Garmin is a leading smartwatch brand in the Indian market, and its Forerunner series is renowned for its cutting-edge GPS-based features, fitness-focused abilities, and reliability. Recently, the company announced the Forerunner 965, aimed at competing with the likes of the Apple Watch Ultra in the high-end smartwatch segment. In this article, we compare both watches to help you decide which one is better suited to your needs.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Design and Build Quality
The Garmin Forerunner 965 sports a circular-shaped dial, a titanium bezel, five push buttons, a 5ATM water resistance rating, and Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 DX protection. The Apple Watch Ultra, on the other hand, features a squircle dial housed in a titanium case, a large crown, a customizable action button, a 10ATM waterproof rating, and sapphire crystal glass. The Apple Watch Ultra is slightly heavier, weighing in at 61.3g compared to Garmin’s offering at 53g.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Display
The Garmin Forerunner 965 has a 1.4-inch (454×454 pixels) circular AMOLED touch display. In comparison, the Apple Watch Ultra sports a 1.92-inch (410×502 pixels) Retina LTPO OLED touchscreen, with 2,000 nits of peak brightness. Both watches support always-on functionality, but the Garmin Forerunner 965 is more compact than the Apple Watch Ultra.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Health Monitoring Features
Both watches offer a range of health-monitoring features. The Garmin Forerunner 965 has multiple clock-based, running, and daily smart features, along with a range of sensors for measuring heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep, stress, hydration, women’s health, and more. The Apple Watch Ultra provides heart rate and irregular rhythm notifications, sleep records, menstrual cycle tracking with ovulation estimates, SpO2 measurement, temperature detection, ECG, and more.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Safety Features
The Garmin Forerunner 965 comes with multiple safety features, including Live Tracking, spectator messaging, and incident detection alert, which sends a message along with your live location. The Apple Watch Ultra offers Emergency SOS, International emergency calling, Crash Detection, Fall Detection, Noise monitoring, and Backtrack, which helps retrace your steps if you get lost. It also packs an 88dB emergency siren that is audible up to 180m.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Connectivity and Storage
The Garmin Forerunner 965 and Apple Watch Ultra support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, multi-band GPS, and LTE connectivity. Both wearables house 32GB of onboard storage for media, apps, and other data records. The Garmin Forerunner 965 delivers up to 34 hours of battery life in activity mode usage, whereas the Apple Watch Ultra provides up to 36 hours of backup.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Pricing
The Garmin Forerunner 965 is priced at Rs. 67,490 in India and comes in Black, Amp Yellow, and Whitestone colorways. The Apple Watch Ultra costs Rs. 89,900 and offers multiple strap options as well.
Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Apple Watch Ultra: Final Verdict
Garmin offers a range of sports and fitness tracking features on its smartwatches. Although Garmin’s app store is more limited than Apple’s, the brand stands out because of its extensive expertise in GPS-based services. If you are looking for a heavy-duty fitness-focused wearable that offers extremely precise metrics along with multiple smartwatch features, the Garmin Forerunner 965 is an excellent choice, and it is more affordable than the Apple Watch Ultra. On the other hand, if you need a comprehensive health monitoring device with advanced safety features, the Apple Watch Ultra is worth the investment.
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