Heena Sharma Blog

  American activity tracker and sports watch maker Garmin recently launched in India its Forerunner 55 . Aimed at runners, this smartwatch is a successor to the company's budget-oriented health and fitness tracker the Forerunner 45. Priced at Rs 20,990, the Forerunner 55 brings meaningful upgrades over the predecessor with regard to design, features and utility. So does it make a good upgrade? Let’s find out: Design and build The smartwatches in the Forerunner series look identical, albeit few changes here and there. That said, the Forerunner 55 does not bring any drastic design changes. There are in total of five physical buttons familiarly placed -- three on the left side and two on the right. The Forerunner 55 has a 42mm plastic case with a 1.04-inch transflective display (208 × 208 pixels resolution) on the top, surrounded by thick bezels. The watch’s transflective display lacks the brightness, thus, suffers from sunlight legibility issues. It takes some effort to read th...

I have used a number of fitness wearables over the years, but each left something to be desired as a companion for fitness tracking. That was until I used the Garmin Forerunner 245 Music . This WiFi- and GPS-enabled sports smartwatch is geared for those fitness aficionados who take their data seriously. That, however, is not to say that it won’t appeal to fancy or casual runners. It indeed comes across as a complete smartwatch with something for all fitness enthusiasts. Priced at Rs 34,990, the Forerunner 245 offers a slew of performance-monitoring features. In addition, it has widgets for heart rate, step count, workout, notifications, music, maps, etc. The feature that really excited me was that I could sync my music with the smartwatch and finally leave my phone behind while running, cycling or doing any other such activity. You can choose a music service from either Spotify or Deezer but you would need a premium account on these platforms. I used the 245 Music with Blaup...