Garmin Celebrates 20 Years of the Forerunner, The World’s First GPS Smartwatch
Manila, Philippines – Garmin is commemorating 20 years of Forerunner, the world’s first GPS smartwatch designed to help runners adopt accurate and sophisticated data to train safely, achieve personal bests and reach new heights.
Garmin first set foot in the aviation industry with cutting-edge GPS navigation products in 1989 and expanded into automotive, marine, outdoor products and subsequently fitness wearables in 2003, with the launch of the world’s first running smartwatch – the Forerunner 201.
Every Run Starts Here – Forerunner for Runners
For the past 20 years, the Forerunner series has been providing runners with precise data analysis – the running smartwatch tracks a runner’s precise positioning while analyzing data including distance, speed, elevation gain as well as heart rate, blood oxygen and more.
In 2022 alone, there were over 320,000 new Forerunner users across Asia. Despite the global pandemic, running activities clocked by Garmin users in Asia grew by 24 percent from 2020 to 2022, with Vietnam, Indonesia and India in the lead with the most growth, demonstrating the unstoppable love for running in Asia.
“From the first time a Garmin engineer awkwardly strapped a GPS device to a wrist, the Forerunner series has evolved into a trusty companion for all runners around the world. We remain committed to achieving our personal best by delivering innovative technological breakthroughs to push users to their personal bests,” said Mr. Scoppen Lin, Assistant General Manager, Garmin Asia.
Likening runners to planets tracing their own orbit, revolving around their common passion for running, every runner is in pursuit of their individual fitness goals and to take on bigger challenges.
Empowering Runners with Running Science
Committed to expanding on Garmin’s expertise in GPS navigation technology and combining it with industry leading smart technology, Garmin has utilized Firstbeat Analytics for more than a decade before acquiring the industry-leading physiological analytics companies in the world.
Developments through the years include Heart Rate Variability (HRV) sensor data to provide the most advanced analysis and metrics in the areas of stress, sleep, maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 Max), training status/load, training effectiveness, and respiration rate.
This allowed Garmin to empower users with the most advanced and accurate health and performance data to make more efficient and data-driven decisions during training and recovery.
In conjunction with this momentous celebration, Garmin has released their most powerful Forerunner smartwatches yet, the Forerunner 265 and 965 today.
The Forerunner 965 is equipped with a titanium bezel, a 1.4-inch AMOLED display and an amazing battery life of up to 23 days on smartwatch mode. It currently holds the record for having the world’s longest battery life for a running watch with an AMOLED display.
Unique to the Forerunner 965, the watch comes equipped with the Stamina and Acute Chronic Workload Ration features to track and help users manage their physical exertion throughout a run, to prevent “bonking” by overexerting too early in a run and to determine overall training load metrics for proper training scheduling respectively.
This smartwatch is designed for marathon and triathlon enthusiasts who will benefit from features like Wrist-Based Running Dynamics, where users can access detailed metric through on-wrist running dynamics including stride length, vertical oscillation directly from the watch in real-time.
The forerunner 965 series will be available in the Philippines starting April 2023.
Forerunner 265 Series
On the other hand, the Forerunner 265 comes with a Ground Gorilla Glass 4 lens, with an option of 1.3-inch AMOLED display, featuring a battery life of up to 13 days or 1.1-inch AMOLED display (on the Forerunner 265S) featuring a battery life of up to 15 days. Forerunner 265 includes performance monitoring tools from Garmin Firstbeat Analytics like VO2 max, performance condition, training effect and more.
Rigorous and Comprehensive Testing Procedures for Quality Assurance
Designed for runners, by runners, Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 265 series are purpose-built in both form and function to help athletes better plan, prepare, perform and connect.
To ensure that Garmin’s products can keep up with users’ vigorous training regimens, the products are put through diverse extreme tests to simulate real-life usage scenarios, including but not limited to low and high temperature tests, 10-bar stress tests, acceleration detection tests, altimeter tests, repeated drop tests, watch band wear cycle tests. The variety of tests would ensure that customers would experience superior product quality and build.
Getting Runners from Zero to Hero
Garmin places great importance on community – building run communities throughout key Asian cities through Garmin Run Club activities to bring people who love running together.
The Season 3 of the Garmin Run club’s Manila leg started last February and will run until May 2023. Garmin welcomes everyone to join the run club every every Monday and Thursday at 7pm held at Toby’s Sports Bonifacio Global City.
The program is led by three Garmin-accredited Coaches: Precious Que, Jules Aquino, and Jasper Tanhueco. Discover new friends, experience a well-planned running program and run with the Garmin running community!
Run with Garmin and experience their most powerful smarwatches out in the market. The Forerunner 965 retails for Php 37,660.00 while Forerunner 265 is at Php 28,250.00. For more information about Garmin Philippines, visit their website or Facebook page.
