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The Garmin Forerunner 745 is a smartwatch with GPS, fitness tracking, and health monitoring capabilities.
Adam Molina/Insider
Garmin’s made GPS fitness devices for close to two decades, so it’s safe to say the company knows a thing or two about accuracy. Whether you’re looking to complete your first 5K, or you’re a seasoned athlete, Garmin watches often do much more than most people really need.
One of its stat-tracking watches is the Forerunner 745, a GPS wearable that offers a range of activity tracking and workout recommendations, as well as some light smartwatch capability. It also keys in on one of the most underrated parts of keeping active: rest and recovery. Intrigued by its capability to be one of the best fitness trackers, I reached out to Garmin to send me one for review.
Garmin’s algorithms can tell you how to make the most of your workout.
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To put it through its paces, I used it for a little over a month to see how well it held up. I’ve been running for the last five years and used tons of fitness trackers including the Apple Watch, a few Fitbits, and more WearOS watches than I’d like to admit.
I planned to push myself and run every day to see how the Forerunner 745 held up — unfortunately, I didn’t quite meet that lofty goal. The watch runs your data through Garmin algorithms to tell you whether you’re having an effective workout and after a week or two, it made it very clear I was doing more harm than good. I decided to follow the watch’s specific recommendations and ended up running about 60 miles in total.
Build quality and features
The watch comes with a durable 1.2-inch display.
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The Garmin Forerunner 745 wears smaller than its 43mm diameter would suggest. It is by no means a small watch but it isn’t bulky either. It wears comfortably on my wrist whether I’m working out or lounging around the house. The silicone strap has plenty of adjustment holes and the material hasn’t worn down at all thus far. Regardless of your wrist size, you shouldn’t have any issues getting a snug fit here. I wore the red model for testing, but it also comes in black, teal, or white colorways
In everyday use, you’ll mostly be looking only at the screen and thankfully, it’s a good one. The 1.2-inch display is a tough Corning Gorilla glass that should hold up to a few smacks against a doorframe and or a desk. I know this because I’ve accidentally done both, but you can’t tell by looking at it.
The display light is off by default which isn’t a problem during the day but I did find it almost impossible to read in the dark. I’d recommend turning on the raise-to-wake feature to increase legibility. This turns on the backlight whenever you raise your wrist to look at your watch. That feature is on by default during workouts which is good, but I found it just as useful for daily use in low-light situations as well.
The Forerunner 745 has five atmospheres of water resistance which means that it can withstand pressures up to 50m deep. I didn’t get to test this myself as I don’t dive, but the watch handled showers with no issue. If you keep your workouts exclusively at sea level the watch also has an open water workout mode for tracking elapsed time and distance, and a pool mode for keeping track of laps.
Battery life can last three to six days depending on usage, and relies on a proprietary charger.
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Garmin claims you’ll get up to six days of battery life in smartwatch mode. I was averaging about three days before needing to throw it back on the charger but that included runs and workouts with GPS and music enabled. I also connected my Bluetooth earbuds directly to the watch enabling me to leave my phone in my apartment when I run.
Turning off Bluetooth or bringing your phone along with you for media playback is one sure way to squeeze that last workout from the watch. Unfortunately, the 745 relies on Garmin’s proprietary charging cable, so if you leave it behind while going away for the weekend, you’re out of luck.
The Forerunner 745 handles basic fitness metrics like pace and elapsed time but that’s only scratching the surface. It does so much more and a full list of the types of workouts available to you could be its own article.
Regardless of what workout you’re looking to do, the Garmin Forerunner 745 keeps track using sensors and algorithms. It features the same accurate heart rate sensor Garmin has on other top models which lets you know how hard you’re pushing yourself in real time. It comes in handy when you’re trying to stay within a specific range for recovery or on longer endurance runs. There’s even a handy graphic that pops up on the watch to illustrate how close you are to having a productive workout.
The Forerunner’s pulse oximeter, though not medical-grade, can give helpful insights on your workouts.
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The Forerunner 745 also has a Pulse Ox sensor for measuring oxygen saturation throughout the day. Garmin makes it a point to say that this is not a medical device, but the watch makes good use of the data, nonetheless.
