The Best Garmin Watch in 2025

Garmin fitness watches stand out not only for their incredibly long battery life (meaning less time spent charging) but also for their precise GPS, reliable heart rate monitoring, and other unique health and fitness features.

Another reason Garmin excels is that there’s a watch for everyone. Whether you’re a runner training for your next marathon, a hiker mapping new trails, or someone who wants a reliable smartwatch that looks good at the office, Garmin’s lineup has over a dozen series to pick from, and new models drop every year.

Variety is great, but finding one that’s best for your needs can be overwhelming. After researching, testing several models, and examining user feedback — in addition to this author’s experience wearing them — we’ve narrowed it down to the best Garmin watches worth considering.

Rick Stella contributed to the FAQ in this guide.

Our top picks for the best Garmin watches

Best Garmin watch overall: Garmin Vivoactive 5 – See at Garmin

Best Garmin smartwatch: Garmin Venu 3 – See at Garmin

Best Garmin running watch: Garmin Forerunner 265 – See at Garmin

Best Garmin watch for athletes: Garmin Fenix 8 – See at Garmin

Best Garmin watch overall

If you want a basic smartwatch that tracks your workouts, steps, recovery, sleep, and other aspects of health with solid accuracy, the Vivoactive 5 has pretty much everything you would want, without an egregious price tag.

Garmin is known for having one of the best on-wrist heart rate sensors, making it great for highly accurate fitness tracking. The Vivoactive 5 can record over 30 types of workouts, from track runs to pickleball and snow sports, including reps completed and calories burned. If you want guidance, it has pre-programmed workouts to follow via the Garmin Coach feature. And with GPS built into the watch, it can accurately track your workouts even if you leave your phone at home.

As a sleep tracker, it provides a sleep score every night, giving you insight into sleep stages, personalized coaching on how much sleep you should aim for, and tips to improve your sleep quality.

A cool and unique feature of Garmin watches is the “Body Battery,” a score that reflects how rested your body is and whether you should chill out or work harder. It takes into consideration your workouts, stress, and sleep.

The watch lasts for up to 11 days on one charge. That means less fuss for you and the ability to wear the tracker for several nights, rather than remembering to charge it every night before bed.

The Vivoactive 5 can track a woman’s menstrual cycle, log daily fluid intake to monitor hydration, and even provide guided meditation practices to help reduce stress. And for wheelchair users, the Vivoactive 5 can track pushes instead of steps and offers adapted built-in workouts.

The watch’s 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen display offers high contrast and deep blacks, making it easier to read under bright sunlight. It’s intuitive to use, and the watch face is customizable.

When paired with a phone, the Vivoactive can display text messages, but there’s no microphone for verbal replies like with the Venu 3, our pick for the best Garmin smartwatch. You have more functionality with an Android phone: You can respond to texts with the on-watch keyboard and view photos.

Like all Garmin watches, the Vivoactive 5 is compatible with the Garmin Connect app, which allows you to load apps like Spotify and Garmin Pay onto your watch. But unlike some models, the Vivoactive 5 is only available in one size.

Note that the Vivoactive 5 will eventually be replaced by the Vivoactive 6, which retains the core functionality but includes slight design tweaks, activity tracking, improved GPS, larger storage, and a new Smart Wake function that vibrates to gently wake you at the appropriate time. We plan to test the Vivoactive 6 soon, but we don’t think it’s a major improvement over the Vivoactive 5, which can now be found at a lower price.

Best Garmin smartwatch

Garmin is known for its advanced GPS watches, but it also makes a solid smartwatch, the Venu. We loved the Venu 2, but the next iteration, Venu 3, has more of the bells and whistles you’d expect in a smartwatch: The ability to not just receive texts but also make and receive phone calls from your wrist and access pre-loaded apps like Spotify or Outlook Calendar.

