I spent a month evaluating Garmin’s premier running watch to determine if the Forerunner 970’s precision and new functionalities justify its cost.
The Garmin Forerunner 970 is the running watch you choose when you seek no compromises. Primarily, this pertains to new features such as running tolerance, impact load, and projected race time, in addition to all the training load tools you appreciate. However, you are also investing $750 for the utmost accuracy.
So, what levels of accuracy does the Garmin Forerunner 970 deliver for GPS tracking, heart rate, step count, and supplementary data like training load? I assessed its Elevate v5 HR sensor, dual-band GPS, and various other sensors over weeks of activities, comparing its findings against satellite maps, chest and arm HR straps, and my usual step-counting application.
The final outcome? The Forerunner 970 is impressively precise. It provides trustworthy health and fitness data from workouts and subsequently outputs data from its algorithm that forecasts your cardiovascular and biomechanical fatigue with remarkable accuracy.
It’s unfortunate that the price of the Forerunner 970 is quite steep, but Garmin makes a commendable effort to justify it.
Garmin Forerunner 970: Heart rate accuracy
During multiple runs, I utilized my Polar H10 chest strap and COROS HRM armband as control groups alongside the Forerunner 970. In my experience, optical armbands are more reliable and reactive than wrist-based optical sensors, serving as a solid comparison point. While chest straps are considered the standard, smartwatches typically lag behind; your best bet is to expect results that are close.
Initially, I employed the Forerunner 970 and Polar H10 on a brief jog to a track, followed by an intense track workout. For the first activity, both devices recorded a 145bpm average and 157bpm max, which I would anticipate for such a short run.
The chart illustrates that the Forerunner 970 reacts swiftly when my heart rate increases, but it is about 10 seconds slower to acknowledge declines in heart rate compared to the chest strap.
(Side note: Polar tracks HR during a pause, yet the exported graph weirdly presents a flat line. Just overlook these; they do not influence the results.)
The real challenge arises during anaerobic workouts; most fitness watches I’ve tested significantly underperform in comparison to my actual HR, often nearing the chest strap average due to inaccurately high HR readings during cooldowns. However, the Forerunner 970 exceeded my expectations.
As demonstrated, the Forerunner 970 consistently stayed within 1–2 bpm of the chest strap, only having slight difficulty keeping pace during rapid HR increases after a pause.
For context, mainstream watches like the Galaxy Watch Ultra or Pixel Watch 3 struggle considerably with anaerobic tracking, falling short by 5–10 bpm for extended periods and distorting the data. Even fitness watches such as the COROS PACE Pro and Polar Vantage M3 face issues with anaerobic data.
The Forerunner 970 concluded with an HR average just 1 bpm lower than the H10 strap, but what matters to me is that I can trust the Forerunner 970 to provide accurate information in the moment when I glance at my wrist mid-sprint and check my heart rate. That’s surprisingly uncommon!
Next, I ran with my Garmin Forerunner 970 and COROS PACE Pro synced with my COROS HRM strap over a ten-mile run. Notably, the 970 reported my minimum, average, and maximum heart rate as 1 bpm higher than COROS’s results.
These graphs are well-aligned; Garmin simply detected that I was exerting slightly more effort than COROS. The discrepancy is so minor that it wouldn’t impact your training load data.
Ultimately, I would assert that the Forerunner 970’s Elevate v5 sensor demonstrates a slight inclination to overestimate my heart rate by about 1 bpm; however, it remains as reliable as I would hope for in this price range. I don’t feel compelled to use an external HRM with the 970 for optimal results, which is something I cannot typically claim with most fitness watches.
Garmin Forerunner 970: GPS accuracy
Garmin watches equipped with dual-band GPS consistently perform flawlessly in my assessments. Knowing that the Forerunner 970 would align with its counterparts, I focused on testing whether its default SatIQ mode — which relies on GPS only until it requires additional satellites to conserve battery — was sufficient, or if runners should solely utilize dual-band GPS.
For my ten-mile run, I selected “Best accuracy” on both my Forerunner 970 and COROS PACE Pro; both concluded at 10.01 miles and exhibited an insignificant gap of six feet at the end. It’s fantastic to see both brands so closely aligned over
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