While I didn’t find too much use for the number itself, Garmin uses it as an input to get a more accurate reading of your physical exertion. This becomes even more important if you’re exercising at altitude as blood oxygen saturation varies based on your elevation.
What kind of fitness stats do you get?
The watch keeps track of several metrics, even if you decide not to display them all.
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The 745 collects all kinds of data from your workouts and displays what you need when you need it. A quick glance at your wrist during a workout shows distance, elapsed time, and pace which changes in real-time based on how fast you’re going. If you’d rather see your heart rate, altitude, or some other piece of information, you can do that, too.
Garmin allows tons of customization, which was my favorite thing about this watch. Whether you like knowing your exact heart rate and pace or want to keep it simple with how much distance you’ve covered, the Forerunner 745 can do it. This allowed me to have a few preset custom screens based on the kind of workout I was doing.
You can see that hard work in all its glory in the Garmin app, too. The app has helpful data visualizations and options to set up custom workouts if you want to take matters into your own hands. If you’re like me and want most of that work done for you, then you can also opt into one of the training programs provided by Garmin.
The watch also begins recommending workouts to you once you’ve used it for roughly ten days. You can always decline the suggestion and do whatever you want, but I found myself using it more often than not as they were perfectly challenging.
It’s a highly accurate tracker
The Forerunner 745 is compatible with both GPS and GLONASS for pinpoint accuracy during outdoor activities and during outdoor runs, I found it to be very precise. While running a known loop at my local park, the final distance it measured was consistently spot-on. The same was true while running through bluffs with a friend who also happened to be wearing this same watch. By the end of the run through sandy dunes and trees, the watches were accurate to within 0.01 miles of each other.
This is good news if you tend to exercise outside but it doesn’t mean much if you’re on a treadmill or stationary bike inside. Thankfully, the Forerunner 745 is good enough for indoor activities, too, but it requires some time to get to know you first.
I wasn’t a fan of its cumbersome menu system
One of my biggest complaints with the 745 is the menu system which is far from intuitive and takes some getting used to. For example, the screen is almost impossible to read in low-light conditions unless you press a button to turn on the backlight. It turns out that buried in the settings there is an option to automatically turn on the screen when you raise your wrist, a helpful feature that I didn’t find until about a week into using it.
The price tag is by far the heaviest lift for this workout accessory.
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The 745 also lets you download and store up to 500 of your favorite songs for offline playback, but compatible music streaming services are limited. At the time of writing, it only supports Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio, meaning that any YouTube Music or Apple Music subscribers are out of luck.
Then there are the smartwatch features, which are fairly basic for a watch at this price point. Notifications from your phone get forwarded to the watch, which is helpful, but actually doing anything about those notifications is barebones. You can reply with a few preset responses if you’re on Android, otherwise, there isn’t much you can do besides dismiss them. That minimal approach is great for people who don’t really care about smartwatch features like answering phone calls or voice-to-text, but if you do, then you’re not getting them here.
The biggest drawback to the Garmin Forerunner 745 is its price tag of $499. The watch has some stiff competition from a competitor like the Apple Watch Series 6 which comes in significantly cheaper for the base GPS-only model. While the Forerunner 745 does offer stats that analytics nerds dream about, those that aren’t as keen on that data may not find the same value.
Should you buy it?
Absolutely. If you’re looking for a true fitness watch to track your workouts, the Forerunner 745 is about as good as it gets. Anyone looking for the best smartwatch will be let down by the lack of a touchscreen or microphone for calling, but if your primary focus is a watch that tracks just about any activity you can think of, then the Forerunner 745 is a worthwhile investment.
All told, the Garmin Forerunner 745 is easily the most advanced fitness watch I’ve used. What it lacks in smartwatch features it makes up for in sheer data. Its workout recommendations know exactly how hard I need to push myself and features like the body battery which displays how much energy you have based on your previous night’s sleep and exertion are surprisingly accurate.
At the end of my time with the Forerunner 745, one thing became clear: I’m buying one for myself.