Run at a higher level
You are making strides. Now, let's take the next step. Get the training and recovery insights you'll need to notch your best time yet.
Key Features:
- Get an overview of your sleep, HRV status and daily workout with your morning report
- Charge less, train more with up to 14 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 30 hours in GPS mode
- Push your limits with a built-in triathlon feature and 30+ activity profiles
- Plan your strategy with daily suggested workouts, course details and more on the race widget
- Utilise a full suite of advanced metrics and training tools to reach your goals
- Pay for your post-workout coffee with Garmin Pay contactless payments
Ready foo the long run
Get an uninterrupted picture of your daily health and nightly sleep with up to 14 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 30 hours in GPS mode.
(Almost) As light as a feather
With its sleek design and 49g weight, you'll almost forget you're wearing a Forerunner 255 running smartwatch - even when you're asleep.
Sweat-Ready materials
Featuring easy-to-use buttons and a silicone band, this watch is ready to wear - and tear - with durable Corning Gorilla Glass 3.
Light on the wrist. Not on features
Morning report
Receive an overview of your sleep, recovery and training outlook as soon as you wake up - alongside HRV status and weather. You can even customise your report to show you what you want to see.
HRV status
Gain a deeper understanding of your overall health, recovery and training performance through heart rate variability while you sleep, based on technology developed by our Firstbeat Analytics team.
Built-In sports apps
Tap into 30+ built-in activities, including the triathlon and open-water swimming profiles - new to the Forerunner 255 running watch series. For races and brick workouts, transition to the next activity with a single button press.
Race widget
Get ready for your next race with training tips, personalised daily suggested workouts and completion time predictions based on course details, weather and performance.
Daily suggested workouts
View your entire week of daily suggested workouts, which adapt after every run to match your performance and recovery as well as the races coming up in your Garmin Connect smartphone app calendar.
Garmin coach
Free adaptive training plans include 5K, 10K and half-marathon programmes, featuring guidance from expert coaches that adapt to you and your goals.
Triathlon and multisport profiles
Switch between sports with one press by using built-in profiles for triathlons, duathlons, brick workouts and swimruns. Or, create your own custom multisport profiles.
Running power
When using a Running dynamics Pod or HRM-Pro heart rate monitor, get a continuous measurement on your wrist of how much power you're applying to the road as you run, so you can manage your effort.
Recovery time
Know how long to recover before your next high-effort workout based on your latest training as well as overall stress, sleep and daily activities outside of workouts.
Pacepro feature
To help you plan your race day strategy, this feature offers GPS-based pace guidance for a selected course or distance, so you can tailor your efforts to what's ahead.
Training status
Using new indicators such as HRV status, your recent exercise history and performance, get an easy insight into your overall effort - and whether you're training productively, peaking or strained.
Acute load
See your training history, and compare the intensity of your recent workouts to the optimal range to help improve your fitness.
Training effect
See how your workouts influence your endurance, speed and power with aerobic and anaerobic training effect feedback.
Performance condition
While you run, get an analysis of your pace and heart rate for a real-time assessment of your current ability to perform.
Running dynamics
When using a running dynamics Pod or HRM-Pro heart rate monitor, the Forerunner 255 running watch measures crucial running metrics such as cadence, stride length, ground contact time and balance, and more - while comparing to others in the Garmin Connect app.
Courses
Create or find existing courses in the Garmin Connect app, so you'll never run out of places to run. Or plan one on other platforms such as Strava and Komoot, then automatically sync them to your Forerunner.
Track running
Ready for some speedwork? Input your lane on the built-in track run activity to record accurate lap distances and see your distances in metres.
Visual race predictor
Based on your running history and overall fitness level, get an estimate of what your pace could be for a 5K, 10K - or even a marathon. Plus, trend data highlights your training's impact over time.
Cross-Training
Mix up your training with different types of workouts. Free HIIT, strength, cardio, yoga and Pilates workouts come preloaded on the watch, and you can download more from the Garmin Connect app.
A depth of wellness insights
Wrist-Based heart rate
The watch constantly samples your heart rate with our latest-generation heart rate sensor and will alert you if it stays too high or too low while you're at rest. It also helps gauge how hard you work during activities - even while swimming.
Body battery energry monitoring
Track your body's energy levels so you can find the best times for activity and rest.
Sleep core and advanced sleep monitoring
Get a score for your sleep's quality and insights on how you can do better. Even keep track of the different sleep stages as well as heart rate, stress, Pulse Ox and respiration.
