Garmin Connect™

As a non-athlete seeking to become more active, I correctly guessed that measuring what I do would be motivating for me. (I’m just that kind of person.) And this app, combined with a Garmin watch, measures SO MUCH! It threatened to be a bit overwhelming - but I’m just exploring new functions a bit at a time, and it’s fine. If you’re new to an activity, you’ll want an outside resource to learn how to start using that activity to build fitness. The app assumes you already know a lot about the activity. For me, the functions for sail racing, sail expedition, navigation and boating activities were ready-to-go. But I have a new goal of building aerobic fitness through biking, swimming & hiking, which I’ve never really done before. While the app & watch are definitely helping me, I need to find an external resource that starts at the beginning about how to train with these activities for my goals. That entry layer of info isn’t in the app’s Help resources. But once I learn WHAT to do, I’m highly confident the app & watch are going to help me do it. I’m confident because the every-day measures they log (intensity minutes, steps, stairs climbed, sleep, etc) has already been really useful. Since they’re more or less automatic, they were a good place to start learning how to use the watch & app. Now I’ve started with swimming, and we’ll see where it goes…

This app has been with me for the better part of five years now. I’ve been through two devices, the Garmin Tactix Bravo and the Tactix Delta solar, both great watches with a lot of functionality. However without the use of the garmin connect app I wouldn’t be able to really dial in my training the way I do today. One of the coolest features is being able to import your own Gpx file to the app and side load to your device for custom routes that you can build from various running websites. Additionally the ability to utilize the virtual coaches have helped me become a far better runner than I could have been on my own. By using the coaching I’ve now completed multiple 5ks a 10k and I’m working my way through a half Marathon plan now. Over all this app has a smooth feel. The customizable Home Screen allows me to see all the data that I want and none that I don’t/ or do not care about. I also really like the “social media” part of the app through what’s called “connections”. Me and a few of my buddies are on similar training plans and it’s really motivating to see who’s cranking out the most miles in a week. This is the first review I’ve ever made on an app and that should be pretty compelling information because I’m one of those people who rides off the backs of other honest reviews. If you’re not using this app in tandem with your garmin device, you’re really missing out.

I recently purchased a Garmin Forerunner 235, and I enjoy everything about it! It is so useful. It is lightweight, tells you your heartbeat, your VO2 max, recovery time, your aerobic training, and more. I didn’t realize all of the features I wanted were on the watch (there is no swimming, but I don’t really care). The app is what makes the watch so cool, and it makes it easy to see your mileage. Also, there are badges that you can get, and it makes the workouts feel like a game sometimes, trying to earn the badges. My mom now really wants one of these watches. I guess the downsides are that the watch dies after around three days, with you recording a workout session in all three days that last for around an hour. I don’t know how accurate the Garmin watch is, but I’m just glad that the features are there, because if I wanted more accuracy I would need to go and make myself uncomfortable for the day (heart rate while sleeping, deep and light sleep tracker, heart rate while running, etc). Sometimes it’s uncomfortable after wearing the watch snug for a couple of days. The “move!” Thing on the watch is a little annoying, but the pros outweigh the cons by far, and you even might be able to disable it. All in all, this is a great brand, and if you are obsessed with health and working out, I would recommend this brand for a lot of people. I got my watch on Black Friday for $150, and I don’t regret it at all.

The application is a good tool for measuring your performance and progress over time. If you are looking for a useful guide for keeping track of your performance this is a great resource to get on the right path. The analytics are sufficient enough to map out your progress day-by-day, weekly, monthly, and annually. Having access to your analytics will provide you with the necessary insights to adjust your daily workout routine. There are several pros to account for rather than simply focusing on what I desire to blame my lack of motivation on. This application is as good as the person putting it to use. Mapping, heart rate data, distance data. pace data, etc. I am satisfied with the application in the light of if being a free resource. The overall gain is not something to take lightly. It is a complex process of creating the metrics and measuring your performance without a tool like the Garmin application. Lastly, information gathered in this application is immediately accessible in my Strava account. Thank you, Garmin application team for your efforts and hard work! You have made an impact on my fitness journey. My level of fitness helps me to influence people’s desire for fitness and wellness. I must give you credit for improving my influence on others. Thank you for all that you do! It is a physical and social capital gain without having to pay a premium cost.

I’ve been a long time Fitbit user. I needed to switch since Google took over. They started making things obsolete. But those issues are for Fitbit. But First with this app: when I’m up doing something such as washing dishes, cooking, vacuuming I get an alert “take a break and move” what more do you want out of me? I’m moving and sometimes sweating. I did notice that I don’t get near as many steps using my Garmin versus Fitbit. It’s drastically different. I can walk around vacuuming my watch on my left arm and sweeping with my right. Obviously I’m walking. But no steps are counted. Like I said before it will tell me to “take a break and move” I would like to see “Stretching” as an activity. As of now I just use “Yoga” Really dislike the “Strength” activity. Super annoying to have to keep clicking my watch every time I start and stop between sets. The sleep I don’t feel is accurate at all. For example I can lay down in my bed at 10:00pm toss and turn and not go to sleep until midnight. But the app says I was in REM. I could have been thumbing through the watch and it still tells me I was sleeping. I can also get out of bed and walk to the kitchen or bathroom. Sometimes it counts steps and other times my sleep says I was in another part of a sleep cycle. I also noticed it doesn’t pick up any naps. I can also wake up lay in bed and look at my phone for 20 minutes or so. Again the app says I was sleeping up to the moment I open Garmin app.

