Words on the Goods

Earlier this week Garmin announced the upcoming release of a new watch with music, the Forerunner 645.

As expected, DC Rainmaker is the place to go to learn more.

A few highlights:

• It weights 42.2 g, which is half the weight of the Fenix series and almost exactly the same as the Forerunner 235 (i.e., nice and light)
• Display resolution is 240 x 240, which is crisper than the FR 235, FR 630, FR 735XT, and identical to the FR 935 and Fenix 5
• It’s got write-based heart rate, VO2 max measurement, (some) GPS navigation, recovery time, race predictor, training effect, training load, advanced running dynamics, and all the other cool metrics you’d expect from Garmin’s higher-end watches
• The watch uses physical buttons rather than a touchscreen… preferred by many runners, including this one
• It’s overpriced (IMHO) at $449
• It tracks steps, sleep, resting heart rate, and lots more
• It tracks swimming, but not in open water, and it doesn’t include the triathlon tracking features that the 735XT and 935 do–this is perhaps the only real loss compared to those watches
• The watch stores up to 500 songs

The huge advantage to this watch, of course, is that you can listen to music without having to take along a phone or your barely-functioning iPod nano. The price point seems higher than it should be, but serious runners who can afford it would probably get their money’s worth out of the watch over a couple of years.

Here’s more at the Garmin product page. It’s also soon to be available at Amazon (affiliate link).