Forerunner 970

Garmin Forerunner 970 is a watch from 2025, sitting in the flagship band at an indicative $749.

It reads 21 of the 33 signals this comparison tracks. Full coverage of activity. Nothing at all from body composition. Rarer readings it does take: AFib detection, Body Battery and ECG recording.

By sensor class: 11 at high accuracy and 3 at consumer grade. That grade is my classification of the hardware, not a lab test. Those readings come from an optical heart rate sensor, ECG electrodes, an optical blood oxygen sensor, a skin temperature sensor, a GPS receiver, a barometer and an accelerometer. It records an ECG and screens for atrial fibrillation. Those are screening features, not a diagnosis. Blood oxygen is a spot reading you take yourself, not a continuous one.

Its 15 days per charge are the 40th longest of the 80 devices of its kind here that publish a figure. The AMOLED screen can stay always on. Multi-band GPS. Rated 5ATM / 50m, fine for swimming. It weighs 56 g. On top of the tracking it also handles music on the device, contactless payments and offline maps. Case size 47mm. No subscription is required.

May 2025 successor to the Forerunner 965 and the first Forerunner with the ECG app (region-gated). Titanium bezel, sapphire, offline maps, LED flashlight.