Apple Watch Series 10 vs Garmin Forerunner 955
🗓️ Release Year
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: 2024
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: 2022
🏃 Activity
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 offers an advanced fitness tracking system that measures steps, calories burned, distance traveled, active minutes, and elevation changes. It automatically tracks daily movement and provides real-time heart rate zone updates to optimize workouts. The Move, Exercise, and Stand rings help users stay motivated by closing daily activity goals.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Garmin Forerunner 955 is a top-tier GPS smartwatch designed for multisport athletes, offering extensive tracking of steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes with daily goals. It provides advanced running dynamics, cycling metrics, and swimming data crucial for comprehensive performance analysis across disciplines.
❤️ Health Monitoring
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: Designed with comprehensive health tracking, the watch continuously monitors heart rate, blood oxygen levels (SpO2), and skin temperature. It includes high and low heart rate alerts, irregular heart rhythm detection, and AFib history tracking, providing crucial health insights. The Heart Rate Variability (HRV) feature assesses cardiovascular health trends over time.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: This device features continuous heart rate monitoring, advanced physiological metrics including VO2 max estimation, training status, training load pro, and heat and altitude acclimatization. It also tracks respiration rate and Pulse Ox for blood oxygen saturation, offering deep insights into an athlete's health and recovery status.
🔋 Battery Life
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 delivers up to 18 hours of battery life in normal use and up to 36 hours in Low Power Mode. Fast charging allows it to reach 80% in around 45 minutes, ensuring minimal downtime between charges.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 offers exceptional battery life, providing up to 15 days in smartwatch mode and up to 42 hours with continuous GPS tracking, making it suitable for ultra-endurance events and extensive training blocks.
😴 Sleep Tracking
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The watch tracks sleep stages (light, deep, and REM), offering personalized insights into sleep patterns. It also monitors respiratory rate and blood oxygen levels during sleep to detect potential disturbances, such as sleep apnea.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: Advanced sleep monitoring is included, meticulously tracking sleep stages (light, deep, and REM) and utilizing the Pulse Ox sensor to monitor blood oxygen levels during sleep. This provides valuable data for assessing recovery quality and informing training decisions.
📍 GPS Tracking
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: With precise dual-frequency GPS (L1 + L5 bands), the Apple Watch Series 10 delivers accurate location tracking for outdoor activities like running, cycling, and hiking. It provides real-time pace, elevation, and route mapping in the Apple Fitness app.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: Equipped with multi-band GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo), the Forerunner 955 provides superior accuracy for outdoor activity tracking, even in challenging environments, without requiring a paired smartphone. It offers detailed route navigation and mapping capabilities.
🏋️ Workout Modes
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The watch supports over 100 workout types, including HIIT, strength training, swimming, cycling, rowing, and yoga. Advanced metrics such as stride length, ground contact time, running power, and vertical oscillation help athletes optimize performance.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 supports a vast array of multisport and individual workout modes, including running, biking, swimming, triathlon, trail running, strength training, and more, with extensive real-time statistics and customizable data screens.
💫 Exercise Recognition
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 automatically detects workouts such as walking, running, cycling, swimming, and elliptical sessions, ensuring that activities are logged even if users forget to start tracking.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The device includes automatic exercise detection for common activities like walking and running through its Move IQ feature, ensuring seamless recording of basic movements within the overall training log.
🍎 Compatibility
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: Seamlessly integrates with iPhone (iOS 17 or later) via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It syncs with Apple Health and supports third-party fitness apps like Strava, MyFitnessPal, and Nike Run Club.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, connecting via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for seamless data synchronization and smart notifications.
📲 App Support
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Fitness+ app provides guided workouts, live metrics, and personalized fitness plans. Users can also sync with third-party wellness apps, including meditation and recovery tracking platforms.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: Synchronization with the comprehensive Garmin Connect app is essential for the Forerunner 955, providing in-depth analysis of all tracked data, performance metrics, training insights, and recovery recommendations. The app allows for creating and syncing detailed training plans and courses.
