. This is the updated one now over the older 945, and we see some really nice updates and some new features in here which were obviously going to take a look at. But before we get started on this, one were actually running a pretty sweet competition where you can actually win yourself, one of these and its pretty easy to enter. So all you have to do is like the video and comment below saying i deserve the new four on a 955 because dot dot dot, whatever. Whatever reason you think pop it in the comments below and youve got a chance to win this new watch, and there will be some bonus points for adding some obscure details from the video or obviously just making it funny, because you know that always wins the winner. Will basically be our favorite response, so just make it good as well as that, its not just going to be me. Looking at this watch in this review, weve got our resident triathlete gabs, having a look as well, because shes training for a big iron man shes been putting some training hours into this watch. So shell give us her opinions on it too. Right now lets get into it well start with a rapid unboxing. Obviously it comes with a watch comes with the classic garmin charger cross compatible with all the old ones, spare little rubber strap band, which is quite a nice touch. So if you manage to lose that one youve got a spare one and some seriously dense, very detailed little product information safety, booklets well have a look at them.
So lets get started with some of these new features. With the new 4runner 955. youll notice, ive got a black and a white one here. They might look very similar at first glance, but these are different models and this feature is probably one of my favorite things about garmin as a whole and im so happy its in the foreign range is the fact that it now comes in a solar model. So you now have an option to get going with powerglass tech in a forerunner which is a first weve seen powerglass in the phoenix and in the instinct range they work phenomenally and give a real boost to your battery, especially for spending a good amount of time. Outdoors, this essentially works very similar, if not identically to the phoenix 7, so youve got a solar screen, so it charges gives you battery from the sun. Obviously, but youve got slightly different photovoltaic levels to this screen, so youll see it has a more shiny rim on the outside and thats harvesting, 100 of the suns energy that hits the screen into battery, obviously not 100 of the suns energy, because youd have a lot Of battery life, if you had all of that and then under the digital part of the screen, thats harvesting 10 of the energy thats hitting the screen and turning it into battery. And this actually makes a really considerable difference to the battery life of the watch. But to summarize, the solar version is going to last for 20 days in smartwatch mode, which is basically connected to your phone with notifications coming through with the heart rate on you know, sleep data, all that sort of stuff so 20 days in normal use and then 49 hours of accurate gps tracking, so thats going to be plenty for many of us to do multiple runs a week and even those endurance, athletes that are doing really long days out there.
This is still going to cover you for a few of them, but you get the picture. The battery life in this thing is pretty good. Its also worth noting as well that they charge really quickly from the watch almost being out of battery. You can get about 50 percent of battery in about half an hour, so if youre running really low on battery – and you do want to nip out for a run or whatever activity youre going to do with it, because it records a lot of them, you can Just nip on charge even for 10 minutes and its probably going to give you enough juice to get your activity done so its nice to know that you can really quickly boost these up if youre running low on battery and you need a quick tupper. Another new feature that comes with the solar and the normal ones. All the 955s is the fact that they are now touch screen. Now we saw this introduced with the phoenix as well and ive always been a bit iffy about touch screens on smart watches for loads of reasons, its just so much easier to click buttons when youre in a run or youre swimming, and you cant see the screen. Its just you get to learn the buttons really quickly bad weather touch screens. Dont work particularly well – and this is all true, but there is some really nice features in where it does work.
Well. So, for example, when youre in a mapping scenario, you can scroll around the map with the touchscreen, and it is buttons and maps are absolutely dreadful. Its like trying to go where you want to go just doesnt work hugely easier with a touch screen, so it does have its bonuses. I mean ive been using garmins for years, so maybe its because im just so used to the garmin ecosystem of using the buttons. Might be that, but i generally find i just use the buttons almost all the time, but it is just a nice feature to use it for those maps and as annoying as it is when you do start using it, its nice and responsive. It works quickly. Its you know it works if you want to use it its there, if you dont, you dont, really use it much, but completely up to you on that one as weve just touched on it, its worth, noting that both the solar and non solar version come with Full color mapping thats turn by turn navigation that youre going to get from your gpx files from garmin connect or strava or wherever you get those files from thats going to work on here for both on and off road color mapping is really going to help differentiate Between what youre running on surfaces elevation, you know all that good stuff is now included in the 955. if youre enjoying this video and still want the chance to win.