Pulse OX sensor
This wrist-based pulse ox sensor monitors blood oxygen saturation levels to support advanced sleep monitoring and altitude acclimation.
Women's health tracking
Use the Garmin Connect app to track your menstrual cycle or pregnancy. Log symptoms, get exercise and nutrition education, and more. Even see and log details on your wrist with the women's health tracking app.
Intensity minutes
Our intensity minutes feature tells you when during the day you earned them and during what activity.
Stress tracking
Find out if you're having a calm, balanced or stressful day. Relax reminders will even prompt you to do a short breathing activity when the watch detects that you're feeling stressed.
Health snapshot feature
Log a 2-minute session to record key stats, including heart rate, heart rate variability, Pulse Ox, respiration and stress. Then generate a report with those stats to share via the Garmin Connect app on your compatible smartphone.
Stay connected at every step
SatIQ technology
Multi-band GNSS with SatIQ technology ensures the best positioning accuracy in any environment while also optimising the device’s battery life.
Garmin Pay contactless payments
Breeze through checkout lines with Garmin Pay contactless payments1 through participating providers.
Smart notifications
Receive emails, texts and alerts right on your watch when paired with your Apple or Android smartphone. You can even respond to texts if you have an Android phone.
Safety and tracking features
If you feel unsafe or if your watch senses that an incident occurred, the Assistance and incident detection features send your location to emergency contacts. Incident detection is enabled by default for select activity profiles only.
Livetrack feature
Use LiveTrack to let friends and family follow your real-time location4 and even view your entire pre-planned course. Rest assured that your loved ones know exactly where you're running.
Garmin connect app
See your health and fitness information, connect and compete with friends, sign up for challenges to earn badges and more - all in one free, zero-subscription app.
Connect IQ store
Download custom watch faces, add data fields, and get apps and widgets from the Connect IQ store app downloaded on your compatible smartphone.
See your stats, track your goals in the Garmin Connect app
Battery Life
- Smartwatch mode: Up to 14 days
- GPS-only GNSS mode: Up to 30 hours
- All-Systems GNSS mode: Up to 25 hours
- All-Systems GNSS mode plus Multi-Band: Up to 16 hours
Clock features
- Time/date
- GPS time sync
- Automatic daylight saving time
- Alarm clock
- Timer
- Stopwatch
- Sunrise/sunset times
Health monitoring
- Wrist-based heart rate (constant, every second)
- Daily resting heart rate
- Abnormal heart rate alerts yes (high and low)
- Respiration rate (24x7)
- Pulse OX blood oxygen saturation - Yes spot-check, and optional all-day acclimation and in sleep)
- Fitness age
- Body battery energy monitor
- All-day stress tracking
- Relaxation reminders
- Relaxation breathing timer
- Sleep - Yes (Advanced)
- Sleep score and insights
- Hydration - Yes (In garmin connect and optional connect IQ widget)
- Women's health - Yes (In Garmin Connect and optional connect IQ widget)
- Health snapshot
Sensors
- GPS
- Glonass
- Galileo
- Multi-frequency positioning
- Satiq technology
- Garmin Elevate wrist heart rate monitor
- Barometric altimeter
- Compass
- Gyroscope
- Accelerometer
- Thermometer
- Pulse OX blood oxygen saturation monitor
Daily smart features
- Connectivity bluetooth, ANT+
- connect IQ (Downloadable watch faces, data fields, widgets and apps)
- On-device Connect IQ store
- Smart notifications
- Text response/reject phone call with text (Android only)
- Calendar
- Weather
- Realtime settings sync with garmin connect™ mobile
- Battery saver - Customisable low power watch
- Controls smartphone music
- Find my phone
- Find my watch
- VIRB camera remote
- Smartphone compatibility - iphone and Android
- Compatible with Garmin Connect mobile
- Garmin Pay
Safety and tracking features
- Livetrack
- Live event sharing - Android only
- Incident detection during select activities
- Incident detection alert on phone for wearables
- Assistance
Activity tracking features
- Step counter
- Move bar (Displays on device after a period of inactivity: walk for a couple of minutes to reset it)
- Auto goal (Learns your activity level and assigns a daily step goal)
- Calories burned
- Floors climbed
- Distance travelled
- Intensity minutes
- Trueup
- Move IQ
- Garmin Connect challenges app
Fitness equipment/gym
- Automatic rep counting
