Garmin Forerunner 165 Music Review: The Sensible Running Watch

The Forerunner 165 Music is Garmin doing something it rarely does: putting a proper AMOLED screen, a barometric altimeter and real training analysis into a watch that costs around £205. For years the entry-level Forerunner was a compromise you tolerated until you could afford a 255. This one is not. Garmin has been careful about which features it withheld, and most of them sit in the analysis layer rather than the running itself, which means the 165 does the actual job of a running watch almost as well as models costing double.

Who it is for

Runners who train regularly, race occasionally, and do not need a map on their wrist. That covers a lot of people. Garmin positions it as an essential running watch with a bright touchscreen, up to 11 days of battery and music on the wrist, which is a fair description of what you get.

It is the wrong watch for trail and ultra runners, who need mapping and longer GPS battery, and for triathletes, since the 165 lacks proper multisport transitions. It is also unnecessary for someone who runs twice a week and wants pace and distance; a cheaper Forerunner does that.

What Garmin kept, and what it took away

The kept list is longer than the price suggests. HRV status runs overnight and feeds the morning report, daily suggested workouts adapt to your recent training and recovery, Garmin Coach plans handle 5k through half marathon, and wrist-based running power arrives without a footpod. The barometric altimeter is the quiet highlight, since elevation measured by air pressure beats GPS estimation by a wide margin on hilly routes.

The missing list is where Garmin protects the 265. There is no multi-band GNSS, so tracks wander a little more under tree cover and between tall buildings than they would on a pricier watch. Training Readiness, Training Status, the race widget and real-time stamina are all absent. Detailed maps are absent too, leaving breadcrumb navigation and loadable GPX files.

Whether that matters depends entirely on how you train. Someone running known routes in a market town will never notice the GNSS difference. Someone doing tempo work along the Thames between office blocks will.

The screen and the battery

A 1.2 inch AMOLED at 390 by 390 pixels is the same technology as watches costing three times more, and the difference in daylight legibility against the old transflective Forerunners is obvious. The touchscreen is responsive, the physical buttons remain for sweaty hands and gloves, and Garmin sensibly kept both.

Battery figures hold up. Eleven days in smartwatch mode assumes gesture wake rather than always-on, and four runs a week lands most people around 8 or 9 days. Streaming music to Bluetooth headphones is the big drain: expect roughly 7 hours of GPS with music playing against the 19-hour figure without.

At 39g it disappears on the wrist, which matters more for sleep tracking than for running. Plenty of people buy an expensive watch and stop wearing it overnight because it is a brick; this one you forget about.

Accuracy in practice

The Elevate V4 optical sensor is Garmin's current mainstream design and it behaves the way every wrist sensor behaves. Steady running tracks closely; short intervals and cold weather cause lag and the occasional cadence lock. Validation research in BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine found wrist-based monitors correlate strongly with reference measures during walking and running, which matches what owners report for steady efforts.

If your training plan revolves around heart rate zones, buy a chest strap and pair it over Bluetooth. Our heart rate monitor guide covers which ones are worth it. For everyone else, the wrist sensor is fine.

Against the alternatives

The obvious internal comparison is the Garmin Forerunner 265, which costs substantially more and adds multi-band GNSS plus the training analysis suite. If you race seriously and read your training data every morning, that gap is worth paying for. If you run, log it and glance at your weekly mileage, it is not.

Outside Garmin, the COROS PACE Pro undercuts the 265 with a brighter screen and free offline maps, losing contactless payments and app ecosystem. Anyone building a base of 150 minutes of moderate activity a week rather than chasing race times should look further down the range again, since the 165's training tools go largely unused at that level.

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