Garmin Forerunner 35 Review

Heart Rate

This is the likely reason to choose the Forerunner 35 over the 25. The Forerunner 35 is Garmin’s first budget GPS watch to feature a wrist-based heart rate monitor. But that adds an extra $60 to the price. And like all of the wrist heart rate monitors, accuracy isn’t as good as a chest strap. It will, however, provide accurate enough data to gauge intensity – and ultimately this is one of the main reasons for tracking heart rate.

New Features

Beyond the optical heart rate monitor, the Forerunner 35 has a few feature upgrades over the Forerunner 25.

Vibration alerts. These tie in nicely with smartphone notifications. When you receive a text, email, or other alert on your phone, you’ll receive a vibration notification and alert details on the watch. Similarly, other notifications like auto-lap and time/distance alerts also vibrate.

Music control. This is a fun little feature. If you listen to music while you run, you can control the music (Next, Previous, Play/Pause) with the Forerunner 35.

Interval training. This lets you set-up intervals directly on the watch. Usually, this is found on Garmin’s higher priced watches. I’ve always been a fan of this feature – it allows you to do distance intervals off the track.

Carry Over Features from the Forerunner 25

We chose the Forerunner 25 as one of our best budget GPS watches. Mainly because in addition to the standard time, speed, and distance common on all GPS watches,  it carries some nice extra features which Garmin has included on the Forerunner 35. 

Smart notifications. When paired with a smartphone, notifications and alerts that normally appear on your phone, also appear on the Forerunner 35. At first, I kind of laughed this one off. But after several runs, I found it’s an easy way to separate the important alerts from the nice-to-know notifications. So if I get an urgent text, I’ll stop, pull out my phone, and answer it. If it’s something that can wait, I’ll leave my phone where it is and keep running. It’s especially nice if you’re like me and keep your phone tucked away in a less-than-convenient spot to take in and out.

Activity Tracker. The other feature that took me a while to get behind is the activity tracker. Like a Fitbit, the Forerunner 35 counts steps, tracks sleep, sets daily step goals, and syncs all this data on your smartphone. And while I run a lot, I still find it’s nice to know how much I’m moving when not running.

Some research even suggests that moving frequently throughout the day, even for short bursts, is needed to compliment other, more intense activities. With the Move Reminders built into the watch, I know when I’ve been stagnant too long and need to stretch my legs. Plus, it’s a convenient excuse to get up and take a break!

Auto-lap and Auto-pause. While running, the Forerunner 35 automatically records laps, will auto-pause when you stop, and can be programmed with time and distance alerts letting you know when you’ve hit a certain mileage or time.

The Forerunner 35 has a couple other neat tricks. It can track time, speed, and distance when you’re indoors on a treadmill. This method relies on arm swing to determine cadence – i.e. it’s not super accurate but can give you general estimates.

It also remembers personal records like your best 5k, 10k, and other common race distances.

Finally, it comes with a virtual pacer that will alert you when you’re going way faster or slower than a set pace. This might be ok if you live in a flat area. I’m surrounded by big hills where my pace fluctuates a lot, so I rarely use this feature.

Check Forerunner 35 price on Amazon.com

Uploading

You can track and view runs and activities two ways. Either sync them to a smartphone with the Garmin Connect app. Or upload them with the included USB cable to your computer. Both methods track activities on Garmin Connect where you can see some data not found on the watch like a route map, elevation profile, and lap splits.

Summary

The Forerunner 35 is a great watch if you want wrist heart rate combined with a simple, basic GPS watch. The extra features are nice add-ons – but they can be completely disregarded if you’re only interested in heart rate and a GPS watch.

I would definitely recommend this watch. It’s stylish, works well, and has good battery life.