8 best Garmin watches for every type of athlete

The first thing we noticed about the vivoactive 5 was its sleek, streamlined design. You could wear it day and night and it wouldn’t detract from your outfit. Once on, we loved that it weighed next to nothing (23g, to be precise), which meant we barely noticed it on the wrist.

It can track a wide range of fitness metrics, including steps, heart rate, distance, calories burned, sleep quality, and more than 30 preloaded sports. We were also impressed by its sleep coaching capability, as it gives you a sleep score and personalised sleep coaching. Priced competitively, it offers a lot of features for £270 and is easy to sync to Garmin Connect for more insights and coaching plans.

The vioactive 4 is a seriously stylish smartwatch, as well as being one of the best value for money Garmin releases. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or a fitness enthusiast just starting out, the vivoactive 4 has you covered. It tracks a wide range of metrics, including heart rate, sleep, steps, calories burned, and distance travelled. It also features more than 20 preloaded sports apps, so we were able to track workouts for a variety of activities, including running, swimming, cycling and yoga.

A built-in GPS allowed us to track location and distance travelled during runs and cycle rides, while the pulse oximeter measured blood-oxygen saturation levels, so we could see how hard we were pushing.

We also enjoyed playing with all the different tracking features for sleep, the menstrual cycle and stress. The watch was able to detect higher levels of stress while we were standing up on a packed train during our commute, and it prompted us to do a breathing activity to calm down. We wouldn’t have done this had we not been prompted, and we were pleasantly surprised to see this feature on a watch costing less than £200.

Any runner knows it’s not how many hours you train that determines race performance, it’s how smart you train. The forerunner 265 can help with that, with a training readiness feature that tells you when you’re prime for peak performance. We enjoyed receiving personalised workout plans each day, which motivated us to get out and run, as we knew they were helping us get faster and stronger.

The large AMOLED display was a dream to read during runs, keeping us informed of our progress in real time. It’s customisable data fields and intuitive interface made it easy to track essential metrics such as pace, distance, and heart rate during workouts, too.

Admittedly this is not the cheapest of watches, but the data it offers is staggering. Once we strapped it to our wrist and wore it for just 24 hours, we had a whole host of numbers about recovery, health, training readiness, optimal training zones, stress levels and more.

For cycling, it tracks in minute detail every second of your workout. To start, select your cycling activity from bike, indoor bike, gravel bike cyclo-cross, MTB, ebike, bike commute and bike tour. Then customise the data screens for each activity, to see time, speed, power and navigation at a glance. The map feature blew our minds. Use it in real time to navigate your route from your wrist or use it in advance to plan courses or navigate to a place of interest. It’s a safe way to explore some new cycle paths, without fear you’ll get lost.

Whether you’re a new player or you have a seriously impressive handicap that you’re trying to whittle down, this watch could save you a lot of money in coaching fees. It acts as a virtual caddy, suggesting the best club to use, based on your performance and the wind conditions, as well as tracking your putts and providing statistics on your putting accuracy.

An innovative shot dispersion chart will help you visualise potential hazards, based on your club choice. We’re not seasoned golf pros, but we did like the wind speed and direction data that gave us a bit of help working out where to aim.

We also tried to use the pin pointer feature, which is essentially a compass that points to the pin location when you are unable to see the green. This is designed to help good golfers line up a shot even if they are in the woods or in a deep sand trap. It was too advanced for us. We’d need a lot more hand-eye co-ordination to be able to line up a shot better and not just a watch, but we can see how it would help take your game to another level if you had some natural ability to start with.

With a beautiful French grey coloured strap and gold detail around the bezel, this watch looks the part. If you love to look your best when you work out, the venu 3S is the accessory to complete your outfit.

Don’t underestimate its powers, either. The venu 3S is a great tool if you’re stuck in a rut in the gym, as you can follow animated workouts that motivate you to leave the comfort zone behind. We loved that it presents health as a holistic concept, giving detail on overall energy levels, based on sleep, naps, stress levels, previous workouts and more. This alerted us to when we were in peak condition and ready to push a little harder, as well as giving us an excuse to take things easy.

It is on the pricier side but it did have the best connectivity out of all the watches we tested. With a built-in speaker and microphone, the venu 3S allowed us to make and take calls right from our wrist, when paired to the smartphone, as well as reply to texts by using our phone’s voice assistant.

This rugged and hardy watch combines the best features of a traditional analog watch with the latest smart technology, making it a perfect companion for outdoor adventures, such as kite surfing, hiking or skiing.

Thinking about climbing a mountain or going off the beaten track? One of the biggest positives of the instinct crossover solar is its long battery life. With solar charging, it can last for weeks on a single charge, making it ideal for extended trips off the grid.

It is also incredibly durable and water-resistant, so you can wear it in any condition, without having to worry about damaging it. One of our favorite features was the clock face, as the watch’s hands are pigmented with super-luminova black, which meant we could clearly read the time in any lighting conditions, even in complete darkness during dawn runs.

While it may hurt to spend almost £700 on a watch, you are getting a lot for the price. It’s pre-loaded with more than 40 activities and each offers expert tracking, recording and coaching detail.

For example, we tested it for running and enjoyed uploading routes and letting the fenix 7S guide us to a target time, telling us when we were going too fast and when we could push harder.

But it was after a session that we really appreciated what this watch has to offer, as you can see data such as estimated sweat loss, cadence, calories, and time spent in different heart-rate zones. We could track our progress with VO2 Max and training effect figures and recover smarter with analysis of weekly training load and recovery time.

It performed equally efficiently, to a dizzying level of detail, for strength training, cycle rides and swimming. If you do a lot of sport, or you’re training for a big event such as an Ironman, which means you’d take advantage of all the watch’s insights, it’s definitely worth the splurge.