Garmin Forerunner 165 ZDNET's key takeaways The Garmin Forerunner 165 is now priced at $199.
The watch is small and lightweight, has a vibrant AMOLED display, 19 hours of GPS battery life, and features extensive support for running.
I just wish there were more sports modes. View now at Amazon
Garmin continues to modernize its various watch series with lovely and vibrant display options, this time putting an AMOLED panel on one of its entry-level running watches, the Garmin Forerunner 165 (currently discounted to $199 for Black Friday, down from $249) and Garmin Forerunner 165 Music (now down to $249 from $299).
With it, one of the company's most compact watches, ideal for those with smaller wrists or who prefer something lighter weight, now has an even better display to help visualize your fitness tracking, metrics, and more
Also: The best Garmin watches I've tested
The Forerunner 165 launched at $249, and the 165 Music is $50 more at $299. I spent a week using both, and here are my biggest takeaways, including which of the two you should buy.
To navigate the Forerunner 165, both a touchscreen interface and traditional five-button controls are provided. All of the customizations I've seen on previous Garmin watches, including the more expensive ones, are also available, so it's rather straightforward to set up workouts and optimize your training plans.
Matthew Miller/ZDNET
Of all the sports and fitness plans, the Forerunner 165 is most focused on supporting runners, with features like adaptive training plans, wrist-based running power and dynamics tracking, training effect, course support, and more. 25 activity profiles are also provided for activities like swimming, pickleball, yoga, and pilates, but I couldn't find anything for more specific tasks like indoor rowing, which is currently my primary exercise. In that case, I wasn't able to track my workouts with the watch.
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