Garmin offers an enormous selection of sports watches, which makes it overwhelming when looking for one that best meets your needs and budget. The Forerunner 55 is right in the middle: it’s perfect not only for recreational athletes but also for regular fitness goers who want decent features without spending too much.
Currently, it can be found on Amazon for an all-time low of $148, reduced from $199, perfectly timed for this month’s upcoming Prime Day in October.
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A Feature-Rich Running Watch
This watch is designed to offer fitness tracking in a convenient and accessible manner without missing out on features. It tracks your heart rate from the wrist, and you get feedback about how hard your body is working while exercising (though it’s not a medical device). With built-in GPS, the Forerunner 55 tracks how far you run, how fast you run, and where you’ve run — all without having the phone on you.
During your workout, it trails a variety of activity to cover all the ways you move. Whether you run on the streets, cycle, track running, swim in a swimming pool, or virtual running, it has you covered. It is suitable for workouts such as Pilates, HIIT, and breathing exercises too. This makes it a smart friend to running, suitable for incorporating into overall fitness and well-being routines.
Watching out for your body’s response is a big part of staying in shape, and the Forerunner 55 is packed with well-being features. It tracks your fitness age, which gives an amusing estimate of how healthy your body is compared to your age, and it even tracks your breathing rate throughout the day. You can track intensity minutes (which helps to alert you to whether or not you’re achieving goals of moderate or hard effort) and other metrics that provide a clear indication of your overall health on a daily basis.
On race day, the PacePro feature helps you plan strategically with pace advice tailored to your selected course or distance. It even predicts your finish time for a race and offers training features to stay motivated and on track. Plus, every workout that’s prescribed is adjusted based on your training history and recovery time, so you have a personal coach on your wrist that knows how to push you just right.
Battery life is impressive as well, staying active for as long as two consecutive weeks in smartwatch mode and 20 hours of use with GPS enabled, so less concern over constantly recharging and greater liberty to concentrate on your workouts.
If you want to upgrade your fitness monitoring or at last get serious about monitoring your health, now is the time to do so.