- Available gym activity profiles - Strength, hiit, cardio and elliptical training, stair stepping, floor climbing, indoor rowing, pilates, yoga
- Strength workouts
- HIIT workouts
- Yoga workouts
- Pilates workouts
- On-screen workout animations
- On-screen workout muscle maps
Training, planning and analysis features
- HR zones
- HR alerts
- HR calories
- % HR MAX
- % HRR
- Recovery time
- Auto max HR
- Morning report
- Race glance/widget
- HRV status
- HR broadcast (Broadcasts HR data over ANT+ to paired devices)
- Respiration rate (During exercise) - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- GPS speed and distance
- Customisable screen(S)
- Customisable activity profiles
- Auto pause
- Interval training
- Improved interval (includes open repeats, intervals data page, rest screen and auto detection)
- Advanced workouts
- Downloadable training plans
- HRM running pace and distance
- Auto lap
- Manual lap
- Rest timer
- Configurable lap alerts
- VO2 MAX (Run)
- VO2 MAX (Trail run)
- Training status (Lets you see if you’re training effectively by tracking your training history and fitness level trend) - Improved
- Training load (Your total training load for the last 7 days calculated from estimated EPOC)
- Training load focus
- Training effect (Aerobic)
- Training effect (Anaerobic)
- Primary benefit (Training effect labels)
- Improved recovery time
- Daily suggested workouts - Yes (7 Days)
- Customisable alerts
- Audio prompts
- Finish time
- Virtual partner
- Race an activity
- Auto multisport activities
- Multi-sport
- Course guidance
- Touch and/or button lock
- Auto scroll
- Activity history on watch
- Physio Trueup
Running features
- Available run profiles - Running, Outdoor track running, Treadmill running, Indoor track running, Trail running, Virtual running, Ultra running
- GPS-based distance, time and pace
- Running dynamics - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- Vertical oscillation and ratio - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- Ground contact time and balance - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- Stride length (Real time) - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- Cadence (Provides real-time number of steps per minute)
- Running power yes (With compatible accessory)
- Grade-adjusted pace
- Performance condition
- Lactate threshold - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- Pacepro pacing strategies
- Run workouts
- Trail run auto climb
- Race predictor
- Course- and weather-specific race predictor
- Foot pod capable
- Run/walk/stand detection
Outdoor recreation
- Available outdoor recreation profiles - Hiking, Skiing, Snowboarding, XC classic skiing, Stand up paddleboarding, Rowing
- Point-to-point navigation
- Breadcrumb trail in real time
- Back to start
- Tracback
- Ultratrac mode
- Up ahead
- Elevation profile
- Distance to destination
- Barometric trend indicator with storm alert
- Vertical speed
- Total ascent/descent
- Future elevation plot
- Projected waypoint
- Sun and moon information
Cycling features
- Available cycling profiles - Biking, Indoor biking, Mountain Biking, Ebiking, Emountain biking
- Alerts (Triggers alarm when you reach goals including time, distance, heart rate or calories)
- Courses
- Bike lap and lap maximum power (with power sensor)
- Race an activity
- FTP Ffunctional Threshold Power) - Yes (With compatible accessory)
- Compatible with Cector and Rally (power meters)
- Power meter compatible
- Compatible with Varia vision(Head-mounted display)
- Compatible with Varia radar (Rear-facing radar)
- Compatible with Varia lights
- Speed and cadence sensor support (With sensor)
Swimming features
- Available swim profiles - Pool swimming, Open water swimming
- Open-water swim metrics (Distance, Pace, Stroke count/rate, Stroke Distance, Swim efficiency (Swolf), Calories)
- Pool swim metrics (Lengths, Distance, Pace, Stroke count, Swim efficiency (Swolf), Calories)
- Stroke type detection (Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly) (Pool swim only)
- Drill logging (Pool swim only)
- Basic rest timer (Up from 0) (Pool swim only)
- "Repeat on" rest timer (Pool swim only)
- Auto rest (Pool swim only)
- Time and distance alerts
- Pacing alerts (Pool swim only)
- Countdown start
- Pool swim workouts
- Critical swim speed
- Underwater wrist-based heart rate
- Heart rate from external HRM (Real-time during rests, Interval and session stats during rests, and automatic heart rate download post-swim)
Kid activity tracking features
- Toe-To-Toe challenges app - Yes (Optional connect IQ Toe-To-Toe challenges app)
Connectivity