I recently switched to Garmin after having Fitbit for years and trying Apple Watch briefly. I love the Garmin watch. It has all the features I want without a bunch of excessive junk. The app, however, I don’t love. My biggest complaint is it seems to be constantly syncing, as in it never completes a sync while I’m viewing my stats on the app. I went for a run for the first time with my watch and I don’t have my stats bc it said I had to sync to the app first. No. Track my run and sync after. I will not stand around delaying my workout while I wait on technology to catch up. I also haven’t quite figured out the interface. It seems straightforward- I think I how where to find something, but then I’m wrong. For example, I wanted to turn off sleep pulse ox to conserve battery while on a trip. It was super simple to turn on, but I gave up on day two of trying to figure out how to turn it off. Fortunately, my battery lasted just fine with it on. I turned off menstrual cycle tracking bc it was completely incorrect. I reported a 28 day cycle and it had a predicted period 6 days after my last reported period. A drag and drop reorder would be nice for the ‘my day’ snapshot. I guess there’s probably a way to rearrange the order but I haven’t figured it out.. UPDATE: I figured out the ‘my day’ reordering. It is a drag and drop but it was phone screen issue and wasn’t working for me. I just deleted everything and added them in the order I wanted.

So far, I have found three bugs with the new version of this program, and I have only had it less than a day. Apparently it wasn’t beta tested. Yesterday after my run, I went to log my data and before I could get into the program, I had to accept a new version of the program. I had no choice I couldn’t keep the old version. In the new version, I am locked into a mode that does not fit me. Supposedly there are three display modes, but two of the three are not available to me. Just now I found a bug where my calorie data does not display on the main tab in the main screen, but if I press on that tab, then I can see my data. on the main screen just is empty as I have no calorie data I found another bug last night while chatting with Garmin Support. The person seems surprised that I could find any because her phone didn’t act that way. In the middle of our conversation to go to lunch or go home or something and she disconnected our chat. I always like the old version of this program and this new version is laid out in a very poor manner and the data I want is hidden several clicks away. They should’ve tested this before they released it. They should’ve given you a choice to update or not update. If they were going to force you to update and you had to choose one of three modes and never be able to change that mode, they should’ve let you preview the modes. Have garments for almost 20 years and this is the most unprofessional planned I have ever seen.

I have 2 main complaints with the app…one is that you have to log into the app and “accept” personal records in order for the watch to recognize a new one later on. Logically it would seem that if that’s my PR then it should automatically recognize it without me having to take the step to accept it. It would make more sense to have the ability to decline the PR after the fact if someone wants to rather than requiring everyone else to “accept” them. The other issue is that there’s no way to view your 5k/10k time on a longer run unless it’s a personal record (and you’ve accepted all previous PR’s) or you are physically looking at the watch during your run to see the time when it hits 3.11 or 6.22 which is just annoying. For example, if you’re like me and have too much OCD to log a 3.11 mile run and instead choose to run 3.5 miles, you can’t see what your 5k time was after the fact unless it was a personal record. Many others online have the same complaint and the only workaround I’ve seen is downloading a competitor app and synching your watch to that as well. It just seems silly that Garmin doesn’t have 5k/10k times viewable on each run since it’s such a popular analysis point and is obviously an issue for many users.

I recently upgraded from the Forerunner 35 to the Venu sq. I had an Apple watch for a minute and quickly discovered that it couldn’t do what my garmin did, so the Apple Watch went back and the Venu sq was purchased. Still trying to decide if i love the Venu Sq, as the Forerunner was so much simpler to use, but the Venu provides so much data that i love, like stress tracking, O2, etc. I really wish the Venu had more exercise options like HIIT or “functional”strength training. The strength training option from Garmin is frustrating with the reps, just simply time my workout. I wish setting up my walk/run intervals while running was simpler than going into another menu. Why isn’t that option there when i go into run? I can’t seem to figure out how to pause a run. Does it auto pause? What happens when i have to wait at a traffic light? Can i scroll through my text messages. Some just show half a message. Why can’t i scroll down? The watch just isn’t very intuitive. I’ll keep reading the manual, but i think improvements could be made. If there wasn’t so much other data that i like, i would be tempted to go back to my Forerunner. 🤔

Please bring back the old version. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a thousand times better than this new update/downgrade. The new version is buggy, clunky, and dysfunctional overall. Users used to be able to see all their categories and stats on the home tab; now we have a limited number, and we have to swipe through these categories to see the data. I strongly preferred to see everything at once, and would like the option to revert to the previous version. Second, this “update” sometimes loses my data! When I first installed the update, it lost all my women’s health data —several years’ worth!! Although I did manage to find a solution online from other women who dealt with this, it’s unacceptable and frankly sexist for Garmin to have released this “update” that deleted women’s health data. Also, the app sometimes tells me I have no training status and temporarily deletes other important data. Finally, it won’t let me reschedule workouts through Garmin coach. I’m doing the half marathon training program and sometimes I want to reschedule today’s workout until tomorrow—this used to work fine, but now it doesn’t. It won’t let me reschedule until tomorrow at all anymore. I used to love this app for the most part, and I don’t understand why they went forward with these changes when it clearly wasn’t ready to be released. I’d like to revert to the old version please. :(

The new update is terrible. It’s like someone designed it who dosnt run or cycle or swim. It dosnt prioritize your workouts you’ve done today or yesterday, the maps of what you did are laughable being about 1/2 an inch instead of what used to be 1.5inches on the main screen as soon as you opened the app. Under the new organization I had to select what is important which was already displayed previously but now is an option for some reason. It’s like someone who sits behind a desk and never trains made this layout. There is a significant amount of negative/blank spaces on the tiles, it’s disorganized and lots of scrolling/swiping to see values of things you want to see. Garmin is a fitness specific app yet they are tailoring it to people who dosnt care about fitness or data, if I didn’t care about fitness and data I wouldn’t have purchased a garmin. Don’t forget who your paying customers actually are, the ones who run out to buy your new watches, cycling computers and pedals etc, were the ones who actually use this app every single day but you’ve changed it to a more casual fitness vibe which dosnt align with your products or marketing. Make a second app for people who don’t want all the data and leave us hardcore users alone, we want to love you and we want to use you but you’re making that very difficult right now. Just head over to garmins Reddit page, you’ll see how your real customers feel.

