Music, not activity, highlighted the debut of Garmin's Forerunner 645 Music at CES year. The $449 fitness watch is the first Garmin wearable to have onboard music storage, a feature slowly becoming standard on smartwatches of all kinds.

Since the Forerunner family appeals to serious runners, onboard storage for music is a logical feature to include. But since the Forerunner family is quite niche, some potential users might have overlooked it. With the inclusion of onboard storage, it sits closer to competing with all-purpose smartwatches than ever before—those who have considered the Apple Watch, the Fitbit Ionic, and similar devices may now consider Garmin's new device, too. While more expensive than the base models of its competitors, the Forerunner 645 Music is designed for runners for a reason—and some runners might be willing to drop nearly $500 for this device.

Design

Garmin has finally found its design stride after years of making wearables that were comfortable but not the most attractive accessories to wear. The Forerunner 645 Music takes after the Vivoactive 3 with its round case, quick-release 20mm bands, and 1.2-inch, 240 x 240 display surrounded by a stainless steel bezel.

Along the circumference are buttons to navigate up and down display options, to go back to previous pages, to start a workout, and to turn on or off the display's backlight. If you've used a recent Garmin wearable, you'll quickly know how to use the Forerunner 645 Music.

Garmin Forerunner 645 Music Buy Now (Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs .)

It seems like every time I use a new Garmin device, the company manages to make it lighter, sleeker, and more stylish in general. While Garmin wearables have always looked a bit more industrial than competitors like the Apple Watch, the company has embraced that as a style using metallic accents, muted colors, and a sporty aesthetic to make designs that are distinctly Garmin.

Forerunner 645 Music doesn't mimic the Vivoactive 3's design completely since it doesn't have the cool side-swipe feature that the existing device has. Running your finger over a textured portion of the Vivoactive 3's bezel lets you scroll through options on the display. It's a simpler version of the Gear Sport's rotating bezel and a neat alternative to using side buttons to navigate.

Inside the Forerunner 645 Music is the typical bevy of sensors found in high-end Garmin devices: accelerometer, gyroscope, barometric altimeter, thermometer, compass, heart-rate monitor, and GPS and GLONASS. It also has NFC so it can make contactless payments using Garmin Pay, and it has space for up to 500 downloaded songs for you to listen to offline with Bluetooth earbuds. In addition to being water-resistant up to 50 meters, the Forerunner 645 Music has an estimated battery life of seven days in smartwatch mode or five hours in GPS and music mode. When I used it, the device lasted about four full days and nights of constant wear, with a number of recorded workouts completed within that time.

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Music storage

The internal storage in the Forerunner 645 Music can hold up to 500 songs from various sources, including iHeartRadio and Deezer. While I was reviewing the device, iHeartRadio's Garmin Connect app was still being finalized, so I couldn't test it out. iHeartRadio All Access subscribers can download playlists from their account to the watch for offline playing with a Bluetooth headset.

Instead, I used Garmin's desktop software, Garmin Express, to save personal .mp3 and .aac files to my Forerunner 645 Music. Garmin Express handles music saved on your PC much more elegantly than other programs, like Fitbit's desktop software for saving music to the Ionic smartwatch. The program immediately recognized my default iTunes track categories and playlists and showed me any purchased files that were available to download to the watch. I made a couple of playlists in iTunes to test this feature out, and it took seconds to download just those playlists to the wearable.

Pairing a Bluetooth headset to the Forerunner 645 Music is easy as well—a long-press of the up button on the left side of the case brings up a menu where the device's settings are located. Under "sensors and accessories," you have the option to pair a Bluetooth headset to the watch. In mere seconds, my Jabra wireless earbuds connected to the Forerunner 645 Music, and I could hear the songs saved to my watch. The device has all the typical music controls you'd expect a player to have, and you can scroll through them using the up and down buttons on the case, similarly to scrolling through on-screen sport profile choices.

The usefulness of onboard music storage is debatable and will depend on the type of athlete you are. I work out almost every day, but I'm rarely separated from my phone while doing so. I have a few armbands where I can pocket my phone while running—they aren't the most comfortable things, and I always feel like they're falling down my arm even when they aren't. But they work and allow me to bring music from multiple sources, as well as non-music media, along for the ride.

Most wearables focus on music when talking about onboard storage, and a device's compatible music sources are quite important to know before buying. If you're not an iHeartMusic All Access subscriber, then you'll have to find other, non-DRM tracks to load onto the Forerunner 645 Music. For some, that may not be a problem at all, but others who strictly get their music from streaming subscription services will be out of luck.

