Garmin Forerunner 645m Review

Garmin is my go-to watch for all my fitness activities, and last year I purchased the Garmin Forerunner 645 Music. With a year of use under my belt, and testing out various activity settings, I figured it was time to do a review. If you’re looking to upgrade your watch, or get a fitness watch, this is a great mid-range model.

Prior to purchasing the 645 music, I had the Forerunner 235 but for me, there weren’t enough stats. I had purchased the 235 back in 2017 for my very first marathon training cycle and it was a great starter watch for me. It gave me my distance, pace, time, steps and had the heart rate zone screen, so I could keep an eye on my effort. I do believe this watch has some additional information given, but I chose to upgrade to get more detailed stats.

Forerunner vs Fenix – Which to choose?!

Let me tell you, I had a heck of a time deciding on which watch to purchase. The Fenix 6s is a stunning watch, with every feature I could ask for and then some. But I couldn’t bring myself to pay that much for a watch. The temptation was real, but ultimately I chose to go with the Forerunner 645 music as it had all the capabilities and stats I was looking for, whereas the Fenix 6s had the icing on top.

Am I ruling out never getting a Fenix 6s? No, of course not. Technology is ever-evolving, and so is my training. Perhaps if I start trail running and I find that the 645 music doesn’t work as well as I had h0ped, I may upgrade again. I love the design of the 6s and the fact that the battery seems to last forever according to my friends that have that style.

Forerunner 645 Music Specs

You can see the detailed specification breakdown on the Garmin website, but I wanted to highlight what was important to me when deciding to purchase this watch.

Quick-release bands

It is so important for me to be able to change the band for my watch to dress up my watch a little bit. I have yet to do so as we’re in a pandemic and I haven’t had many places to go where dressing up my watch is important. Christmas is coming, however, so you can bet these will be on my Christmas wishlist. You can get them in silicone, nylon, leather and Milanese.

Watch size

When you have tiny wrists, some larger watches just look ridiculous. I’m pretty minimalistic when it comes to jewelry that I wear, so having a watch that didn’t stand out on my wrist was important. Garmin 645 to the rescue!

Stress

If only I had pulled the trigger on this Garmin 645 before I was laid off. I would have loved to have seen the stress levels during the peak of conference and event season! On second thought, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t …

Smart Notifications

I do typically tend to run with my phone in do not disturb mode but for other activities such as skiing, snowshoeing, paddleboarding etc., I don’t mind being interrupted. And as someone who works for herself, seeing a notification pop up that can be dealt with when away from my computer is very helpful.

Find my phone/watch mode

I have had to use the find my phone mode more times than I can count or care to admit. Since I am typically always wearing my Garmin except when charging, I have yet to have to try the find my watch mode. I do stress yet.

Live track

My husband follows me around to every race I do and the Garmin live track feature is helpful to see where I am on the course. He’s usually chasing me around to yell words of encouragement and snap photos so being able to use this instead of the location feature with iPhone is key for him.

Garmin Incident Detection

As a female, I always run with my phone in case I need to call 9-1-1 or my husband. But, what happens if I fall and can’t get to my phone? Incident detection alerts your emergency contact(s) if Garmin detects an incident. Garmin will send your name and location to your emergency contact(s) and is determined by the live track location feature. I thankfully haven’t had to use this yet, but safety features are insanely important to me.

Downloadable workouts

For me, these would be interval-style running workouts, that I can completely set up by myself (using the Garmin app) based on my training plan. I do use a running coach, so being able to have the customized workout on my watch keeps me on track, and not manually counting laps or anything.

Training Status

Sometimes I regret getting a watch that tells me my training status. Training status alerts are accompanied by a message explaining why you received the status and what you can do to improve or maintain it.

• • • No status: you typically need a week or two of activity history to get an accurate read on status.
    • Detraining: You’re training a lot less and it is beginning to affect your overall fitness. I hit this status after my car accident, as I was told not to run and I couldn’t even be in the gym doing strength work.
    • Unproductive: My watch LOVES to tell me I am unproductive! Your training level is at a good level, but your general fitness is decreasing. Typically you’re not getting enough recovery in between workouts. My watch has more faith in me than I do, and typically when I run my slower runs, (over 6:05-6:10/KM) I get this status.
    • Recovery: A lighter training load is allowing your body to recover nicely and is absolutely essential during extended periods of hard training (I’m looking at you marathon training). As you feel ready, you can add more to your training load.
    • Maintaining: Your load of fitness is currently enough to maintain your current fitness level, but you’re not improving. You can add variety to your workouts or increase your training load.
    • Productive: You’re rocking your training load, and your fitness is moving up. Don’t forget to add recovery periods into your training, to help maintain your overall fitness level.
    • Peaking: Hello race condition! Your current reduced training load means your body is recovering and compensating for earlier training. This can only be maintained for a short period of time!
    • Overreaching: Your training volume is too high, and is counterproductive to your fitness. You need a break and should add lighter training into your schedule before picking back up.

Different Activity Profiles

Since I don’t just run, it is important to me to have different activity profiles on my Garmin. On my previous watch, there was running, cycling and another catchall category called other, but let’s be honest, I am never going to remember to manually switch the type of activity. This 645 music now has yoga, strength, workout, skiing, stand-up paddleboarding, walk, cardio, trail run and more.

Recovery TIme

Being able to see what recovery times look like after each type of run is important to me. I do know that different types of activities bring on different types of recovery times, and not allowing enough recovery in-between can cause injuries. I am the Queen of injuries and I know that when I push myself, I’m not recovering enough.

Miscellaneous

This watch will hold up to 500 songs worth of music storage directly on the watch, and you can connect your Bluetooth headphones to your watch. For me, I won’t ever run without my phone for safety reasons but would be good for me in the gym.

There is also Garmin Pay, but I think it currently only works within the USA. My bank isn’t listed, and I do look forward to when it is an option here. Sometimes it’s easier to use my wrist to pay for my post-run coffee

Wrapping It Up

This Garmin watch has exceeded my expectations so far. For me, I am your average runner, and I love to be outside. I needed something to give me the data I want to keep an eye on, with multiple activity choices & not be over the top expensive. I did get the music version but only for the aesthetic aspect.

I just ran my first in-person race with this watch, and it held up well. My watch tracked a higher overall distance, but that’s typically just from dodging around people throughout the race.

All in all, if you were looking for a mid-range watch to help track your fitness activities – running or not – I would suggest getting this watch. Join in on weekly, monthly, and quarterly challenges with Garmin and track your overall fitness, whatever that means to you. If you are looking to do something like a Triathalon, I would suggest getting a more sophisticated watch.

Basically, fashion aside, I am so happy I took the jump and upgraded my fitness watch last year; not once have I wondered if I made the correct decision. Easy to use, looks good fashionably, doesn’t look out of place on my wrist, and gives me detailed stats on my fitness.

I’m interested to know, do you use a fitness watch? What do you love? What do you hate?