I have a vivoactive 3 for 1.5 yrs. Until recently I owned a edge 520 for roughly 4 years. The 520 does the basic features ok but when you want to use an advanced feature, it might work it might not. Both are plagued with constant glitches. I couldn’t handle the edge 520 reoccurring issues. When the charging usb port broke I got a refurbished 520 and gave it to a friend who was new to cycling. I switched to a wahoo roam and I am problem free!! I still wear the vivoactive 3. My watch always had one or two nagging quirks. Now it continues to have constant connection issues since iOS 13 was released. I’ve gone through the suggestions garmin sent out to fix this issue but still nothing. 🙄 Furthermore I had great customer service 4ish years ago. The last time I called my experience was the opposite. Things happen and people can have bad days. Why am I bringing up customer service? If you buy a garmin product you’ll have to use the garmin connect app. When issues arise you’ll have to call garmin. I know this is supposed to be a review of the app and I am giving examples of the products issues. In the end who knows if it’s a garmin connect issue or a 520/vivoactive issue.... who cares when the stuff isn’t dependable and doesn’t work as advertised. If anyone reads this the take away thought is my garmin experience has been sub par due to numerous glitches. They kinda work 🤷🏻‍♀️. Good luck

I’ve been a Garmin fan since buying my Forerunner 935 on initial release two years ago. I take some ribbing from Suunto (climbing) and Apple Watch (running) friends, but I’ve been 100% pleased with the decision: the 935 is a great piece of tech, and I’m sure the 945 is as well. HOWEVER: the Garmin Connect app seems to be getting more disappointing to use as a training tool with each revision. The prevailing style seems to prioritize oversimplified infographics over actually allowing users to review and interact with their data. As an example, I’ve been religiously using “training status” every day for two years to monitor the relationship between my 7-day training load and my target load (based on integrated firstbeat tables), making training adjustments on the fly... Now, when I open the app, all those brilliantly helpful, adjustable, overlaid charts are gone—they have literally been replaced by a colored icon that says, “Productive.” That icon changes in response to training each day, but I can no longer view the data that underlies it on the fly, rendering this potentially valuable source of insight meaningless within the app. Dev team: you’ve had two years here. Please, please, please stop driving this app towards banal “mass-market cuteness,” and instead, try giving your devoted fanbase more powerful tools to articulate and shape our fitness goals. Would love to see you course correct here.

I use the Garmin Fenix 6 and I could not recommend it more. I’ve ran with it each day for 3 weeks and have also done kayaking and biking. I have only needed to recharge it twice, and the only negative has been a slight lack of tracking under even a few trees. As for the app, I would give it 4.5 starts if I could, but have given the benefit of the doubt. All in all it provides very useful information about your performance and overall health, but is slightly lacking in User Interface as opposed to other activity apps. The graphs are often annoying because I have not found out how to choose a point on the graph to see a value, you can only see the trend roughly plotted and guess (this goes for paces from your runs and also things like your heart rate throughout the night). I also find the calendar view largely useless, especially when compared to something like Apple’s activity rings. Don’t get me wrong though, the data Garmin provides is second to none, but largely a function of which watch you have purchased. In summary, Garmin provides as accurate and useful of info as any company does in the sports watch realm, but could stand to improve accessibility and aesthetics for some of that data in the app.

** Update ** latest update signed me out and refuses to sync my steps. My watch shows 18k+ steps from yesterday, but nothing in the app. I think they need to look up the definition of “synchronized.” PS: app is useless without an internet connection? Has anyone at this company ever actually hiked or camped? No internet in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest for example. Probably some young engineer who doesn’t understand the concept of not having an internet connection. Real outdoorsy app you’ve got here. What a joke. I’ve had my Garmin watch for about 6 years and it’s still working fine. However, the recently updated Connect app is horrible. It crashes all the time on my iPhone 12. I notice when the Bluetooth symbol on the watch disappears. On top of that, the new Home Screen for the app is just horrible. There was nothing wrong with the Home Screen! Plus, it’s glitchy. I click Steps under “At a Glance” and my sleep data comes up instead. I currently don’t know how to check my steps history, other than the week’s worth on my watch. App developers do this all the time, “fix” something that wasn’t broken because they’re expected to continuously develop their software, even if it’s not necessary. Keep it secure, leave the functionality alone when it’s working fine!

I’ve owned various Garmin devices for years. I never liked the “ANT” products. I never liked any of the software mobile/PC. My wife is a Triathlete and has all the Garmin “stuff” you can purchase. I saw from her experience how improved the Garmin software experience is. I own a iPhone X. She purchased the V4 for me Christmas. I was training for a February marathon. I have been very impressed with the software. In the past 2 months maybe 3 times I’ve had to do the full Bluetooth, Phone, watch, shutdown restart. I’ve seldom had to resync. The software I think is amazing. It tells, tracks, shows more than I could ever want. It is like an onion. It has layers and layers of information. My wife’s group included me in in one of their “Challenges”. That function works perfectly. I’ve never used the calendar but it seems to keep track of me to some degree anyway. I normally am a “Big Brother” is out to get me. I threw caution to the wind for the Marathon and turned on all the sharing with Apple Health and all the Garmin Connection software. There was a TON of bio data Garmin wanted. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the software running so well and keeping me up to date.

Upgraded 5 years ago from 210 to 235. My 210 wrist strap deteriorated beyond usability but the watch was working well. While I was happy with my 210 I upgraded to the 235. I replaced my 235 wristband two years ago as both wrist band keepers broke. Otherwise the strap is 100 times better than my prior Garmin. Very comfortable. I wear my Garmin overnight for the alarm and then for my morning workout. Run, Bike (indoor and outdoor) as well as CrossFit is all I do for workouts and the watch is perfect for these activities. Simple and easy to use. The alarm wakes me but is quiet enough to not disturb my wife. As well it is quickly silenced. The Garmin Connect app works flawlessly. I do not follow any metrics or use it beyond simple activity tracking nor do I wear my Forerunners at work or on weekends as I’m hard on my watches (military) but I will definitely replace it with another Forerunner when the time comes. My only minor gripe is that when bicycling it frequently does not pick up my wrist heart rate as I adjust my workouts based upon my HR zone but not a big deal when cycling. Overall it’s a great product at a great price.