One of these watches dont forget to hit that like button and if you like it even more, then maybe even consider hitting that subscribe button. Another nice update and again its another one, thats trickled down from the new phoenix 7, is the fact that these new 955s have multi band gnss satellite connectivity. So, basically, what that is in a quick bullet point, its going to give you far better gps tracking. But basically, what it is is the fact it can have multiple connections with multiple satellites, giving you much more honed in accurate gps data, but where this is going to make a bigger difference to getting more accurate data is when youre in really tricky environments. So if youre in forests and data is hard to get through the forest, forestry, the leaves whatevers up there – alpine environments, where youre in really steep scenarios and its harder for a gps to work out and where you actually are, and also in urban big cities. Where youve obviously got big buildings around you and its much harder to get a pinpoint location so its going to make your data much more accurate? And you know when youre looking at your gps data – and you really zoom in and you can see that you know youre not actually even running on that road that it says youre running on this is getting so accurate. Now, where you can even tell which side of the road youre running on its really making a difference to all those data metrics, because all those little imperfections are going to make your data skew? If and not right, so the more accurate the data you collect, the more accurate your data is, i mean obvious, but simple, but obvious Music.
So i have come down to the woods today to test out the new multiband gps on the garmin 955.. I have to say it is connecting a lot lot quicker to the signal, its really noticeable that it tracks the trail really accurately, especially in densely forested areas like im in right now. So another new feature on the garmin forerunner 955 is running power. Cyclists have been banging on about their watts and average power for years and now its time for us runners, yes, essentially running power, allows you to kind of put in the same effort and the same pace even with external factors such as rain or heels, or even Like the surface underfoot, so this just means that you can really really kind of measure how youre running whether thats in training or on race day, and really keep that same power that same effort throughout your whole distance running power has actually been a feature that you Can download from the garmin iq app for a few years now, however, it is now natively installed on the watch when you get it out the box, its taken garmin a couple of years to get this native on the watch and thats, because theyve been continuously improving. The data that you collect, such as you know, vertical oscillation or even your ground, contact time, just to give you a better accurate reading. When it comes to your running on your watch for running power to work, you will need to get yourself if you dont already have one a separate garmin heart rate, monitor just that you can wear around your chest here and youre good to go.
Another new feature on the 955 is something called stamina. This feature is actually also found on one of their newer watches, the garmin fenix 7. stamina kind of says what it does on the tin, and it just allows you to know how much energy youve still got left in the tank or whether to push yourself. A little bit harder, weve all gone out on race day, whether thats on the bike or running and bonked, maybe a little bit hard or a little bit early, just because weve put all of our energy into that particular activity. If youre looking at stamina, though, this will actually give you a really good indication of whether you need to slow it up a little bit or whether you can push yourself just that little bit harder to go and smash out a new pb and who doesnt love A new pb, if you ever wake up in the morning with a pre planned, run in mind, but sometimes just dont have the energy to get up and do it. This is where training readiness may really suit you. It basically tells you, based on your sleep, your heart rate, your stress and all the other factors that your watch kind of picks up, whether you might be better to actually train at a different time of day. Garmins theory is that youll make more improvements in your training. If your body is more ready for it, so it will tell you the optimum time to get out of the door and go for your run or ride or swim or triathlon, or any of the many features that this watch actually has.
This follows on nicely to the new race widget that you will find on the watch as well. Well, kind of give you a predicted time for a specific course that youre training for – and this is kind of based on your fitness, your training load and your recovery and as well as actually taking into account the course route itself, whether its kind of undulating. Essentially, this will help you in the lead up to race day, because it will just give you a kind of a more realistic expectation of kind of what to expect and how far and how long youre going to be running for, and it basically combines all of Your training data um together, which is kind of why youre training in the first place. It just gives you a really holistic view of all your data all in one place, so that on race day, you can go out there and absolutely smash it. So i mentioned there that the new race widget actually takes into account the actual course itself, and this is because of a feature called up ahead up ahead, actually allows you to kind of program into the map and points of interest, hills, water stations, aid stations. All of that good stuff actually into your map, so you know whats coming up ahead on many of the garment watches. There is something called incident detection and this kind of alerts, members of your family or friends, whoever youve kind of set up in the garmin connect app.
