Garmin Forerunner 70 Review: An Amoled Entry Point

Five years after the Forerunner 55, a keenly positioned watch built around running, Garmin has replaced it with the Forerunner 70, still sitting at the entry point of the range. Between technical progress and the compromises needed to stay accessible, it walks something of a tightrope.

The Forerunner 70 succeeds a Forerunner 55 that launched in 2021 and is still sold. Technology has had ample time to move on in between, so the newer watch brings numerous improvements, without that preventing it from making a few concessions compared with the manufacturer's other references. The question is whether it delivers the best balance of sporting and everyday performance within Garmin's own line-up, and in an increasingly competitive smartwatch market where accessible alternatives such as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 and the Apple Watch SE 3 are multiplying.

The Forerunner 70 deserves credit for modernising the Forerunner 55 without betraying its style. The Garmin signature is recognisable at a glance, and the brand retains its habit of fitting a great many physical buttons even to watches that have a touchscreen.

The first point to note is a relatively compact case, 42.6 mm in diameter, which is 0.6 mm more than the Forerunner 55. It is also a touch thicker, at 11.9 mm against 11.6 mm. The restrained diameter makes it easy to wear on small wrists, but it is not the most discreet watch on the market, since the slimmest models manage to stay under a centimetre thick.

Nor is it the lightest of the moment at 40 g, sitting in the upper part of the range for its format. That is not because of heavy materials: there is no stainless steel or titanium here, with Garmin using reinforced polymer instead, a plastic that inspires no concerns about its solidity.

There is more room for doubt over the screen protection, which is limited to chemically strengthened glass rather than sapphire, raising the prospect of scratches over time. The watch remains an entry-level model by the manufacturer's standards, like the Forerunner 55 with which it shares that type of glass.

Despite dimensions almost identical to the 55's, the Forerunner 70 carries a larger screen at 1.2 inches against 1.04 inches, and a better defined one at 390 x 390 pixels against 208 x 208 pixels. The one reservation is that its bezels remain thick, with the display occupying only 51.2% of the available space. In exchange, the panel now uses Amoled technology.

That is where Garmin's real modernisation effort is concentrated, since the previous generation used a transflective MIP screen. The older technology was certainly less prone to reflections, an advantage in bright sunlight, but it was also less contrasted, less precise, and it confined the interface to a bare minimum of colours. With Amoled come gradients and effectively infinite contrast. The slightly more marked reflections are offset here by high brightness: in strong June sunshine the Forerunner 70 remained perfectly legible. A brightness sensor accompanies the screen to adjust the backlight automatically.

True to habit, Garmin uses a standard 20 mm strap. If the supplied silicone strap with its pin buckle, which is very comfortable in any case, does not suit, replacing it is very simple.

Otherwise, the watch carries the usual biometric sensors for heart rate and SpO2, but goes without an altimeter, a temperature sensor and a depth gauge. The Forerunner 70 is rated to 5 ATM.

The Forerunner 70 relies on an interface mixing touch and button navigation, and there are five buttons to work with. That is a constant across the rest of the range, including the recent Forerunner 970 and 570, even if a little more restraint might have been expected on an entry-level product. The controls are identical: the top right button confirms and opens the application list, while the lower right one handles going back. On the left flank, the top key wakes or switches off the screen, while the other two navigate up and down. Regular users of the brand will not be caught out, and more experienced owners can replace most physical operations with touch navigation. As is traditional on the Forerunner line, the function of each button is written on the edge of the screen.

A long press on the Light or Start button activates functions that can be customised from the Garmin Connect app on a smartphone, while a long press on the middle left button opens the watch settings.

Once the screen is woken by a press on the dedicated button or a simple movement of the wrist, a swipe from top to bottom shows the most recent notifications. Usefully, photographs received by message are displayed, which is not always the case with rival watches, although reply options are limited to predefined text.

A swipe from bottom to top gives access to widgets summarising current status: heart rate, Body Battery, step count, the previous night's sleep score, training load and, as a bonus, a preview of the calendar. Displaying the full set of applications takes a swipe from right to left from the home screen, or a press on the Start button.

The watch synchronises with the Garmin Connect application, available on iOS and Android. It is a thorough app split into five sections: Home gives an overview of the daily data recorded, such as sleep, heart rate and intensity minutes; the second is dedicated to challenges, that is the social side of the watch, with badges; the third is a calendar of training sessions; Flux acts as a social feed for sharing activities with friends; and the last section covers additional settings. The app is where training programmes can be created through Garmin Coach, for instance while preparing for a specific race, and where sporting equipment can be registered.

Both on the watch screen and on the smartphone, Garmin's interfaces lack a little modernity. The functions on offer, though, are among the richest on the market. Even so, a few appealing tools have to be given up on the Forerunner 70: Garmin Pay for payments from the wrist, answering calls, since the watch has no microphone, and storing music playlists for offline listening. Playback can still be controlled from the player built into the watch when the smartphone is nearby.

The Forerunner 70 does not carry Garmin's most sophisticated optical heart-rate sensor, although it has been updated since the 55, and it goes without ECG or body-temperature sensing. It does add measurements that the Forerunner 55 lacked, including blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), heart-rate variability and VO2 Max.

Since this is a watch designed for running above all, the recorded measurements were checked against a Polar H10 chest strap used as the reference. Across several endurance sessions of around fifty minutes, the readings tracked the reference closely, with an average deviation of only 1.7 bpm over a run of that length. Apart from small, non-systematic lapses at the start of a session, the watch follows the chest strap's measurement very closely.

The same applies to interval work, useful for runners looking to improve their performance. The watch is responsive and tracks the chest strap's readings very closely, with less than 1.5 bpm of deviation across a whole session. A few minor discrepancies appear on one of the peaks and at the very start of a run, while the watch settles.

The Forerunner 70 has multi-band GNSS but not dual-frequency reception, which raised the prospect of positioning difficulties, particularly in the urban settings where the recorded testing took place. Garmin's entry-level model did not falter, avoiding the zigzagging between buildings shown by the Huawei GT Runner 2, itself a capable performer on positioning, which was recorded alongside it.

Courses can also be stored on the watch, with turn-by-turn navigation available when starting a cycling session, for example. There is a back-to-start function too, handy when you have lost track of where you are in the middle of a run. Even so, the Forerunner 70 is not the best equipped on the software side for navigation, and the absence of a barometric altimeter means trail runners have to rely on GPS-derived altitude.

Garmin quotes battery life of up to 13 days, barely below the two weeks quoted for the Forerunner 55 with its less power-hungry screen. In practice the watch only needed the charger after 10 and a half days, which is a strong result. With an Amoled panel, an always-on display option is available, and enabling it reduces endurance by more than half.

The manufacturer sticks with the physical charger used on its other watches, avoiding the misalignment that can occur with the magnetic designs rivals rest their watches on. With that arrangement, expect two hours for a full charge.

The competition is very different in character. For an equivalent outlay you can have watches running Wear OS, from Samsung or Google Pixel, or watchOS on the Apple Watch SE 3, all far richer on the software side and better looking, but rather less sporting and above all far less enduring. The choice is between raw performance and design.