Make yourself a pro

Review: Garmin Forerunner 970 - Packed with professional insights

This is a watch for those who take training seriously, and if you're not already serious about your training, the watch can instill that feeling.

Published 10 September 2025 - 10:17

Forerunner is Garmin's series of watches for runners, but in addition to a wide range of different analyses and conclusions about running, it also works, of course, to measure sleep, manage notifications from the phone, show the right way on the map, play music, and much more.

Gives a professional impression

If we start with running, it is the watch's main event. One of my first training sessions with the Garmin Forerunner 970 is in the evening in Helsinki, a run I see a bit as a sightseeing tour, even though it's dark and I can hardly see much of the surroundings. When I start the session, the watch asks if I want to use the built-in lamp's flashing function to ensure that I am visible in the dark. I say yes.

It is supposed to work as a reflector but with light, and I am undeniably visible as I make my way along both cycle paths and pavements with adjacent car traffic. The flashes and the watch's extensive analyses of my workouts even make me feel more professional than I am. I half-jokingly think that if someone sees me running now, they probably think, he's not running slowly because he's bad, it's probably some advanced interval training.

The Garmin Forerunner 970 is equipped with both a touchscreen, a bright AMOLED display, and physical buttons, and these methods can be used in parallel to control the watch's functions. If your fingers are wet, from sweat or rain, you can still control the watch's functions even if the touchscreen is not usable at that moment.

In the start position, you have the watch face where, in addition to time, you can of course get brief facts about your training and health. A swipe on the screen from top to bottom shows incoming notifications from the phone. You can respond to these if you have connected the watch to an Android, but with an iPhone, you have to settle for just reading incoming messages. If you swipe instead from bottom to top, you come to a list of widgets that act as shortcuts to all the functions the watch has, and you can customise these so that the ones you use most often are close at hand.

Some issues with the settings

This can apply to, for example, maps for navigation, various training data, weather, Spotify, or Garmin Wallet to pay with the watch in-store. I can also hold down the button at the top left to bring up a quick menu with shortcuts. For a beginner or someone who is used to other smartwatches, Garmin's watch is still a bit difficult to get an overview of. The combination of control with both touchscreen and buttons makes the options many to keep track of. I get used to it quite quickly and find my shortcuts for the functions I use, start Spotify, start a workout, get the contactless payment going. I can easily customise the buttons so they become shortcuts to favourite functions. Hold down the start button to start sleep mode, for example. Still, I encounter quite a few problems when I start using the watch before I get everything in order. The information I get when something goes wrong is therefore insufficient and does not help me solve the problem.

When I try to set up Spotify, I get a message on the watch saying that I should log in to Spotify in the phone's Garmin Connect app. But every time I start it and frantically search, there's no login there. Until suddenly on the fifth attempt. Then a popup appears out of nowhere and lets me log in. I have a similar experience when setting up payments. Doesn't work, try again later. Maybe I did something wrong when entering the card number, maybe there was a problem with the connection to the bank, without explanation I don't know. I just know that it worked on the third attempt.

The battery life is generous, but still presents me with certain problems. I start using the watch on a Tuesday afternoon. By Friday lunchtime, I check the battery level and note 60 percent remaining. I go away for the weekend, take a forest walk with mushroom picking (which I log with the watch) on Saturday morning and at lunchtime, I plan to go for a jog. Then the battery is inexplicably and suddenly completely drained. For the rest of the test period, the watch behaves without surprises and when I use it around the clock, it consumes about 15 percent per day, a battery life of about a week with sleep tracking every night and regular workouts with GPS on.

Good GPS accuracy

The accuracy of the watch's GPS is really good. It is very rare for smartwatches today to have inaccurate GPS, but Garmin is among the better ones and keeps pace with other smartwatches I test at the same time, and shows clearly, for example, a time when I stopped, walked back a few steps, and looked at a sign. It seems to have a handle on everything.

If the watch's interface is a bit messy, it's easier to get an overview in the accompanying phone app. Here you can get a summary of all workouts and what the analysis of these suggests about how ready the body is for the next training session or if it's best to rest. Some settings here are general in the app and others I find under the specific settings for the watch. As a whole, however, the app is good and provides a clear summary of all collected data and what they indicate. Like the watch itself, a professional tool.