighting, it lacks compared to AMOLED. It doesn’t have the pretty colors nor the contrast indoors, but I like a more serious looking watch anyway and find AMOLED to look like a game. The battery life is amazing. To get this sort of life on the 265 you have to let face go dark when inactive and use gestures to wake it. Not a big deal, but nice to be able to see the watch with a side glimpse without having to raise hand all the time.Customization is great. I downloaded a watch face that allows me to put all the metrics I need and have the time highly visible. Data screens are also very customizable. I have downloaded a custom data screen for running and for strength training to supplement the default screens.This isn’t a Pixel watch or an Apple Watch. As a smart watch it has limited ability and that’s fine. It reliably shows notifications. If you have your phone with you, you can initiate contact with an emergency contact. For example, you can send a message to come get picked up. If you have a compatible bank or credit card, you can use Garmin pay. I do find my financial institutions don’t currently support it, though.The music functionality is flawless. I use it with Spotify and a pair of JBL earbuds. It’s nice to be able to run with just the watch and earbuds and not have to carry a phone for music.I was able to use my ANT heart rate strap and foot pod from 13 years ago with no issues. They sync quickly and stay synced. The onboard wrist heart rate and running dynamics functionality have been very good when I haven’t used my ANT accessories. So there is no need to get an HR strap, but if you have or want one, they work flawlessly.The Garmin ecosystem; the watch, Garmin Connect App, and the website are great. Highly customizable and reliable. I had most recently used Fitbit and found the experience with the app and its website to be headed in a negative direction this last year.Overall, I highly recommend this watch. If the price difference between this and the 265 is around $50, it’s a hard decision. It boils down to how you feel about AMOLED versus MIPS, and maybe the chance that 265 feature set continues to get updated a bit longer than the 255. When the price delta is above $50…. The 265 becomes hard to justify and the 255 is the obvious choice. To reiterate, training readiness isn’t worth much at all. It’s a combination of other metrics that are already on both watches. So the decision is simply AMOLED vs MIPS display versus price.

I’ve been looking for a more advanced watch to support my running and cross-training, and the Garmin 255 Music has been perfect. Setting it up was super easy, and I had it ready to go in no time. The watch tracks all the data I need, and the built-in music feature is a great bonus for keeping me motivated during workouts. The GPS accuracy and heart rate monitoring are spot on, making it an excellent tool for anyone serious about their fitness.

Perfect conditions and easy to connect with the Garmin App

My Forerunner 645 Music served me well for nearly 5 years and I wanted something similar to that. There are some nice software upgrades on the 255 while still having a familiar feel. I love the simplicity with physical buttons and the battery-saving display. It accurately records my runs and my Spotify downloads play without interruption on my Airpods.Although, I do wish Garmin had a one-stop app instead of needing 3 separate apps to get everything setup. You need Garmin Connect, Garmin IQ, and Garmin Express to get this watch setup with Spotify. After the initial setup it’s easy to use.

There is plenty you can say negative things about Garmin products but this watch is actually very fine. What's snowing about 'music' feature: this watch is not able to create playlist from uploaded songs, navigation has only forward button (you have to click to get into menu every time you want to go back), can't set autovolume (songs are played with different loudness), doesn't have option to block buttons on BT headphones. Does not feel like some premium sport smart watch - rather cheap plastic toy but it's light which is a +. It has nice feats like suggested workouts. Battery holds well (longer than Fenix 5), you can easily listen whole day to music (bt headphones will die first). Garmin pay is very limited what cards you can use it with. Live tracking works only when connected with phone.

I've been running with garmin for over 10 years now and it keeps getting better. The updates from the garmin forerunner 245 are noticeable and the technology in this watch is outstanding. There are plenty of apps to connect the watch to, whether it's running to tennis it has a mode for it. The watch is light and responsive with every button pressed. The GPS signal is strong and accurate and the wrist HR is dead on. I'm going to be honest, I'll never get a garmin with out a music mode to it. It's super clutch to run around with Spotify Playlist loaded on my watch without my phone being needed. Additionally, if you do carry your phone while completing an activity and you happen to fall, there is an incident detection and will contact a designated person on your liat with accurate gps coordinates to you location.This watch is amazing and does everything you need it to do, and more !

prompt, good service, great product, works well as described