Garmin Forerunner 170 Music: keeps you in tune with your running

Garmin’s latest Forerunner 170 Music isn’t just about tracking miles. It analyses your readiness, adapts training plans and helps you recover better, all while soundtracking your fitness sessions.

If you’re the kind of person who wants a fitness watch to bring structure to your training, the Garmin Forerunner 170 is made for you. Built for runners first, the Forerunner 170 can also track rides, pool and open water swims, with profiles dedicated to monitoring strength sessions and HIIT workouts. Most sports watches can do all of that. Where Garmin wants to stand out is through features to help you make better decisions about when’s the best time to make a beeline for the gym or put your feet up on the sofa.

It’s doing that by scoring your readiness to train, delving into your sleep and stress data to pick those optimal days to go hard. This is a sports watch that can behave like an Apple Watch or Samsung Galaxy Watch too. That means ditching your phone to pick up supplies on the way home or stream your go-to Spotify playlists.

It’s not a cheap watch, but if you’ve been eyeing up one of Garmin’s more expensive watches and like the idea of getting some big training features for less, the Forerunner 170 could be the watch to strap on.

Garmin Forerunner 170 Music design

The first thing to address is that Garmin offers this watch in two versions. There’s the one with a built-in music player and one without. Everything else is the same. Just be prepared that the battery gets hit harder when you’re tracking an outdoor workout and playing music at the same time.

Fans of watches with hulking bezels will likely be put off by the 170’s diminutive frame. Runners, on the other hand, will lap up a watch that weighs just 41g, so you can forget it’s there in between workout tracking.

There’s two ways to interact with the watch. There’s a full array of physical buttons dotted around the case, which are ideal when hands get sweaty. You’ve also got a colour display that responds nicely to taps and swipes. 

If you want to take it for a dip or not whip it off before you jump in the shower, you can do that. I’ve taken it for swims where it’s a strong tracking performer. This is also fit for open water swims, though does lack a dedicated triathlon mode.

Garmin Forerunner 170 Music features

The Garmin Forerunner 170 represents a step up from Garmin’s cheapest watches and its predecessor, the Garmin Forerunner 165, giving you more software features to play with.

One of the reasons you’ll want to upgrade from an older Garmin is that the 170 runs on hardware that makes it ripe for new features Garmin could roll out in the future. It also gives you a more polished version of Garmin’s software that brings together its sports and smartwatch features all into one place to make it easier to use.

Beyond the 80-plus different sports you can track, runners will benefit most from using it as a more useful training companion. Like making use of the new quick workouts, that let you pick the workout difficulty level and then you’ll be presented with a range of sessions to get out and tackle.

You also have access to Coach, Garmin’s free training platform, which can help you train for your first race and fire your plan over to the watch. It’ll also adapt those plans if you need to skip a session. Garmin has now extended those training plans to cover cycling and strength training. If your focus is to build muscle mass or get fit quickly, it’ll generate plans to follow on along with muscle heat maps to make sure you’re not just focusing on upper body gains.

Then there’s that time when you’re not powering through reps. The Forerunner 170 includes Garmin Pay to unlock contactless payments. You’ll find Google Maps to help you get around and there’s an official WhatsApp app so you don’t miss out on the group chats. Opt for the added music player and it’s a breeze to load up music that you own or from the likes of Spotify or YouTube Music. It also supports Garmin’s useful LiveTrack location sharing, which is ideal if you love a solo adventure.

Garmin Forerunner 170 Music performance

Unsurprisingly, the Forerunner 170’s run tracking and training prowess is solid. That’s despite not featuring the latest GPS or heart rate sensor technology. It still managed to reliably track metrics like distance and pace in line with more expensive sports watches. It was a similar story for swims and indoor bike rides. The automatic rep counting for strength workouts has also improved since Garmin introduced it. Paying attention to heart rate to gauge your effort is more useful. You will likely want to take the option of pairing up an external heart rate monitor to get cleaner, more accurate heart rate stats.

When you’re turning to it as a training tool, insights like training readiness, capturing training load and dishing out recovery time advice feels more in tune with your workout history than it does on rival watches. Coach remains a feature that Garmin can laud over the competition. It’s beginner-friendly with upcoming sessions presented nicely on the watch to follow. The daily evening reports provide a nice overview of your day’s accomplishments and prepare you for what’s to come after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.

Garmin Forerunner 170 Music verdict

One area I can’t be too glowing about is the battery life performance. Garmin states that it can last up to 10 days or 4 days if you decide you need that screen on at all times. I found it was less than that on both fronts. Especially if you’re tracking training regularly throughout the week.

The Garmin Forerunner 170 falls into that bracket of running-focused sports watches that non-runners can get on with as well. Especially if you like the idea of a lightweight watch with a colour screen and the sort of training features and insights you can actually put to good use. Is it the best sports watch that Garmin makes? No, it’s not. It offers a good enough all-round package to make up for some of the gripes that might put you off from grabbing it.

Garmin Forerunner 170 Music technical specs