There are a couple of aspects to this app that are not user-friendly. As of late, perhaps because of the latest update, the app will crash when you attempt to add a photo to your workout or if you edit the out and try to save it. It goes into a perpetual update cycle and then crashes the app. However, the biggest flaw is that the workouts are not customizable afterwards. For example, if I were to do a AMRAP workout, it will not allow me to add a second movement to each round. For example, if I do a work out with both double unders and push presses, it will only allow me to add one of those workouts to every round. Why can’t I add an exercise to each round I order to accurately track my movements? Secondly, when you design a workout or edit a workout, the app seems not to have the intelligence to allow you to copy and paste the same movements across all the different rounds. For each round whether you’re designing the training plan or whether you’re editing your workout plan, you have to repetitively select the same workout and the same rep count for round after round. This is unnecessary and mildly infuriating 🙃. Seriously though, Garmin can do better – please build software that compliments your excellent hardware.

I purchased the Fenix 6s a few weeks ago and have been loving the watch with all its bells and whistles. The watch and app is an upgrade compared to Polar, however I wish there were more options to customize things. Like being able to create certain activities (or change the names of the provided activities), or adding additional bed and awake times (I have different wake times on days off), or being able to record and separate naps from overnight sleep and have that data compute to your sleep score. Supposedly, according to the Garmin website, the sleep and wake times that you key in are fixed in that even if you take a nap any recorded data would be in ADDITION to what was computed overnight. Wrong. I took a 2+ hour nap and the data OVERWROTE my overnight sleep. Which is very frustrating when the data is being used for tracking purposes. Aside from that, I find the app is very limited in its ability to customize or tailor to personal preferences. Perhaps I am just unfamiliar with Connect but I do not want to have to download all or any of the the other Garmin apps JUST to be able to get one or two things to my liking. My phone doesn’t have the space and I don’t like having to constantly switch between apps.

I have had a Garmin device for several years now. I was using a Fitbit, but their devices did not seem to withstand my active lifestyle and I was having to buy a new device each year. I decided to move over to Garmin and stayed with the forerunner 45. I actually still have that device and other than some quirkiness with charging, it still works great. I recently moved to the forerunner 55, and I’m happy once again with the device, but there have been rapid updates to the connect app and each time I see less and less connectivity. The last 2 days I’ve logged over my step goal and my device promptly indicated that I had reached my goal. When I went to the app, it shows I have no steps for both days. Yesterday I started an activity and the app shows I went over 3 miles, but with no steps. As I looked in the app, I found that for several walks now I have been getting in steps, it showed on the device, but now is blank in the app. Disappointed that I don’t have the history, but I know I’m active and getting more fit, so I guess that’s what matters

PLEASEEE. When viewing a completed activity, running, for instance, please add the ability to see the time for 5k/10k/half marathon. I always pull up the mile checkpoint review page to see mile times, i just would love to see another little stat between miles 3 and 4 that says the time in which i ran 5k, and further metric distances as well (i’m using statute by preference in the USA). I would also like to see the ability to gain the same badge multiple times. And at the end of the activity show you new badges as well as your new total of badges of which you have more than one. Annoying to only get them once. Okay cool you ran 10 miles here’s a badge. It would be satisfying and motivational to be able to accrue multiples of some of these. I imagine a lot of people would strive to collect a benchmark 100 5ks or something. Just some things i hope the developers consider. After being suspicious of some of the pace times the display has been showing me, I decided to run 3 miles on a track at an even pace. The watch was almost a full 200m early in telling me I ran 3 miles. That really starts to compound on longer runs. Using ViviActive 3 Music.

Why run a beta and ask people for feedback if you don’t take any of it into account and roll out the subpar update anyway? And what is it that’s been updated exactly? The app is exactly the same, just now vertical tiles instead of horizontal and less information than before. Nothing other than the homepage has been touched. And now even that is worse. Tomorrow’s scheduled run appears under the “Today” header. Why? Confusing. The run I just did earlier now sits on top in exactly the same color as the rest of the app, with far less info than before. It used to be a different color with more data at a glance. But no. Now we get tiny font and a couple of data points scrunched up on one end. What a colossal waste of space. Insane that this was approved. You could have improved the app instead you chose to just chew up the home page and spit it out again for your customers, just worse than before. Very disappointing. The calendar never updates unless I manually reset the app every single time I use it or make a change. Addressing that would have been a great update. But no. We get something called “at a glance” instead that is literally not at a glance and needs to be scrolled through. Garmin team, what planet are you on?

4 Stars - Jan 2020 update - In January my iphone upgraded to ios13 and since then my FR245 continues to disconnect from the app and I need to repair them every day. I used the instructions recommended, kudos to Garmin for acknowledging this problem. It’s a real hassle so far, not thrilled about it and haven’t fixed the disconnect on my phone yet. 5 Stars- The app provides tremendous amount of useful information. I enjoy the format compared to Fitbit in every way. The app is customizable to each persons preferences in terms of what you want to see and in what order. Works seamlessly with Strava and Myfitness Pal. I’m enjoying it very much and I find the app to be very satisfying. -I love how as I read my stats, I can also read about what statistics mean and how Garmin calculates them so seamlessly in the app. -I never quite figured out how to use the Garmin coach for marathon training plan in that... I was hoping for interactive videos and audio commands, haven’t figured it out yet and used other training plans for the Marathon. I may try it for a different goal I set for myself to be seen.