The Venu 3 has a 45mm case size, but there’s also a smaller Venu 3S with a 41mm case size, which we tested. The latter is ideal for smaller wrists, but it’s also thinner, and it comes in more color options. Functionally, the Venu 3 and 3S are nearly identical. However, the larger model has a bigger battery and a few more activity trackers.

Compared to other Garmin watches, the Venu 3 looks and performs more like a smartwatch than a fitness tracker, thanks to the bright 1.4-inch AMOLED touchscreen display (1.2 inches on the Venu 3S). Navigating through the intuitive interface is fluid, akin to using an Apple or Android watch, but getting back to the home screen.

When paired with a smartphone via the Garmin Connect app, you can send and receive text messages, make calls, scroll through photos, download music from supported music services, and more. It even has Garmin Pay for contactless payments.

However, the Venu 3 is limited as a connected device. There is no cellular option, so many of its functions, like calling or texting, require tethering to a smartphone. While it supports both iPhone and Android, most of the smartwatch features only work with Android. And, there aren’t as many apps you can download.

The Venu 3 redeems itself with a 14-day battery life (10 on the Venue 3S) and Garmin’s trademark fitness and health features, including sleep tracking and coaching, the ability to track more than 30 workout types, stress tracking, and body battery monitoring to give you insight into how drained or recovered your body is overall.

It also has many advanced health and fitness features not found on other Garmin watches: the Garmin ECG app, which senses the electrical signals of your heart to potentially detect signs of atrial fibrillation; jet leg monitoring; and even the ability to tell how much power you’re putting out during a run or bike ride to help optimize your pacing.

Ultimately, the Venu 3 is a Garmin fitness watch that doubles as a smartwatch. It’s ideal for those who prefer a tracker but want to stay connected. However, if you’re after a true smartwatch — one that works seamlessly with your phone and has access to tons of apps — the Venu 3 may disappoint due to its limitations.

Read our full review of the Venu 3S.

Best Garmin running watch

The Garmin Forerunner series has always been a go-to pick for runners. While the Forerunner 195 is more affordable and great for beginner runners, and the 965 Big Kahuna is ideal for ultra-runners and triathletes, it’s the Forerunner 265 that hits the sweet spot in the middle.

Like the Venu 3, the Forerunner 265 (46mm) is available in a smaller size (42mm), the Forerunner 265S, which we tested.

The Forerunner 265 has a lot to offer runners. Garmin’s sensors deliver all the metrics runners would want, with a high degree of accuracy, including cadence, stride length, heart rate, pace, and even ground contact.

The GPS tracks your mileage with incredible accuracy, and it can also record accurate track lap distances in meters for sprint training. Unlike the Vivoactive line, the Forerunner has an altimeter to track elevation, giving you more accurate data on trail runs or hill sprints.

But the Forerunner 265 also comes with a ton of features that’ll help improve your training and racing: mid-run power analysis to help you better pace yourself, post-run performance analysis, pre-loaded cross-training workouts complete with audio prompts, and race-day pace planning. It also has the standard sleep tracker, stress tracker, and Body Battery insight for smarter recovery, but we wish the watch offered guidance on how to improve in these areas with the data provided.

If you’re training for a triathlon or duathlon, the Forerunner 265 can switch between sports automatically. With a built-in GPS and storage for music, you can leave your phone at home. But some hardcore athletes or adventurers may find the more advanced Garmin watches, such as the Fenix 8, better suit their needs.

This watch comes with two built-in safety features: Livetrack so your friends and family can check your real-time location and pre-planned courses, and an accident tracker that sends a message with your live location if it senses that an accident or incident has occurred.

You can also load Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, or YouTube Music onto the watch, receive smart notifications, and access other features via the Garmin Connect and Connect IQ apps. The battery lasts up to 13 days in smartwatch mode and 20 hours in GPS mode.

To top it off, all of these features are wrapped in a bright AMOLED display so you can actually see your stats out in the sunlight.

Best Garmin for athletes

While the Vivoactive 5 is great for basic health and fitness, and the Forerunner 265 is ideal for runners, if you are super active and enjoy all sports, you want the Fenix 8.

