The excellent Garmin Forerunner 945 smartwatch is always on our radar, so we were excited to spot this fantastic Presidents Day deal on the excellent fitness watch at Walmart, with a fantastic 50% off, bringing it down from $600 to just $299.999. That’s a great deal on a superb watch.
When we tested the Garmin Forerunner 945 for our full review, we rated it really highly for many reasons. It can track your activities in 30 different sports, offers full-color maps for your outdoor adventures and is absolutely packed with health and performance monitoring features. And all this comes in a lightweight design, too. At just 50g, unlike some of the more ‘extreme adventure’ watches now on the market this is a watch you can wear and forget about, except when you don’t want to!
Of course, we’re always on the lookout for deals on the best fitness trackers in a whole variety of categories, but the Forerunner 945 really is a great watch for endurance runners. It’s certainly not the newest watch on the market — but then Garmin are constantly bringing out new models.
In fact, the Forerunner 945 was actually in our best smartwatch guide for some time but has now been superseded by the Forerunner 965. And that means we can absolutely vouch for its quality.
One of the best features of the Garmin Forerunner 945 is the ability to download music on to it for running, meaning you can leave your phone at home and still have inspirational tunes ringing in your ears.
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Back when we originally reviewed the Forerunner 945, our only gripe about the watch was the price — a problem this massive discount absolutely eliminates!
The watch has a superb battery life of 14 days (down to a still generous 36 hours with GPS mode enabled), its GPS sensor is very accurate and locks in really quickly, which is always a bonus for runners who hate waving their arms around in the arm when its cold outside or the race is about to start …
It has a lovely clear 1.2-inch screen with transflective display technology to ensure good visibility, even in bright sunlight. That is particularly useful when you are using color maps for navigation on outdoor runs or hikes.
It also features a whole host of the usual smartwatch and fitness tracker features, including wrist-based heart rate monitoring, advanced performance metrics, music storage and playback, sleep monitoring and more.
When it comes to music capacity on the Forerunner 945, you can store around 1,000 songs on the watch itself, which should be more than enough to see you through some pretty epic runs. This is a great bonus for runners who prefer not to rely on their phones.
It’s a great fitness watch and at 50%, a true bargain. As our full review said, “To put it simply, the Garmin Forerunner 945 is a top-class sports tracking and training analysis fitness tracker. I was pleasantly surprised at how some of its new key features enhanced my training during testing and by the general depth and accuracy provided by the watch when it came to recording core activities like running and biking.”
Key features: Accurate tracking, lightweight chassis, up to 14 days of battery life.
Price history: The Forerunner 945 has been on sale before, notably when Walmart was competing post-Amazon Prime Day. At one stage it dipped to its lowest ever price of $279 but $299 is still a great price.
Price comparison: Amazon offers the same model for $450, so Walmart certainly has it beat in this instance.
Reviews consensus: A comfortable, lightweight fitness tracker with plenty of metrics and onboard storage for music is great, and it’s even better at this price. Our review was full of praise for the Forerunner 945. It also incorporates smartwatch features like contactless payments for added convenience.
TechRadar: ★★★★ T3: ★★★★★ Live Science: ★★★★½
Buy it if: You want a fitness tracker with fantastic battery life and onboard music storage for long treks.
Don’t buy it if: You want to install third-party apps — you’ll need an Apple Watch or Google Wear OS device for that.