💡 Smart Features
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: In addition to fitness tracking, the Apple Watch Series 10 includes smart notifications for calls, texts, and apps. It supports Siri voice commands, Apple Pay for contactless payments, and music streaming via Apple Music and Spotify. The SOS Emergency Call feature provides enhanced safety by detecting severe falls and crashes, automatically notifying emergency contacts if needed.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: Beyond its extensive sports features, the Forerunner 955 includes practical smart functionalities such as on-wrist notifications, Garmin Pay for contactless payments, and on-device music storage with support for streaming services, allowing for phone-free training with connectivity.
💦 Water Resistance
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: With a WR50 rating, the watch is water-resistant up to 50 meters, making it suitable for pool swimming, water workouts, and showering. It also tracks swimming metrics, including stroke count, distance, and pace.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: With a water resistance rating of 50 meters (5 ATM), the Forerunner 955 is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a reliable device for tracking pool and open water swimming activities as part of a multisport training regimen.
⌚ Display Quality
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The ultra-bright LTPO OLED Retina display offers sharp colors, deep blacks, and excellent visibility in direct sunlight. The always-on display ensures users can quickly check the time, notifications, and health data without raising their wrist.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 features a sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) color display with optional touchscreen. This display technology offers excellent readability in direct sunlight and is power-efficient, crucial for extended outdoor activities.
👌 Ease of Use
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The watch features a responsive touchscreen, a Digital Crown for precise scrolling, and haptic feedback for smooth navigation. With customizable watch faces, users can personalize their interface based on preference.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The device offers a dual interface with traditional buttons and a responsive touchscreen, providing flexible and easy navigation through menus, data screens, and mapping features during both activities and daily use.
✨ Design and Comfort
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Apple Watch Series 10 features a lightweight yet durable titanium or aluminum case with interchangeable bands. It is available in multiple sizes and finishes, ensuring a comfortable fit for all-day wear.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 features a lightweight and comfortable design with a soft silicone band, optimized for a secure fit during intense training sessions and suitable for all-day wear, balancing durability with comfort.
🩸 SpO2 Monitoring
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The built-in SpO2 sensor continuously measures blood oxygen levels, providing real-time insights into respiratory and overall health, especially useful during sleep and high-altitude activities.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: An integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for on-demand spot checks and continuous monitoring of blood oxygen saturation levels, particularly valuable for acclimatization at altitude, monitoring sleep quality, and assessing overall recovery.
💖 ECG Functionality
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The ECG app allows users to take electrocardiograms (ECGs) on demand, detecting signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). Results can be shared with healthcare professionals for further analysis.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: It is important to note that the Garmin Forerunner 955 does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
🧘 Stress Tracking
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: With Mindfulness and Breathe apps, the watch offers guided breathing sessions and stress-level assessments. It tracks heart rate variability (HRV) to indicate periods of high or low stress.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The Forerunner 955 tracks stress levels throughout the day based on heart rate variability and offers guided breathing exercises to help athletes manage stress and optimize their mental recovery alongside physical training.
🩹 Recovery Tracking
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: The Recovery Insights feature provides data on heart rate recovery time, sleep quality, and fatigue levels, helping users determine when to train or rest. Apple Fitness+ offers personalized recommendations based on recovery status.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: The device provides advanced recovery insights, including a daily readiness score, recovery time advisor, training status, and training load focus, offering detailed guidance to help athletes understand their recovery needs and optimize their training schedule to prevent overtraining and improve performance.
💳 Subscription
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: ✅ The watch provides core health and fitness features for free, but Apple Fitness+ (optional, $9.99/month or $79.99/year) offers guided workouts, advanced training insights, and exclusive content.
2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: A significant benefit of the Garmin platform is that all features and data tracked by the Forerunner 955 are accessible through the free Garmin Connect app, requiring no additional subscription fees for core functionality or advanced training analysis, providing comprehensive value out of the box.
🏷️️ Price
1️⃣ Apple Watch Series 10: $399.00
Check Apple Watch Series 10 Price *2️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 955: $699.99
Check Garmin Forerunner 955 Price ** If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you