Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar: Ultimate Triathlon Smartwatch

Excellent watch, worth every penny!
I was a little worried initially if this would look a bit small on my wrist. Something about a big bold watch on my wrist I was really drawn to. This watch fits just that and is a little more elegant than the Fenix line, in my opinion.My first Garmin watch was the Venu Sq Music, which I still currently use for work. Work is a bit physical, and I want to keep this watch for just my workouts, mainly running. The Venu Sq Music is a little small for my liking, but I really like the look and feel of this watch.I would personally recommend to get the solar option, but as others have said, if you never go outside it’s probably not needed. I ordered this watch mid Oct 2022, so not as many opportunities in WI to gauge the charging/maintaining abilities- I will have to wait for summer or a vacation for that. I did have a nice sunny day in late October here, and sitting for roughly 1hr in the sun charged a percent. Pretty decent in my opinion. I do not use any of the music, txt alert, or other Bluetooth options other than to sync to my phone every few days. Battery life is amazing. To a point that I actually have to think hard when my last charge was when it finally needs to be plugged in. I’m sure not using the Bluetooth alerts help a lot. I run just about everyday and use the GPS on run mode, so I still do challenge the battery a bit.Tons of features that I am still learning. The watch does take a few weeks to “learn you”. I take the training suggestions with a grain of salt, but have noticed suggestions are not all that far off from my pre-planned training program.I like the quick morning report each morning. Kinda fun to wake up and look at phone for this info.Sure it’s expensive but GPS tracking, battery life, and overall software/options on this watch are very expensive.I was on the fence at first, but very glad I pulled the trigger.

Good Tri Watch
I’ve purchased this watch about a year ago. I’ve used it in a couple races and definitely love having the solar charging. I get about a week and half to two weeks of usage without needing a charge. If you are new to Garmin, it does take some time to figure out all of the toggling, and at times it can be frustrating setting up the screen profiles, but all in all it hasn’t let me down in over a year and the app and watch are very stable.

Fantastic smartwatch!
Long battery life, not especially gaudy or ugly, fantastic functionality and apps! Very pleased! I don’t know what their competition is doing, but it’s hard to go wrong with Garmin.

My first, and last, Garmin has stopped working in less than a week of use.
After spending a couple of weeks reading reviews I ended up deciding on he Garmin 955 over an Apple Watch. For the first few days i was enjoying the experience of looking at all the data it collects. I must say it is a really nice overall experience with monitoring HR, sleep, stress, running and biking sessions but it is definitely not built for strength workouts.After 5 days of use the watch froze, turned off and never switched back on. I tried everything to work around this (force restart, overnight charging) with no success. Please Google for “Garmin 955 Blue Triangle of Death” and you will see that the 955 does have a recurrent problem.I ended up returning the watch and I think I’ll never be confident enough to purchase another Garmin in the future 🙁

I’ve had this watch for a month now and here’s my honest review. My original watch was a cheap Fitbit, I bought a Samsung Galaxy active 3 which I liked but the battery was terrible, the watch was not durable and inevitably broke which made it completely unusable. I purchased a forerunner 245 music as my first Garmin watch. It was miles ahead of my previous watches. Garmin connect app is wonderful and free! Sleep and exercise tracking with many other things I didn’t even use. I was coming from an OLED display on my Samsung to the translucent display on the Garmin. That took a bit of getting used to but the less eye popping display was easy to let go for better battery life. My Garmin 245 lasted 3-4 days in my average use case which was great compared to my daily charging need of the samsung. I was looking for an upgrade however since I wanted more battery life, a bigger display and more features. In comes the Forerunner 955 Solar. For starters the sale price was amazing. $598 Cad after tax. This watch has given me the same translucent but bigger display, longer battery life, more features and exercise options including ice skating and hockey as options! I now have additional sleep tracking features like a sleep coach and sleep score. I have also started using a Garmin connect training plan which has been great. It gives me a workout routine to train for a certain time goal in a run all customizable. This isn’t just available on the 955 but all Garmin devices through the Garmin connect app.Now the advertised battery life is 21 days. If I was in battery saver mode not using any features I could probably get close to that. But I use all features except for sp02 sensor. I leave that off and will use it on demand if I want to. My current settings are, notifications on but no sound of vibration. I downloaded a watch face that I like on Garmin IQ store for free with all the information I wanted. It counts seconds and shows me solar juice as well as heart rate in real time. I can turn off that off to save more battery but I prefer the real time info.I use the GPS for my runs 3-4 times a week right now the runs last 30 mins or so. My only other workout I use GPS for is walks. I track all my workouts with 2 rest days a week. If I don’t listen to Spotify on my watch and I get strong sun for 4+ hours a day I got 12 days battery my first 2 weeks. On average I’ve been getting 7 days battery with weak sunlight. Yes I know it’s lower than advertised but with all my features that I like this is great and much better than previous watches I’ve had. I have a slightly larger wrist so the size I find looks good. I don’t find it a burden to wear all the time. Garmin’s have been stellar for me in terms of durability. I will have to be mindful of heat though since. I’m obsessed with trying to charge the watch in the sun but I’m mindful of over heating the battery.Great watch. I’d recommend to anyone! I even gave my FR 245 to my sister in law and she is using it now and loves it.

I’m really enjoying this watch. I use it to track running and cycling mostly and it’s been very good. Battery life is good, it’s sturdy and light on the wrist and has a tonne of features. The integration with the Garmin app is great. Very happy with this purchase, as even though the watch is a couple of years old, it’s still getting updates and the sensor package is great.