The Fenix 8 has pretty much every Garmin feature available. For training, it can track every workout you could want (including biking, climbing, and kayaking) with highly accurate GPS and heart rate monitoring; has data on performance metrics and coaching for training readiness and race prep; and can auto-transition between sports for triathletes.

For outdoor adventures, the Fenix 8 has an altimeter to track ascents and descents more accurately. It also offers on-wrist map navigation with topographic maps, suggested return routes for recorded round-trips, and the ability to preload maps at ski resorts and golf courses. It’s completely waterproof and dive-proof up to 40 meters, and its buttons are leak-proof.

As a smartwatch, it has a built-in speaker and microphone, offline voice commands, and the ability to add apps like weather and tide charts or Spotify. It also has an on-wrist LED flashlight for dawn runs.

All of these features are packaged into a rugged design. It’s available in three sizes (43, 47, or 51mm) and with either an AMOLED display or an MIP display that can be solar charged. Visuals aside, the key difference here is battery life: The solar models have a longer single charge and can recharge outdoors. The AMOLED gives you that crisp display common in smartwatches, but at the expense of battery life. (See a full rundown of each size’s battery life here.)

If you enable GPS, battery life is drastically reduced (22 to 28 hours), so most athletes will appreciate being able to regenerate power on long days out adventuring. Moreover, some people prefer the MIP display outdoors.

You can score older models of the Fenix for a lower price, but note that Garmin recently retired its Epix line and rolled its features into the Fenix 8, so the higher price tag scores you things like the AMOLED display.

What to look for in a Garmin watch

When shopping for a Garmin watch, how you plan on using it is everything. For instance, if you don’t need offline map support, a built-in flashlight, or tracking capability for every sport imaginable, then you likely don’t need to spend $1,200 on something like the Fenix 8. Here’s how to determine which Garmin model is best for you.

How you’ll use it: Many Garmin watches offer similar features, but some are better suited for certain users. For instance, the Forerunner series is a great choice for runners and triathletes as it has plenty of running-specific features and training tools. Avid outdoors people will want the altimeter for more accurate adventure tracking and solar charging. The average gym-goer will be perfectly happy with the basic features and affordability of the Vivoactive line.

Sizing: Many Garmin watches are available in different sizes, and some, like the Venu, are available in a small-specific model. These smaller models carry an “S” after the product name, so in the case of the Venu 3, the smaller version is titled the Venu 3S. Other watches, like the Fenix, are available in multiple sizing options.

Battery life: Garmin watches’ battery life is generally much longer than competitors’, with most running for 10 days or more on a single charge. Wearing it longer means you’ll be able to record more data. Battery life among Garmins varies from model to model and from how you use it. Enabling both the GPS and always-on display drain your battery faster. A few models also have solar charging for a longer-lasting battery life outdoors.

Smartwatch functionality: Many of Garmin’s wearables blur the line between fitness watch and smartwatch, but most of them have some form of smart feature, such as receiving text messages and other notifications or the ability to download from Spotify. The Venu series is most like a smartwatch, but all Garmin watches with smart functionality rely on a smartphone.

FAQs

Does a Garmin watch work with any smartphone? 

Garmin watches are compatible with smartphones running either iOS or Android. The experience is almost identical since both phone formats use the Garmin Connect app to interact with the watch. However, some Garmin watches have additional functionality when used with an Android phone, such as the ability to make calls or send text messages. 

Do Garmin watches have accurate GPS? 

Garmin watches have incredibly accurate and fast GPS functionality. This is true across the entire Garmin lineup, regardless of the price tag. Note that when GPS is enabled, the watch uses more battery.

Are Garmin’s wearables considered smartwatches? 

Although Garmin’s watches tend to lean more toward being fitness and health trackers, they also offer basic smartwatch functionality. However, some models, like the Venu 3, are more full-featured smartwatches, offering on-watch phone call support and a more interactive touchscreen display.