It will alert them if youve kind of had an incident as such. This is a very similar feature to something new called live event sharing. However, this is super super positive instead, so the live event sharing actually kind of texts, your friends or family and again, who, whoever you set up in the garmin, connect app. It will kind of send them some information in the form of a text to let them know where you are on the course, for example, or how far youve completed so far. How far youve got left to go. Anything that you want them to know when you hit certain points along your map. This is a great little feature, especially on race day, so that your friends and family can kind of track you as youre, going along thanks for that gabs back to the studio. So as well as that incident and sharing information, you might be thinking what data can i record on this? There is a lot of them, so i wont list them all out. I might show it on screen. Actually, as a quick fly through different profiles, are you can scroll down to the bottom and then add and thats going to give you the option to add all these profiles? So you can see them, but youve obviously got all the running ones. Trail runs loads of different cycling activities, mounted, biking, gravel biking, touring and then your classic hiking and climbing even got golf in there and then youve got winter sports and then moving on to water sports and then a few other extra sports.
I mean im saying a lot of sports, but you get the idea theres a lot of profiles on there, but that gives you a good idea that if you want to track the majority of your sports youre going to be able to do it with this watch. For those of you that, like listening to music when doing sports youll be happy to know, this has got on device music storage, and this is going to give you up to 500 songs, storage from spotify, amazon, music and deezer. I believe so. You can store up to 500 songs on here and play it without your phone or any other music device need you obviously youll need some headphones. Music device will be needed, but this is the music player. You get what im saying speaking about not having your phone on. You garmin have got this great little feature that i really like, and no one really talks about, but you can add a find my phone option. So if youve lost your phone, maybe because youve been running listening to music and you didnt need to take it with you. You can hold down the top left hand, menu button and then go down to find my phone click it, and then your phone starts beeping. Wherever it is, so a nice little feature there and it can help it if youre running late and youre like wheres my phone as long as youve got your watch, you can find it and in the same menu, not a new feature to garmin, but a great Feature to the watches that have it and again another reason not to take your phone out which to me is a massive bonus, but its got garmin pay on here.
So you can sync up your card to make this work as a wireless transaction. So you can go into a shop and just tap your watch on the contactless payment machine and youre good to go so another reason not to take your phone out. That sounds great leave me alone, im running if youre use the garmin watches and the garmin ecosystem, then the watch fundamentally works very similar, if not almost the same as all the other watches out there. So youve got your up and down buttons. This is going to take you flying through your widgets, and not only do you have to use the buttons you have to you, dont have to you, can use your finger and scroll up and down and look at all these different areas and scroll through all these Highlight widgets, so you can choose fundamentally the things that you want to look at the most and have them as quick glances. You can customize all these widgets and get rid of the ones that youre not going to look at and add ones that you are to start an activity. You just click on this start. Stop imprint that you can see just on the bezel there and thats the top right hand button you just click that and thats going to take you to where you can start your activity. You can scroll down to what activities you want to choose highlight all the ones youre going to be doing frequently and then hide the ones that youre not because lets face it theres a lot of activities on here that we probably wont be doing the garmin ecosystem And the way their watches work is my favorite by quite a long way, its just intuitive and it works.
You can basically have every single notification that pings through onto your phone ping, up onto your wrist onto your watch as well. Now some people love this because they dont have to get their phone out and check it. Some people hate it because they dont want to be notified about anything extra, so completely two options that you can have on and off for whatever sort of person. You are another one of these new notifications. You can have pop up is morning reports and essentially what that is its going to give you a brief snapshot of your general well being at that time and thats going to take in all the data that you put into the watch. So your training, your sleep, your stress, all that sort of stuffs going to be taken into account and give you a little morning report about how well youre doing and what you, what you can expect to feel like for the day ahead. So fingers crossed thats good for you because it might not be the nicest thing to wake up to saying youre going to have a bad day when youre feeling pretty bad, but at the same light, if it tells you youre going to feel good. Maybe i make you feel better, who knows, but an interesting one either way, so it has a new hrv status, which is heart rate, variability, basically thats. What that stands for and that takes in the microseconds between your heartbeat.
So its not heart rate, obviously because garmin have done that well for many years, but its the variability in micro milliseconds between your heart beats – and this is all pretty new to me – and i dont know much about but its something to do with the fact that An actual, very regular beating heart isnt, a very healthy one and if your hearts just ticking over exactly the same on the beat that can actually account for you being quite stressed. So its going to be analyzing your heart in more data than ever before and telling you about it, so be aware of that theres! Definitely a lot more to that and ive just skimmed, the top of heart rate variability and all the data and how it affects you and why it changes and all this stuff, but well, probably make a video on that separately.6LHgirNXEMI
