Garmin Forerunner 165 : Scientific Review (My Top Garmin!)

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Reference devices:
ZMax + Dreamento: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.11... & https://github.com/dreamento/dreamento
Polar H10: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004...
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Timestamps:
00:00 Quick Intro
00:51 Small Complaints
02:11 Heart Rate Test 1 : Indoor Cycling
07:12 Heart Rate Test 2 : Running
10:15 Heart Rate Test 3 : Outdoor Cycling
13:17 Heart Rate Test 4 : Weight Lifting
16:10 Sleep Test
21:08 Sleep Test : Comparison w/ Other Watches
23:36 GPS Test
26:44 Limitations, Recommendations & Conclusions

The Forerunner 165 provides some of the best balance between price and performance in the Garmin line-up, and in this video I am going to use a bunch of data to show you why I think that is, and why it is the Garmin I would likely choose to buy for myself. Still this watch is far from perfect, and there are a few choices Garmin made that I am not completely happy with. In this video we will test the heart rate tracking performance of the forerunner 165 during 4 different types of workouts, we will also compare the sleep stage tracking against an EEG headband that can actually measure my brainwaves, and finally we will take a look at the GPS tracking performance. And, as I said, all of this will be based on actual data analysis, let’s get to it.

Hello everyone, for those of you that are new to the channel, my name is Rob and I am a postdoctoral scientist specializing in biological data analysis. Now, I don’t want to go into the specs of this watch too much, since the focus in my reviews is on actual independent testing of devices. But, there is one thing that bugs me a bit about some Garmin watches, and that includes the Forerunner 165. For some reason, Garmin tends to exclude certain sports profiles and sensor connections from their lower to medium tier watches, and that's also what they did for this watch. So, certain types of sports will not be available on the Forerunner 165, and also certain external sensors, like power meters or Smart Trainers, can not be connected, but this is only possible on the more expensive watches. And I suspect much of this is not really a technical limitation, but just a choice they make to differentiate their watches. Especially for the sports profiles, I imagine it would just be a matter of porting over the firmware from another watch, and it would work fine. So, they are quite likely limiting these watches intentionally. Maybe I am wrong, and the hardware somehow limits these more “low end” watches, like this Forerunner 165, but I suspect it is just a firmware choice. That being said, those relatively small differences would not make me want to pay almost double for for instance the Forerunner 265, and I would still go for this 165 instead. If you want a more detailed comparison, Ray from DC Rainmaker made a nice video about this.