The Garmin Forerunner 745 smartwatch has many design similarities like Forerunners 35, Garmin 235, and Garmin 935. It is considered a device that offers many new experiences from the innovations brought by Garmin. This watch focuses primarily on triathlon tracking, making it perfect for users who are passionate about sports or professional athletes.
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Design and Display
The Garmin Forerunner 745 has a classic round face look, but thanks to a few fine touches that make the watch more stylish and modern. Owning a rather large appearance may limit some small wrists, the screen is relatively bright when displayed, and some buttons to navigate the interface. Thanks to these buttons, they help you control the more easily, and not too difficult to learn the device.
Except for the Garmin Venu watches, most other Garmin sports watches have a solid and dynamic appearance. Although looking at the appearance, you can see that they are quite pitiful, but in fact, they are very light and easily worn on many users’ wrists. The 44mm case size has a thickness of about 13.3mm. The silicon strap is quite soft, breathable, and suitable for long-term training.
You will get four colors on the Garmin Forerunner 745: Black, Whitestone, Red, and Tropic. The four versions have the same color as the bands, but it will be annoying for some users who want to change to other bands.
Although not equipped with a touch on the screen, the display level is excellent even when outdoors, thanks to the display screen in-pixel memory (MIP) switch. Brightness is, of course, adjustable in the settings, and thousands of other third-party watch faces are available in the Garmin Connect IQ app.
Performance and Battery
After a period of use, the Forerunner 745 works extremely well in terms of battery life. Whether you use it in sports mode or regular mode, Garmin’s always-on display (AOD) provides the essential data. The company claims that the Garmin Forerunner 745’s battery can last up to 7 days in smart mode, up to 6 hours when using GPS and listening to music. But if you only operate GPS, it can be up to 16 hours.
In this case, triathletes or marathon runners need a greater amount of battery life while on the move. In UltraTrac mode, it can help increase your time up to 21 hours.
In terms of performance, you can rest assured as they perform quite well and have no lag on clock apps. Phone notifications are also easily found on the smartwatch screen.
Like most Garmin smartwatches, the Garmin Forerunner 745 is equipped with five buttons. Two buttons on the right and three buttons on the left, the top left button has the function to wake up, brighten the screen with one press or show some features like a phone finder, timer, clock hours, and support.
The center button scrolls up for convenient viewing of heart rate control panels, step count, notifications, body battery, weather, and more. The bottom button allows you to navigate the screen with a single press and push of a button. That will display the music player. The top right button allows you to switch to exercise mode and start a workout, and the bottom right button is mainly used as the home button.
Track your Fitness and Exercise
As mentioned, Forerunner 745 is aimed at elite athletes, including long-distance runners, cyclists, triathlon athletes, and heavy bodybuilders. Using it, you get basic features, including step count, heart rate, and sleep analysis.
We compared the Forerunner 745 and the Fitbit Charge 3 to the fitness tracking modes after finding Garmin to be somewhat more accurate. The display is always on display, even outdoors, giving me clear information on distance, speed, and time. All the data are adjustable on-screen. They depend on what you want to see after your workout.
As can be seen, where this smartwatch can shine the most is its cutting-edge fitness tracking capabilities. You’ll get the ability to track respiration rate, SpO2, exercise time, and calories burned. Garmin Forerunner 745 also supports high-intensity exercises such as strength, cardio, yoga, pilates, etc…
Users who run regularly may be interested in monitoring their heart rate, running dynamics, and running speed. For cycling, it is possible to track cycling courses and measure FTP or active capacity. And swimmers can track all the water activity metrics, receive pool cadence alerts. Not only that, but the watch can calculate recovery time, load, and workout efficiency, not to mention you get instructions and track live segments from Garmin and Strava.
Additional features
This Garmin smartwatch comes with many features, some of which you will love.
Like the Apple Watch, the Garmin Forerunner 745 can detect accidents and provide emergency notifications about your location. This is beneficial for users to exercise and convenient for times when you are not connected to the phone. This also includes a phone finder feature, and you should be sure that you will get your phone ringing pretty loud.
While it’s a fitness watch, it can handle contactless payments, and it’s even more convenient than Google Pay or Samsung Pay on your phone.
Garmin supports music playback with built-in music storage and works with some different services like Spotify and Amazon Music. Plus, you get quick button access to launch music apps. It’s more convenient for going out without carrying your phone and can help you connect a Bluetooth headset. Also, comprehensive health monitoring, including stress and body battery level, gives you essential data and is quite interesting in this feature.
Conclude
This is the Garmin Forerunner 745 smartwatch equipped with advanced training features but is relatively cheap compared to other wearable devices. What’s better that the battery life can last up to a week or more when using the battery-saver mode, which means you don’t have to worry about daily charging like the Apple Watch models.
