Garmin Forerunner 255S GPS Running Smartwatch Powder Grey

Excellent watch. Very pleased with my purchase.You need to know that Amazon will send you a "one time password" and you need to give this to the delivery driver. They will not simply leave it in a safe place; they have to give it to you personally. Plan accordingly!This is my first sports watch, but I was familiar with the Garmin buttons because family members own different models. Set up was far easier than I expected. Using an Android phone I was able to download the app and get the watch up and running in about 5 minutes. Not difficult at all. Quite a relief.Setting the watch up exactly how you want it in terms of display, putting preferred activities in the right order, and so on, is quite intuitive, but best approached a bit at a time over the first few days as you get used to it.Many of these watches are shown in advertisements with all the information on the screen. However, it is easy to choose a simple, uncluttered, watch face that is easy to read at a glance when you are just using it as a watch. A nice touch is that a quick flick of the wrist is enough to light up the watch face for a few seconds. This means the light is off most of the time (to save battery) but comes on when you need it without having to press any buttons.My preferred activity is running. Press one button once to bring up the running screen. A few seconds later, it buzzes to confirm it has locked onto the GPS satellites. Press one button to start recording the run. Press the same button to stop recording. It's that simple. While you're running, it shows the information you need in simple clear format.I have mine set on metric, which means it pings and gives a "lap time" every 1 km. If I have my phone with me and the app open, it also gives me a voice update.The app on my phone gives me more information than I could ever need, but the basics are very easy to interpret.One slight irritation: you can set it on kilometres, or you can set it on miles. Like a lot of British people, I run in km, and cycle in miles, and there appears to be no way of getting the watch to do some activities in metric and some in "imperial". A work around is to have the watch set in metric, and the app on the phone in imperial. The same activity will then show in km on the watch and miles on the phone. Another work around is to do the simple arithmetic after the activity. However, I would have preferred the option to set different units for the different activities. A quick look at Garmin users' forums shows I am not the only one.Another slight irritation: although the steps counter is very accurate indeed when I am walking outside, it seems to record a small number of extra steps randomly when I am driving or on the motorbike. Over the course of a day, this may add 1,000 steps to the actual number I have walked. Also, working on the ground floor of a tall building, I find that it doesn't always record the steps I take indoors.The overall feel of the watch is good quality. The display is attractive, clear and easy to read, and the strap is simple, smart, and comfortable and very adjustable.Battery life so far has been excellent. I give it a few minutes' charge while I'm in the shower, and so far the display has never dipped below 13 days of battery life. That's when used as a watch. Battery life when recording an activity is of course less because it's doing more work.I am not a gadget person, and it took me a long time to decide to buy this. All I really wanted was a smart-looking watch with a clear analogue display, and the ability to record runs and cycle rides accurately. This does so much more, but I have very quickly come to appreciate it as an excellent bit of kit.

He’s found it a great watch for keeping track of his progress & training, very accurate gps, battery lasts well and is a good fit, not too heavy and looks great with the bigger screen. Definitely value for money even though it’s still an expensive item, the app is easy to use and has good functionality and you can programme runs and efforts too.

I absolutely love this watch. Prior to buying it I was wearing both a Forerunner 45 and a Whoop Band to get far less information combined than I now get from the Forerunner 255. It has allowed me to cancel my Whoop subscription so after about 8 months it will have paid for itself.The primary benefit of the watch is for running. It gives a ton of data I wanted it for - heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep metrics, oxygen levels, running pace, stride length and cadence (steps per minute) as well as a lot more data I didnt even expect such as vertical osciliation, ground contact time, respiration rate, stress level, advised recovery rates/times, training load analysis. For someone who loves analyzing data like I do its amazing and it's surprising that you dont have to pay a monthly fee to access everything on the app like you do with other brands like Whoop and Fitbit.Another great running feature is that it allows you to input your upcoming races and it will plan your running workouts out leading up to the event, reacting in real time to your running and health data and intelligently building up your training volume and then tapering off before a race. Like earlier Forerunners, it also has the Garmin Coach program where you can set parameters and do a full coaching plan from a selection of three professionals. I'd like to see them introduce a bit more variety on those as its the same line up as when I got my last Forerunner a few years ago, but its still a good feature.One unexpected feature that as a gym rat absolutely blew my mind was that it is fantastic for tracking weight training workouts. It tracks sets and reps, allows you to enter the weights used and is semi-reasonable at even guessing what exercise you are doing (maybe 40% accuracy on that but its easy to edit to the correct exercise). At the end of the workout it shows you the muscle areas worked, the total 'work time' (duration of the sets excluding rest time), the total amount of weight lifted as well as a load more data. I had no idea the watch did this and am really impressed. It's also very useful if you are trying to stick to a certain rest time between sets as it displays this very clearly.Another function I like is that it gives you a report every morning directly on the watch about the prior day (including sleep details and recommended training for the day). There's a suprising amount of data accessible directly on the watch compared to other similar devices I've used.I cant really be specific on how accurate the data is but it generally matches up to what I'd expect and have seen on prior devices. Probably the weakest area is the sleep recording as there's some nights where I know I'm awake more than it is registering and also it doesnt seem to register if you wake up and then go back to sleep in the morning (or track naps like Whoop does) but that's a minor grumble and sleep metrics are not a main reason why I use the watch.There's even more features than I've listed but these are the highlights for me. Its a really great watch that I dont hesitate to recommend, especially if you can pick one up when they are on offer like I did. The level of features included may be daunting to new users but its actually really easy to pick up as you go along and quite intuitive.

This watch really worth for those who seek to know more about the own body and track trainings. There's a lot of information around health that is helping me to achieve my goals. The battery is wonderful, even using for the whole day and night during 6 days, I still have 50% of battery that should be enough for more 5 days. I get all this data about my trainings, sleep, resting needed, recommended sleep based on level of activity, heart rate, speed on my runs, notifications from email, social media, messages etc. It's a complete gadget with the bonus of an awesome battery life. Better than my expectations and simple to use. Highly recommend!

I have had and used a few sports watches with this one of the best quality but the most expensive. It has many features with an excellent GPS. The only issue, in common with all the watches I have known, is that it does not pick up the different swim strokes or some drills. Overall I am very happy!