Garmin Forerunner 265 vs Apple Watch Series 9
🗓️ Release Year
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: 2023
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: 2023
🏃 Activity
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Garmin Forerunner 265 is engineered for runners and athletes, offering precise tracking of steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes with personalized daily goals. It provides advanced running dynamics, giving users deeper insights into their form and performance.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 is a powerful and intuitive smartwatch offering advanced activity tracking with enhanced performance. Powered by the new S9 SiP, it provides faster and more accurate tracking of steps, distance, calories burned, and active minutes. Its comprehensive workout modes and detailed metrics are designed to help users monitor and improve their fitness across a wide range of activities.
❤️ Health Monitoring
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: This device features continuous heart rate monitoring, VO2 max estimation for assessing cardiovascular fitness, advanced running dynamics including ground contact time and vertical oscillation, and respiration tracking for a comprehensive view of physiological data.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: This device is a robust health companion, featuring continuous heart rate monitoring, ECG functionality for detecting signs of irregular heart rhythms, and SpO2 monitoring for blood oxygen levels. The temperature sensor offers deeper insights into overall wellness and cycle tracking, while enhanced health algorithms provide more precise data analysis.
🔋 Battery Life
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Forerunner 265 offers impressive battery life, providing up to 13 days in smartwatch mode and up to 20 hours with continuous GPS tracking, ensuring sufficient power for extended training periods.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 provides up to 18 hours of battery life on a single charge under normal usage, and up to 36 hours in Low Power Mode, similar to its predecessor. Fast charging capabilities minimize downtime, ensuring consistent tracking throughout the day and night.
😴 Sleep Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: Advanced sleep monitoring is included, tracking detailed sleep stages and incorporating a Pulse Ox sensor to monitor blood oxygen levels during sleep. This provides valuable data for assessing sleep quality and recovery.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Advanced sleep tracking on the Apple Watch Series 9 monitors sleep stages (light, deep, and REM), sleep duration, and provides detailed sleep analysis within the Health app. It also tracks blood oxygen levels and wrist temperature during sleep, offering valuable insights into sleep quality and recovery.
📍 GPS Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: Equipped with built-in GPS, the Forerunner 265 provides accurate outdoor activity tracking without requiring a paired smartphone. It delivers precise pace, distance, and route data essential for runners and cyclists.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: With built-in GPS, the Apple Watch Series 9 accurately tracks outdoor activities like running, cycling, and hiking without needing a paired iPhone. It provides precise route mapping, pace, and distance data, essential for monitoring performance during outdoor workouts.
🏋️ Workout Modes
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Forerunner 265 supports a wide array of workout modes beyond running, including biking, swimming, cardio, and strength training, with real-time statistics displayed during activities for performance monitoring.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 supports a wide variety of workout modes, including running, walking, cycling, swimming, yoga, hiking, and more. Users can select specific modes to get tailored real-time statistics and post-workout analysis within the Fitness app.
💫 Exercise Recognition
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The device includes automatic exercise detection for common activities such as walking and running, ensuring seamless recording of these basic movements for a complete activity log.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The smartwatch features automatic exercise recognition for common activities such as walking, running, and cycling, ensuring that workouts are logged even if the user forgets to manually start tracking, providing a more complete record of physical activity.
🍎 Compatibility
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Forerunner 265 is compatible with both iOS and Android smartphones, connecting via Bluetooth for seamless data synchronization and smart notifications.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Seamlessly integrating with the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch Series 9 requires an iPhone XS or later running the latest iOS version for full functionality. It connects via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, offering tight integration with Apple Health and other Apple services.
📲 App Support
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: Synchronization with the comprehensive Garmin Connect app provides users with detailed analysis of activity data, performance metrics, and health statistics. The app allows for goal setting, training plan customization, and access to a large online community.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Leveraging the App Store, the Apple Watch Series 9 provides access to a vast ecosystem of third-party apps, enhancing its capabilities for fitness, productivity, communication, and entertainment. The Apple Health app serves as a central repository for all health and fitness data.
