Editor’s note October 7, 2026: Garmin just announced the Enduro 4, it is on preorder and we have not yet tested it. The Enduro 3 is still available right now, and we stand behind it. There will be a forthcoming review of the fourth model.
The Forerunner 55 is also retired, but it’s still available on Amazon and other sites, and it’s still incredible. There’s a reason almost everyone on the Runner’s World team wears a Garmin—and not just for long runs. Reasons span far beyond the company’s history of making watches built specifically for runners and multisport athletes.
It’s the fact that they have built-in precision data and battery life that’s measured in days or weeks, instead of hours, into lightweight, easy-to-operate, insight-driven machines that just work. Yes, they can be pricey, and yes, your morning report may feel like the seventh grade gym teacher who bullied you, but overall, they are nearly impossible to beat, and as someone who tests running watches for a living, I’ve yet to find their superior. Every single Garmin on this list has logged real runs on my wrist through every conceivable condition short of running in outer space.
I’ve worn them on tempo days, track days, and those runs that last so long you start hallucinating armadillos in upstate New York. That firsthand testing matters, because not every watch is for every runner; the right one depends on how you train, how you recover, and how deep you want to dive into your data. The best Garmin running watch for most people isn’t the most expensive one.
The Forerunner 170 Music edition comes in at $349.99 and gets you a 43mm fiber-reinforced polymer case, a 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, Garmin’s Elevate Gen 4 optical heart rate sensor, barometric altimeter, compass, gyroscope, and 4GB of onboard music storage. That means phone-free Spotify, Amazon Music, or Deezer through your wireless headphones, plus Garmin Pay. Combine those specs with up to 10 days of battery, training plans, sleep tracking, and proper advanced training metrics, and the value math just stops making sense for anything pricier, at least for most runners.
I’ve been running with it for over 60 miles now, and it disappears on the wrist compared to the heavier 265. The AMOLED screen is crisp and readable mid-stride even in harsh sunlight, the five-button layout was not hard to maneuver even when I was sweaty and gross, and queuing up a playlist from my wrist before a long run could not be simpler. And yes, I tested it 24 hours per day so I could check out just how bad my sleep is, and to see if the 170 would bully me as hard as my 970.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
