Garmin Forerunner 265 Review: Halve the Battery Claims
AMOLED finally arrived at a sane price, and Training Readiness answers the metric overload. Just do not believe the 13-day figure — the real one is still excellent.
Running watches spent a decade getting better at a thing almost nobody needed. Pace and distance were solved by about 2015. Everything since has been an argument about what else a watch should tell you, and most of the answers have been numbers that feel scientific and change nothing about what you do on Tuesday morning.
The Forerunner 265 is interesting because it is Garmin’s answer to two different complaints at once. The screen — finally AMOLED, at a price that is not absurd — answers the people who found Garmin’s displays grim next to an Apple Watch. Training Readiness answers the people drowning in metrics who wanted the watch to just say whether today is a hard day or an easy one. This review is about whether either answer holds up, and about the battery figures, which need translating.
Why a dedicated running watch, when a smartwatch exists
Reasonable question, and the answer has narrowed over the years but not disappeared.
Battery is the honest one. A general smartwatch that needs charging every night is a poor fit for anyone doing long efforts, tracking sleep, or spending a weekend away from a charger. A running watch that lasts a week changes what you can actually measure.
Buttons. Five physical buttons work with cold fingers, wet hands, gloves, and while your heart rate is at 175 and your judgement is poor. Touchscreens do not. The 265 has both, and the buttons are why serious runners keep choosing this shape.
The metrics are built for training, not for wellness. Running dynamics, race predictions, recovery guidance and load balance are aimed at someone following a plan. If you are not following a plan, most of this is decoration, and a cheaper watch will serve you better.
Worth deciding before you spend: are you a runner who wants a watch, or a person who wants a watch that tracks running? The first should buy this. The second is usually happier with a general smartwatch, and there is nothing wrong with being the second.
The screen, and what it costs
AMOLED is the headline and it deserves it. Garmin’s transflective memory-in-pixel displays were extraordinary in direct sunlight and looked like a calculator everywhere else. The 265’s screen is bright, colourful and readable in nearly every condition — though very bright direct sun is the one place where the old technology arguably still wins, and some reviewers do note glare.
The cost is power. A bright screen draws more than a dim one, which is exactly where the battery conversation starts.
Battery, translated
Garmin rates the 265 at up to 13 days in smartwatch mode and up to 20 hours in GPS. Independent testing consistently lands lower — around a week of general wear, and roughly 10 to 11 hours of GPS in practice. Garmin’s own figures also drop to about seven hours when you add music playback over GPS, which is the honest number for anyone running with the watch as their audio source.
This is not deception so much as best-case testing meeting real use. Rated figures assume conservative display settings, no music, no always-on screen, and a gesture-activated backlight. Turn the display always-on, which is the first thing most people do because the screen is lovely, and you are in the lower half of every range.
Training Readiness, and whether to trust it
This is the feature Garmin most wants you to care about. Each morning the watch gives you a score out of 100 and a verdict — train hard, train easy, or rest — built from sleep, recovery time, heart rate variability trend, acute load and stress.
It is genuinely useful, with one caveat worth stating plainly. The score is a summary of inputs the watch can measure, and it cannot measure the things that most affect how you feel: a stressful week, a bad meal, a cold coming on, or a poor night that your watch scored as fine because you lay still.
Used as a tiebreaker it is excellent. When you are unsure whether to do the hard session, a low readiness score is a reasonable reason not to. Used as an instruction, it is a way to talk yourself out of training you were perfectly capable of doing. HRV Status is the more reliable underlying signal, because it trends over weeks rather than reacting to a single night.
The trap nobody warns you about: a readiness score creates a feedback loop. People start sleeping badly because they are anxious about what the watch will say in the morning. If you notice yourself checking the score before deciding how you feel, turn the glance off for a fortnight.
What else it does well
Multi-band GPS is the quiet upgrade that matters most for accuracy. In cities with tall buildings, or under dense tree cover, it holds a track far better than single-band. If your runs have ever produced a map showing you swimming through a building, this fixes it.
Music on the watch, with offline playback from the major streaming services, means running without a phone is genuinely practical.
Race Predictor and running dynamics — cadence, ground contact time, vertical oscillation and stride length — give real feedback for anyone working on form rather than just fitness.
Two sizes. The 265S is meaningfully smaller, which matters more than spec sheets admit. A watch that is too large for your wrist gives worse heart rate readings, not just a worse look.
Where it falls short
Wrist heart rate under load. Improved and still imperfect. For intervals and anything with sharp changes in effort, a chest strap remains meaningfully more accurate. This is true of every wrist optical sensor, not just Garmin’s.
Garmin Connect. The app is powerful and cluttered, and finding a specific setting is an exercise in patience.
It is not a smartwatch. Notifications work, replies are limited, and the app ecosystem is thin compared to Apple or Wear OS. If you want a wrist computer, this is not it.
Its age. This is not a new release, and newer Forerunners exist above it. That is largely good news — it discounts heavily — but it does mean you are buying an established product rather than a current flagship.
What it does well
- Bright AMOLED screen with physical buttons kept alongside
- Multi-band GPS that holds a track in cities and forest
- Training Readiness and HRV Status give usable daily guidance
- Real battery life still measured in days, not hours
- Offline music makes phone-free running practical
What to think about first
- Real battery life is roughly half the headline figures
- Wrist heart rate still trails a chest strap during intervals
- Garmin Connect is powerful and genuinely cluttered
- Limited as a general smartwatch
- An older model, so check what has replaced it before paying full price
How it compares
| Option | Strongest at | Weakest at | Choose it if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forerunner 265 | Training metrics, GPS accuracy, battery | Smartwatch features | You follow a running plan |
| Forerunner 165 | Price, AMOLED, the basics | No multi-band GPS, fewer metrics | You run regularly but not seriously |
| Apple Watch / Wear OS | Apps, notifications, everything else | Battery, buttons, training depth | Running is one of many things you want |
| WHOOP 5.0 | Recovery and sleep analysis, no screen to obsess over | No GPS display, subscription model | You care about recovery more than pace |
That last row is a real fork. A screenless recovery tracker and a running watch answer different questions, and a number of people buy the watch when the honest problem was that they were not recovering.
Who it is for
Runners following a structured plan. The clearest case. Training load, readiness and race predictions all assume you are building toward something.
Anyone training in a city or under trees, where multi-band GPS turns unreliable data into reliable data.
Triathletes on a budget, since full multisport mode is included at a price well below Garmin’s triathlon-specific watches.
It is the wrong watch if you run occasionally for general fitness, if you want a proper smartwatch, or if you already own a recent Forerunner that works.
Check the current price
This model discounts heavily and the smaller 265S is often priced differently to the 265. Check both before deciding.
See the Garmin Forerunner 265 →
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Frequently asked questions
How long does the battery really last?
Is Training Readiness actually accurate?
Should I get the 265 or the 265S?
Do I still need a chest strap?
Is the AMOLED screen readable in sunlight?
Is it still worth buying, given newer models exist?
The verdict
The best-value serious running watch of its generation, and the AMOLED screen removed the last good reason not to buy Garmin. Halve the battery claims and it still comfortably outlasts anything from Apple. Buy it if you follow a plan; use Training Readiness as a tiebreaker rather than a rule; and check the current discount, because this one moves a lot.
Sources and method
Rated specifications are Garmin’s published figures. Real-world battery life reflects consistent measurements reported by independent reviewers, which fall well below the rated figures. Reports differ on sunlight readability, and we have said so rather than picking a side. We have not tested this watch ourselves and do not claim to have.