💡 Smart Features
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: Beyond its athletic focus, the Forerunner 265 includes practical smart features such as on-wrist notifications for calls, texts, and calendar alerts. It supports Garmin Pay for contactless payments and allows for on-device music storage.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: As a full-featured smartwatch, the Apple Watch Series 9 provides comprehensive smart capabilities, including on-wrist notifications, enhanced Siri with on-device processing, Apple Pay for contactless payments, and cellular connectivity for calls and messages without an iPhone. The innovative Double Tap gesture provides a new way to interact with the watch, and advanced safety features like Fall Detection and Crash Detection are included.
💦 Water Resistance
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: With a water resistance rating of 50 meters (5 ATM), the Forerunner 265 is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a durable companion for triathletes and those who incorporate swimming into their training.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: With a WR50 water resistance rating, the Apple Watch Series 9 is suitable for swimming and showering, making it a durable companion for everyday wear and aquatic activities. It is capable of tracking swimming workouts.
⌚ Display Quality
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Forerunner 265 features a vibrant AMOLED color touchscreen display, providing excellent readability in various lighting conditions, including bright sunlight, for clear visibility of data and maps.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 features an even brighter Always-On Retina LTPO OLED display, offering a peak brightness of 2000 nits for exceptional visibility in direct sunlight. It provides sharp resolution, deep blacks, and vibrant colors, enhancing the visual experience.
👌 Ease of Use
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The device offers a user-friendly interface with a combination of traditional buttons and touchscreen navigation, providing quick and easy access to features and data during workouts and daily use.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The device offers an intuitive user interface with a combination of the responsive touchscreen, Digital Crown for precise scrolling, and a physical side button for navigation. watchOS is optimized for easy navigation, and the new Double Tap gesture adds a convenient way to interact one-handed.
✨ Design and Comfort
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Forerunner 265 features a lightweight and comfortable design with a soft silicone band, making it ideal for extended wear during training and everyday activities.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 features a sleek and refined design with a lightweight aluminum or stainless steel case. It offers a comfortable fit for all-day wear and comes with a wide variety of interchangeable bands for extensive personalization, balancing aesthetic appeal with functional design.
🩸 SpO2 Monitoring
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: An integrated Pulse Ox sensor allows for monitoring blood oxygen levels during sleep, providing valuable data related to sleep quality and acclimatization.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Equipped with an SpO2 sensor, the Apple Watch Series 9 allows for on-demand spot checks and background monitoring of blood oxygen saturation levels. This feature provides valuable data for assessing respiratory health and overall well-being, especially during sleep and at altitude.
💖 ECG Functionality
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: It is important to note that the Garmin Forerunner 265 does not support ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: The Apple Watch Series 9 supports ECG (Electrocardiogram) functionality through the ECG app, allowing users to record a 30-second ECG to detect signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib). This feature provides valuable heart health data that can be shared with healthcare professionals.
🧘 Stress Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Forerunner 265 includes stress tracking based on heart rate variability and offers guided breathing exercises to help users manage stress levels throughout the day.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: While not a dedicated stress tracking metric, the Apple Watch Series 9 contributes to stress insights through features like Mindfulness and Breathe apps, heart rate variability (HRV) data, and sleep analysis, helping users understand their body's response to stress and find moments of calm.
🩹 Recovery Tracking
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: The Body Battery energy monitoring feature provides insights into the body's energy reserves based on activity, stress, and sleep data, helping users optimize training and recovery strategies. It also offers a Training Status feature to assess overall training effectiveness.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: Recovery is primarily tracked through detailed sleep analysis, heart rate variability (HRV), and insights provided within the Apple Health and Fitness apps based on workout data. While not a single "recovery score" like some dedicated sports watches, the collected data helps users understand their body's state and inform rest and training decisions for optimal performance.
💳 Subscription
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: A key advantage of the Garmin platform is that all features and data tracked by the Forerunner 265 are accessible through the free Garmin Connect app, requiring no additional subscription fees for core functionality.
2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: No subscription is required to access the core features and data tracked by the Apple Watch Series 9 through the Apple Health and Fitness apps. Optional services like Apple Fitness+ require a separate subscription.
🏷️️ Price
1️⃣ Garmin Forerunner 265: $449.99
Check Garmin Forerunner 265 Price *2️⃣ Apple Watch Series 9: $399.00
Check Apple Watch Series 9 Price ** If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you