When I first purchased this Venus 2 watch, I really liked it. Did not care for the shortage of battery life. I did not like enabling battery saver because I look at my watch frequently and did not want to have to be turning my wrist or tapping on the watch every time I wanted to look at it. Also, the fact that when it did come on, it was only for a split second and one had to tap on it or twist your wrist to get it to come up again for another split second. Then came the first update. It wiped everything off. Wiped out my watch face, wiped out the Bluetooth connection, , wiped out connectivity. I cannot get anything to work. Nothing wants to connect. I tried to get my selected face back on the watch, says it is installed, but it’s not. I can barely see the time (the default face )on the watch. It is so dark it is barely, and I do mean barely legible. Nothing is working and the watch, since I cannot see the face, it is so bloody dark, is totally useless. For the money I paid for this watch, this should not have happened just because of an update. So, it was nice at first, but if this is what happens every time there is an update, you can assume I will not be a happy camper.

I think this is a 5 star level app, but it misses the ability to do 2 things!! So if u would could u please add in these two things: 1) the watch I have had the ability to recognize I’m sleeping and the ability to see hey I’m asleep, what zone I’m in and etc. so is there a way we can establish its ability to recognize my naps. I sleep 4 hours and then wake up almost every night. But then when I try to go back to sleep 30 minutes later or during the day it doesn’t document my sleep. I for this because my average sleep is at 3-4 hours, but I don’t know how much I’m actually sleeping. I’d appreciate you updating this, as I’ve also seen multiple people talking about this via the internet. 2) and I think this is the bigger of the two. The workouts don’t have enough options, it’s like u can run but u can’t run and swim. It’s like u can swim but u can’t swim and workout. I’ve been searching how to do this on the internet, but everything is just running or just swimming or just etc. I think if you added this in at the least I’d be extremely happy. Thank you so much for reading my review and I’d appreciate you guys putting in these few features!

5/24 update. Not properly synching. Ran this morning. Then played tennis. The tennis synched but my run is nowhere to be found. Re-did the transfer multiple times. It said it took it but still does not show in the app. This has happened before. Poor. Maybe something is wrong with the update. Just ran the newest update. My run still isn’t showing up. I also noticed that my 30 minute yoga shows ok on the detail screen but shows 0 minutes on the sum up page. I guess because I don’t enter individual poses?? Not right. Prior Used my Garmin watch for triathlons, bike rides, runs. Much more data than I use. I should explore more of the data fields. I track my shoe mileage. Update request : After a run you can give it a title. It defaults to name of my town for all runs. I then need to delete all those words and enter the date and descriptor (how I want to name it). Would be nice to have either 1) an X at the end of the line that when tapped deletes the entire line immediately, or 2) A profile setting to set some customized naming convention. Just a thought. I enjoy it. Like the Badge feature because it keeps me motivated.

I’ve been a been a Garmin user for a long time and at times I really question my loyalty because their software updates for devices frequently cause new issues, loss of functions, etc. (Some issues have taken months to resolve, eg when Strava segments updates weren’t transferring to Garmin devices.) Why am I bringing up device software issues on an app review? It’s because the app has the same issues, eg I bought a Fenix 5 about 7-8 days ago and it was working great with this app, I had all the functionality that I was supposed to until I updated the Garmin app this morning. Now the weather and the Physio TrueUp functions aren’t syncing to the watch. All the rest of my software is up to date so it’s not another software issue. Stupid me, for forgetting how many times I’ve updated the app when everything was already good and only to have a month or two until it finally gets fixed. This cycle repeats itself with Garmin every few months. Apparently there is no testing before an update release. As such, I encourage all to ask “is everything working well? If yes, then do I really need to update the app?”

I never write reviews and am only writing this in the hopes that someone, anyone, at Garmin will read it that can change things. I use Connect quite a bit for tracking runs and workouts. The functionality is there but the app is not all that intuitive and the design is wildly out of date. Which I was willing to overlook because the app functioned like it was supposed to. Recently though, tracking my workouts has become somewhat frustrating. It’s minor but when you edit an exercise it constantly glitches out and redefines another exercise that you weren’t trying to edit. It seems to have something to do with exercises that target similar muscle groups or have similar names. If you want things to be correct then you have to manually create the exercise and reorder the list the way you want. This wasn’t an issue a month or so ago so I assume a recent update screwed things up. Garmin just seems slow to respond to things like this and there’s no easy way to submit a bug report. Which would be a very nice feature. I’ll gladly delete or update this review if, and when, they respond.

Overall I really like Garmin app & Garmin products. Am currently on my 5th Garmin watch over 7 year period. I currently use a Garmin 235 and am anxiously awaiting its replacement. I find Garmin Connect has been a very reliable application and has all the data I need. I find it has all features I need and several more that I’ve never gotten into. My only qualm with Garmin over the years is their heart rate measuring devices... to me it’s their weak spot. I have had issues with heart rate straps dating back to my first Forerunner 25 up through my Forerunner 620. I switch to wrist based on 235 and find it’s maybe 90-95% reliable - unfortunately that 5-10% comes at the most inopportune times! Like during the Boston marathon in 2017 or other critical races or workout. Actually it’s the Garmin Connect app that kept me with Garmin running watches. I know Polar does a better job tracking heart rate but I like the Garmin Connect app enough, plus have years of data on it. Am hoping that improvements to the 235 replacement will include better more reliable heart rate tracking...

Garmin connect was the exact thing I was looking for when I used an Apple Watch, which is frankly a joke of a training tool. Switching to Garmin was one of the better decisions I’ve made in a while. Unfortunately, the latest update absolutely ruins the experience. From what it used to be, the now current version is now a hunt and click mess of a user interface. From what was a catalog of personal information gathered from a computer on your wrist, is now a nightmare to sort through, when before it was as simple as just scrolling the page. Instead of every single metric I could ever want to see, I now have “Sleep” “steps” “most recent workout” and that’s the extent of it. Sure you can tailor the homepage, or so they claim. In reality you only get about 6 stats to view, and whatever else I loved is now hidden and messy. I am beyond dismayed at how this as irked me. I used to love opening the app and see the things I’ve accomplished, and everything I had ever done since putting on the watch. But now I dread answering my own questions regarding my health, or sleep, or steps; as the encyclopedia I had once had access to, is rotten and moldy, and gives me papercuts on every finger in the process. I am not alone in these feelings.

