Cyber Monday is in full swing, with great discounts on a range of health and fitness products for runners.
This includes some massive savings on running watches, including the Garmin Forerunner 245, which just hit its lowest price yet - now £149.99 at Decathlon (saving you 25%). Or, if you want to leave your phone at home while still enjoying your favourite music and podcasts, the Forerunner 245 Music is also 22% off at Amazon.
As a nine-time marathoner and Boston qualifying runner, I’ve tested a range of GPS running watches over the years. The Forerunner 245 is still one of my top all-rounders: it’s got a decent battery life to see you through a week of training, it’s packed with useful features you can use to optimise your running technique, and it's a sleeker, less-rugged design than some of Garmin's higher-end options – not to mention the price tag is a lot lower.
I also like that I can send my location to a friend when out on a training run – a really neat little safety feature for extra peace of mind.
High-performing running watches rarely come with a small price tag, which is why I'm claiming this to be one of the best Cyber Monday running watch deals I've seen so far.
The Forerunner 245 was first released in 2019, with the Forerunner 255 (also 14% off) arriving in June 2022 and the 265 earlier this year. There’s very little difference between the 255 and the 265 apart from an OLED screen in the newest iteration. While the 255 comes with double the battery life (14 days versus seven) of the 245, as well as multiport modes for triathletes, it contains many of the same features: heart rate, Garmin Pay, maps and advanced performance metrics.
In the 245, features such as body battery and running dynamics tracking evaluate your current training status to indicate if you’re undertraining or overdoing it. Garmin also offers additional performance monitoring features, so if you're a junkie for stats and analysis, you can get into the nitty gritty information that the watch stores after each workout.
In my opinion, the Forerunner 245 is one of the best mid-range offerings from the Garmin clan. But if you're after something more premium, the Fenix 7 is currently a huge £210 off too – down to £479.99.