I often listen to other media while working out, mostly audiobooks from Audible or Overdrive and podcasts from Overcast. I can't save some of these files to any wearable for offline listening because I don't "own" them. In Overcast, I can download any podcast episode to my iPhone for offline listening via the iPhone, but that episode cannot be transferred to the Forerunner 645 Music or another similar wearable.





Audible's Download Manager lets you import Audible files to Windows Media Player and iTunes so you can listen to those files on your preferred program. In theory, you should be able to load an audiobook from Audible imported to iTunes using the Download Manager onto the Forerunner 645 Music. However, if the audiobook is DRM-protected, you won't be able to transfer that file to the Forerunner 645 Music or another similar wearable easily unless you were to manually remove the DRM (which we wouldn't suggest doing).

The Forerunner 645 Music isn't the only wearable to fall into the trap of prioritizing music above all other forms of media. Currently, there are no native podcast apps for the Apple Watch or for Android Wear devices, nor are there any native audiobook apps. Some third-party services like MiniCast and Audiobooks.com let you download files to wearables through their apps, but Apple and Google haven't made it easy for their wearable customers to access non-music files on the go.

Onboard storage on a fitness wearable becomes less useful as you prioritize non-music media. That's not to diminish the importance of this feature on the Forerunner 645 Music, though—it's Garmin's first wearable with onboard music storage, and it's not an accident that a device in the Forerunner line got that honor. Forerunner devices are designed for hardcore runners, many of whom want to leave the house with as little as possible weighing them down while they train. If you're one of those people and can deal with just music on your wrist, then the Forerunner 645 Music should do the trick.

Activity features

The Forerunner 645 Music has all of the same activity features that the Vivoactive 3 has, including a library of trackable sport profiles, the option to create your own sport profile, rep counting in strength activities, exercise recognition, auto-recording, and LiveTrack. You can customize data sections on the display for any sport profile and have more than three screens to scroll through during a workout (which means more than six stats available to check at any time).

Scrolling through these pages is when I wish I had Garmin's side swipe feature as an alternative to pressing the "down" side button every time I want to switch to a different data screen. However, the Forerunner line is made for those who want control over their devices regardless of rain, snow, or other environmental conditions. Buttons are the best controls for that—side swipe's ease of use may be affected by different weather conditions, so I understand why it wasn't included in the Forerunner 645 Music.

The heart-rate monitor is of typical Garmin quality—at high and low BPMs, the Forerunner 645 Music measured my pulse within 5 BMP of the Polar H10 chest strap. The device's GPS is just as accurate as its heart-rate monitor: within a second or two, the GPS grabbed my location as I took a walk around the block. In Garmin Connect, you can see a map of your route on a standard, satellite, or hybrid map.

I've always appreciated the heart-rate screen on Garmin devices like these because it shows your real-time pulse in large numbers, with a small arrow pointing to a colored bar that indicates your intensity level (easy, moderate, intense, etc.). It gives you a clear picture of where your heart rate is in terms of zones so you can quickly decide to push yourself harder or slow down. The device was also quick to respond to the presence of my chest strap with an on-screen alert asking to connect to it (I declined for testing purposes, but you can connect any ANT+ compatible chest strap to the wristband for even more accurate pulse measurements).

Exercise recognition and rep counting continue to get better. The Forerunner 645 Music correctly identified more of my strength-training exercises than any other Garmin device I've used, even if it couldn't identify all of them. Those that were left unknown can be labeled in the Garmin Connect app from a huge list of exercises, including ab jabs, calf raises, plank, reverse crunch, dumbbell shrug, and many more. You can also add the amount of weight you lift if you wish.

Forerunner-specific features

Since the Forerunner line is geared toward more advanced athletes than the Vivo line, the 645 Music has a few special features not found on the Vivoactive 3. The device shows training status or a calculation of training productivity based on previously recorded workouts. This can tell you if you're peaking or overachieving in your workouts, allowing you to adjust your training methods accordingly. It also supports "training load"—which tells you if your previous week's worth of exercise was too easy or too hard for you—and "anaerobic training effect"—which is an estimate of how your current training is preparing your body to push itself even further in future sessions.

I found myself constantly looking at my anaerobic training number after any workout that included heart rate and speed data (you need both to get an anaerobic training measurement). While my main workout goal is to maintain my current fitness level, I often have days where I have the energy and willpower to push myself further than I usually do. It's helpful to see how my regular workouts help my body perform better on those peak days as well as the higher anaerobic training numbers that those intense workouts produce.

The Forerunner 645 Music can also connect to a running dynamics pod for deeper running stats. With this sensor that clips to your waistband, the Forerunner 645 Music can track cadence, ground-contact time balance, stride length, vertical oscillation, vertical ratio, and ground-contact time.