This app makes all the amazing functionality of the fenix 7 (and I’m sure other devices) easy to use, review, expand, and deploy for many parts of life. I say this because the feedback from my sleep quality (duration, quality, and HRV) has literally changed my life. I wouldn’t say I was a heavy drinker, but it became totally clear how one or two beers in the evening affected my sleep, and the next day my training readiness would be in the toilet. Figuring out sleep, rest, training readiness, diet, and all of that has helped me beyond just my training. But I have also used the coaching to get back to some semblance of conditioning. I was a long-time triathlete and gave that up with some moves and a passion for rock climbing. And I’m still clawing my way back to a reasonable level of cardiovascular health with great programming from the coaches and Garmin. Really helps me to just get up and do what it says when I’m in an environment that doesn’t pull me out the door every day as it did where I used to live. Thanks for it all.

Latest update seems to have resolved all of the issues below. I am upgrading my rating to 4 stars since the auto syncing is working flawlessly again and when I manually sync it works exactly as intended. The only reason I’m not going a full 5 stars is due to the amount of time it took them to resolve an issue that wasn’t an issue to begin with. Since the last update my FR945 has difficulty maintaining connection and syncing with iPhone. iOS 13 latest version. I have to turn off the 945 and restart just to acquire a connection. Then when I attempt to sync the status bar/circle will reach the halfway point and freeze and eventually fail. I have to repeat this process 3-4 times before getting a full sync. Last night it took over an hour to sync the data. Prior to the latest update there were none of these issues and everything worked great. Seems as though Garmin is going backwards? Oh, and I have gone through and adjusted all of the privacy and Bluetooth settings as Garmin has instructed since the latest release.

May not deserve a 1 star but the fact there are so many problems/bugs that they haven’t addressed in years makes it a one to me. The first is the notifications. If I get one in anything it’ll show as a very large number of notifications and won’t go away unless I tap on the top left icon. Second are the charts that are messed up when going in my run details. Might as well forget trying to look at pace chart. For some reason it wants to show pace as slow as 30 minutes a mile even if you never went that slow. For instance I may do a run and the slowest I go is 8 minutes a mile but since they pull the chart down to 30 minutes a mile you can really tell anything about your pace. The other thing they need to do better on is making it more sociable. They have basically accepted strava as taking its business but if they would make a better screen with social interaction and better search engine for friends it would be great. They also need to make it to where people can use their phone as their GPS device in their app but I doubt they’ll ever do that as they want people to buy their devices but the fact is most casual runners will never buy one cause they want their phone with them.

I wanted a watch that was a tool to help monitor sleep, workouts, outdoor activities, heart rate, while also playing music without the need to strap my phone on somehow. I’ve already used the watch for several activities including row, run, walk and the metrics measures by the watch are better than I expected. I’m still finding the capability of the Connect app but I was looking into doing a 5k this spring and was surprised to find the 5k coach. Battery life and the claim of 500 songs are why it’s 4 stars. I’m not seeing a way to get the 7 days battery unless I strictly use it as a watch and not monitor activities. Music storage is not what was advertised. Maybe advertise it can hold X amount of hours of music because I went to building playlists and it filled up in about 110 songs. I will be checking to see if the length of 1 list just cut out the whole thing and I’ll update if I increase the amount stored. Overall I’m pleased with my VivoActive 3 Music watch and The Garmin Connect app and I’d recommend it to those looking for a multi tool kind of watch.

A couple weeks ago a friend of mine talked me into participating in a sprint distance triathlon. Often I’d joke around with friends that my three least favorite activities are running, cycling and swimming. However, I am very competitive and very much into fitness. So I got talked into this triathlon. I knew I had to prepare but I had no idea how to. When all else fails, data is the key. While looking for the ideal fitness tracker, most of them seemed lackluster. When I found Garmin, and realized that they make much more than just GPS devices, I knew that it’d be worth a try. Ordered a Garmin Forerunner 735xt and the running sensor and off I went on my journey. Everything about this app is awesome! From the recovery advisor to the map of your run. The graphs that I show my girlfriend/trainer so that she can help me get better are easy to understand. It feels like it uses minimal battery in the background even when on constantly. Solid app, great hardware, flawless connectivity so far and I recommend it to all my friends and training partners!

Despite many updates, this app never works well for me, regardless of which iOS version I’m using. I use it with an Instinct solar and it keeps disconnecting. I have to reboot the app for it to work again. Since there is no Bluetooth connection indicator on any watch face (it’s in a deeper menu), you don’t realize the connection has been lost. When the app works and you turn off your phone, the watch will notify you that there is no Bluetooth connection. But when the app just randomly stops working, you never get that notification, or any other notification, and that happens a lot. Very frustrating as it’s easy to miss calls and messages since my phone is on silent most of the time. Wish there were more watch faces to choose from and that they would include the Bluetooth icon. Even my old Pebble had that. I would also like to see my phone’s battery level displayed on a watch face. Sometimes the watch battery saver won’t turn itself on at night, and if it does, it will stay in that mode past the designated off time. This is less common but it happens. Love all the features but it would be nice to get what I described above. Please make it less buggy.

I got my first Garmin Forerunner 2.5 years ago and it’s been with me every day, encouraging me and training me through my first 10k, then first half marathon, then first full marathon. It’s been fun to connect with my friends all over the US and comment on their runs and rides, encouraging each other and challenging each other to be better. I’ve really appreciated the accuracy of the collected data and the insights it’s given me to aid my training. I’ve appreciated the UI and general ease of use/understanding the app gave in the past but since the new update I find the information unhelpful. The presentation of the widgets doesn’t give enough insight and I don’t think I’ve even opened the app in 2 weeks. I’m still running on my normal schedule but the information gleaned from the app is so much more confusing that it doesn’t feel worth it to check. I really hope that the developers decide to focus on things like route generation or navigation within the app and move back to the easier to see style of the previous version.

