First things first. I enjoyed using the Garmin Forerunner 645 Music for a peculiar reason: It doesn’t have a touchscreen. The fitness-cum-smartwatch is controlled using a set of five buttons on its sides, and it reminded me of the digital watches we grew up wearing that came with stopwatches and the much-coveted ‘digital’ light.

Fitness geeks and serious and professional runners will vouch for Garmin products being up there with the Fitbits. The amount of information the Forerunner 645 Music provides a user is humungous. You get onscreen road and elevation maps to chart out your runs, VO2 readouts, distance, lap time, pace, and the amount of time you have spent in an individual effort zone (based on heart rate). Some of this data is available on the watchscreen itself and for the rest along with the advanced stuff, there’s the Garmin Connect smartphone app.

Connection is simple enough. Just download the app and sync the Forerunner to it using Bluetooth. The sidebar of the app lets users select and view data on different activities such as walking, running, cycling, and even swimming. There’s Yoga as well, for the enthusiasts. Users can even create training plans and workouts on the app. However, users will have to manually indicate the start of an activity and there’s no automatic detection.

Needless to say, all these features and the information serves a serious running and fitness enthusiast really well, but can be quite a handful and difficult to understand for someone using it just for the basics. If you fall in the latter category, the Forerunner 645 music will measure your steps, distance covered, and calories burnt to the ‘T’, keep a good track of your heart rate and stress levels, measure your sleep cycle accurately, and track your runs well. Heart rate is continuously measured and the readings were within a few beats when compared to the Forerunner’s peers.

The fitness watch can automatically tune the day’s step-count goals based on how much you’ve logged in the previous day. This is a boon as the watch is practically shaming you into achieving your goal, reducing it when you haven’t hit the target. You can almost hear it mocking you saying, “10,000 steps too much for you? All right, do 8,000 today.” Needless to say, this gamified the experience for me and I found myself jogging that one km extra just to say, “Ha! I got this.” Another feature that keeps users on their toes is the ‘move bar’, which buzzes when it gets full (when you haven’t moved). There are also different kinds of badges users can earn on accomplishing goals, which further gamify the experience.

Now, coming to the music bit. More and more fitness watch-makers are including music capabilities on their products so users don’t have to lug their smartphone or a music player along. The Forerunner 645 Music allows you to add songs directly from your computer. Users have to download the Garmin desktop app to do so, however, and that could get a little cumbersome. I had a few unsuccessful attempts before I could finally figure it out. The fitness watch offers over 3 GB of space to store songs so you can easily add enough music to keep you entertained. The watch pairs easily enough with Bluetooth earphones, but I did notice the connection getting severed sometimes. As far as Bluetooth connectivity goes, another peculiarity I noticed was that when my phone was connected to the Forerunner and my Bluetooth headset at the same time, the connection between the phone and the headset kept getting severed. This problem did not arise when the Forerunner wasn’t connected to my phone. The watch’s display is vivid and bright, and its legibility under different lighting conditions is also good. It displays notifications, messages and mails when connected to the phone quite nicely and clearly, and also offers quick reply options. Battery life on the Forerunner 645 Music is very good. I had to forget about charging it for a good five days despite moderate to heavy usage. It comes with a comfortable silicone strap, so you can keep it on for long.

Many may balk at the price, but Garmin makes no bones about the fact that this is a serious and professional device for runners and comes at a cost. Regular users, however, don’t really need something this packed with features. This one is strictly for the professionals and super enthusiasts.

Price: ₹39,990 (cheaper on some online stores)

Pros: Great battery, direct music playback, host of features and information for runners

Cons: Bluetooth connection iffy, loading music can be cumbersome

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