My first Garmin was a Forerunner 610 and it was my absolute favorite watch. Marathons to long trail runs it worked perfectly until one day I hit a tree (embarrassing I know) but I cracked the screen a piece of the screen literally fell off. It still worked for another year! Finally it died and I decided to give the Nike watch a try. I wasn’t crazy about the way it looked and it randomly died on my twice. So I decided to give Fitbit a try... I like Fitbit however, their software on the device has way to many issues for me. And the app leaves your yearning for more. Now this leads me to today. I have a fenix 3 hr and between the device and the app I couldn’t be happier. There are a lot of reviews on here saying about glitches in the app. The occasional slowness to update from my fitness pal is the only issue I have. And I wouldn’t really call it an issue typically I just have to close the app and open it back up. Overall I’ve used a lot of devices that also have apps and this is the best one of them all.

I have been using Garmin 645 for about 4 weeks and I really like it. I primarily use it for running, so cannot comment on its utility for strength training. As regards running, I run around 20 miles a week and training for half marathon. I am using the ‘coach’ feature and it is really helpful. I don’t have to spend hours for planning the workouts. The ‘coach’ does it for me. It adapts the upcoming workouts based on current performance. I find the various statistics that Garmin provides useful. However, I doubt if a beginner would need them. They might get overwhelmed or bogged down with such info overload. I don’t think beginners use such sophistication. Until I started long runs (up to 10 miles) I was using Vi earphones. That’s the best thing happened to me in recent times. It was great motivator and made me coming for a run each morning. But it is not accurate and detailed as Garmin. So I switched and it’s a bitter sweet feeling. I am keeping one star because I feel Garmin can do better with the coach feature.

For some reason, the development team decided to absolutely ruin what was an extremely clean and user-friendly version of this app. It is an absolute shame. The current version of the app is a dork level 1000 mishmash of charts and graphs that you need a microscope to even see, let alone interpret any of the data. It used to be very clearly laid out and easy to see on a daily basis, and allowed you to take a deeper dive if you wanted to. Now the deeper dive is the main focus of the app, and it is not extremely useful if you want to use it in a normal day-to-day scenario. They also removed all of the color coding, which made certain aspects of the app jump out and be extremely easy to reference at a glance. I have no idea why they start making the app would look like this to be a better scenario than the previous version of the app. I am guessing that erroneously they believe their customers want to be Apple customers and have a similar user interface. If I wanted an apple user interface, I would have bought that piece of trash Apple Watch. Instead, I bought this and what is a great product now has an absolutely junk app to support it. It is a shame.

“Don’t fight the data, fight to make the data better for over-all health.” Finally, an app and watch that gives you daily insights into quality of sleep, resting heart rate, HRV, and provides recommendations for how to make my workouts fit my over-all goals. I live by my Garmin Connect, and I’ve never been healthier. After 3 years of my personal data analytics, I now know when I’m getting sick before it actually happens. Slight variations in my data also alert me to high stress days and days where I’m at my best! It’s been a long road to getting better biometrics, but I’m proof that it can happen. But the journey begins with embracing the data that Garmin Connect provides and resigning yourself to getting better. Before Garmin connect, I was guessing on my health and now, I actually KNOW what my health is, based on data, not feelings. Knowing is the power to change it! Garmin Connect gives me that control over my own health!

I use to run 10 miles easily at a 6:30 mile pace when I was running track and XC. That was my early college years up until covid and school got tougher and I put on a significant amount of weight. I honestly got scared to run again because I could barely run a 800m at a 9 minute mile pace without stopping. My girlfriend got me the garmin 245 music because I told her I use to have one and loved it. I started following the app and calorie counting. I wanted to just put miles on it. After a few weeks to a month I was running 9 minute miles easily and started running further and further. Now I’m at about 8 minute miles and feel more positive to be healthy and looking a lot better. It was a gift I never knew I needed but it pulled me out of a bad place. The watch and app itself works just fine for me, I wish other apps would connect with it like an Apple Watch would, but garmin has always been a very solid brand.

I must start off by saying I love this app, it is my go to and probably the one I spend the most time in! Some improvements are still needed: 1. Allow users to customize sleep hours! My goal is 7 hours but Garmin doesn’t allow this setting to be modified! You only have 8 as an option I tend to never make this goal which throws off my daily card showing that I made all of my goals! My health and fitness team recommends 6-9 hours I’m not certain if this is a general health standard but Garmin should at least allow us to set it within this range! 2. The watch menus “in the app” -can use a overhaul “Activities,Apps and More” should be collapsed as a single section which includes “data fields” and “widgets” currently they fall under appearance! I get it Garmin is trying to make it simpler for non-technical users however, I think with less menus and more grouping it would improve workflow! Btw, it used to be this way they changed it some time a go! 3. The App Store needs to be more integrated! It seems that Garmin should let the app include apps from the AppStore without launching a browser within the app! I would suggest putting the App Store directly below the watch on the main menu, allow the api to talk directly to the store and have it better embedded into the app! Overall I can live with the app without these features however it would be nice to see them in a future release!

It doesn’t load. At all. I waited forever. Nothing. I hate this app and it should never have been on the App Store. It’s the only way to control my garmin. But no, 😑it doesn’t work. My moms works perfectly, but no, no, no, mine stinks. Why do y’all hate me that much that you make it so I can’t control my watch? I haven’t had a watch in 4 years because of it. I can’t have nice new ones like you millionaires do. oh wait, you’re not millionaires, cause this app stinks!!! But seriously dude, this app is terrible. Maybe you should rename it to something else instead of Garmin. Here are some ideas: Lamein, Stinkin, doesn’tworkin, loadin forever and Ever and everin. Even though I hate this app I wanted to let you know that, I’m never gonna give you up never gonna let you down never gonna run around and desert you never gonna make you cry never gonna say goodbye never gonna tell a lie and hurt you bud um ch. Have a great day. Hopefully by the end of it you can create an idea for a better app. But for now, I’m stuck not knowing the time for the rest of my life while our school clocks broken. Sincerely, Someone 🎩

I had this app and wore the watch years ago (vivofit 2) but got frustrated with myself; self competition got old. My original review was a 1 star (after an update) because I couldn’t edit or find runs that came out as walks (9 min miles aren’t THAT slow) and my HR was missing most of the time. Fast forward to the last month where I’m back on a health kick and have moved to a farm, curious to see what my activity level is. The app is slow to sync, slow to look at different days and activities. It still shows workouts as as a walk or shows I walked 47 min only going .03 miles....I walk the perimeters of our fields with our dogs that I know are approx 1.5 miles depending on the route. So what the heck? Is it that the app is old, or the watch is old or that I’m on an iPhone 7 which seems to work fine with just about everything else. I’m still not satisfied with this product-5 years later. On the flip side I now know my general step count per day and a general idea of calories burned even if it doesn’t see my workouts and me sweating to the sound of my lungs collapsing under all this heat in TN!

I got a Garmin FR645 as a bday gift to myself last June: I run, swim, lift weights, boxing/MMA & just keep active in general. I never realized what I was missing until I upgraded from a FitBit Blaze to Garmin! GPS tracking is on point on the watch & app, training stats are amazing to see where & when I need to adjust intensity & history is great to see how I’ve improved with better tracking abilities from Garmin. Yes, there are some glitches, but nothing to cry or scream about: pretty much everything tracks, monitors & gives guidance where needed. It’s great to pull up stats after a long run to see if VO2 Max is improving, cadence, HR Zones & pace (for those coveted negative splits!) & see how my cross training improves my running. The only down side is sleep doesn’t seem as accurate - it’s shown me asleep when I was watching a movie, but I’m more concerned with the other athletic stats so as long as I’m scraping 6+ hours of sleep I know everything else flows well. I was using MyFitnessPal to track calories consumed which it synced 99% of the time accurately which was nice to see the calories burned/consumed stats. I don’t track there much anymore unless I’m in serious training or trying something new to see how it may affect me but things usually flow between the apps well. Garmin syncs to MyHealth which syncs to my smart scale so everything is together. As long as I can keep active I’ll keep Garmin!!

*Edit/update*: The issue I had turned out to be a bug in the watch’s sensor software, not a Garmin Connect issue. I found a fix on the product support website, and things seem to be working now. I do wish I had been pointed toward this fix a little sooner in interactions with product support. Alas. Hopefully this issue is in the rear view. The app itself mostly works okay, though there are occasional hiccups. (Also found a way to set up via computer, so my bad for thinking I could only set up the watch while using the mobile app.) Original: I mostly enjoy using my watch (Vivoactive 3), but I can’t connect it to my phone right now. Product support had me reset the watch to factory, and now I can’t connect to desktop either, since set up is strictly via mobile. There were some intermittent connectivity issues with iOS 15 (the connection would drop randomly), but eventually it would always connect. Right now my watch is basically bricked. Please update the app.

The new app design is clunky and flawed. Gone is the ease of use and decent UX/UI. The app before was intuitive and data driven. You could still customize what was visible to your needs. Now, without customization, the app is useless. It also runs poorly, struggles to load, struggles to connect, and struggles to show accurate data. This was not an issue with the app previously. What is the point of a running watch and app if I can’t see more information in the app than on the watch? My family and myself chose garmin watches for the detailed information and the ease of app usage. As these are far more expensive watches, why shouldn’t I swap back to a cheaper brand if they take away the entire reason I purchased the watch? I was part of the beta testing for the app design, and very quickly noted how useless it made my experience. After given myself time to adjust, i asked to be removed from the beta as the app style did not work for me and made me engage less with my stats. No updates or changes were made between the beta and the official roll out. The app even runs poorly like the beta did.

First off it’s not well tested, as bugs slip through which affect obvious functions which can’t be missed. You have to have internet do use any of it Outside that issue it’s fairly solid, but somehow too generic to be useful for any specific question you have. It’s so generic I think it’s impossible for them to do much with it now, other than the low hanging fruit, and I haven’t seen any useful improvement in 2 years. It does save your activities but doing anything useful with them is often impossible. Annoyingly you can’t merge or do many useful edits. And it always has issues syncing, super slow. Stay away from their streaks or similar features. They act like overbearing parents and don’t trust you to track your own activity. Just pray you don’t forget your watch one day, or take a flight, or anything. Eff you garmin, it’s my activity let me do what I want with it. With behavior like that, and the general difficulty of doing much with stats, I’m looking for a alternative watch and app. If apple adds one more feature that I’m missing then I’m out.

I am a Garmin Fan Boy. I have used their product both watches and bike computers for years. I like the Ecco system and I like the hardware functionality. However, the connectivity has been consistently and very disappointingly mediocre at best. I recently got the Garmin Edge 830 and it worked reasonably well and now I literally have not been able to connect the device to the app for a couple of weeks. This may finally be the straw that breaks the camels back and may return the Edge 830 and abandon Garmin devises for Wahoo. I hate that this is the case as I am very happy with the hardware but the software ecosystem is just plain and simple unreliable. It is Bluetooth and 2019 why can the software engineers not figure this one out. I know I am not alone. More and more people I ride with are abandoning Garmin because they can’t figure this out. I even had a bike shop that carries both Garmin and Wahoo tell me not to get the Garmin and to get the cheeper Wahoo because they are getting so many complaints about this. I guess I should have listened. This may be my first app review but it is so frustrating that I had to share.