Living with the Forerunner 170 Music
Price band: under $350
Underneath, this is a small, light running watch. The case is 1.7 in (42.6 mm) and weighs 1.4 oz (41 g). Its 1.2 in AMOLED screen responds to touch, and Garmin Pay is on board. GPS is single-band, and there's no triathlon mode. There's no speaker, only a beeper, so music needs Bluetooth headphones.
Is the Music edition worth it over the plain Forerunner 170?
What the extra money really buys is headphone pairing. The plain 170 can only nudge the music on your phone. Around that come 4 GB of storage and Wi-Fi to fill it, plus spoken alerts in your earbuds and two extra colors. Garmin's manual rates both editions the same until music plays, so none of it helps the run itself.
One owner found under half the 4 GB free once the system took its share. Over a dozen albums still fit: fine for playlists, tight for a podcast hoard. If the phone is staying home, buy the Music edition. If it's coming anyway, skip the extra and look at the Forerunner 70.
Does my streaming service sync to the Forerunner 170 Music?
Yes, unless it's Apple Music. Each service's own Connect IQ store listing names this watch (read Nov 1, 2026), and each wants a paid tier:
Garmin's product page says a subscription "may be required". For every streaming service on the list, it is. That page still names only three services, because YouTube Music arrived months after launch. Type Apple Music into Garmin's app store and it offers you watch faces, which is Garmin's polite way of saying no. Apple Music tracks won't load as your own files either. If your music is on one of the four, it syncs and we'd buy it. If it lives in Apple Music, skip this watch.
How many GPS hours are left with music playing?
Garmin's manual is refreshingly plain here, and the news isn't kind. GPS-only drops from 20 hours to 7.5 with music. All Systems, which listens to every satellite network, drops from 14 to 6.5. Music takes 62% of the GPS-only time. On the 47mm Forerunner 570 it takes exactly half, 18 hours down to 9.
A marathon with earbuds from corral to finish fits. A 50K with music all the way doesn't, unless you save the playlist for the hard miles. Our GPS battery planner works through longer days.
Nobody has measured it, though. No tester has run this watch down with music playing, so 7.5 hours is Garmin's number alone. I read it like a supplier's figure on a part that hasn't been through inspection: plausible, not yet proven. The nearest test doesn't help much. Tom's Guide got about 3.5 days with the screen always on against Garmin's 4, and that's a smartwatch test that says nothing about GPS with music.
Will the headphone dropouts hit you?
Maybe, and nobody can tell you in advance. Two owners of this exact watch report stutter from the watch's own storage. One sent Garmin two sets of data through its forum and still had no fix about two months later. The other's Samsung earbuds cut out every few seconds, yet behaved perfectly with the phone.
This looks less like a 170 Music defect than a Garmin habit. The same complaint follows the vívoactive 6, the fēnix 8 and the Forerunner 570, in reports that don't say which 570 case size. The trouble tends to begin as you press start, and it seems to come down to which earbuds you wear. No firmware fix has been found for this model.
Garmin's Forerunner 170 manual suggests three fixes. Keep a clear line between the watch and the headphones' antenna. Wear the watch on the antenna's side, or switch wrists. Swap a metal or leather band for silicone.
Two reports in six months isn't a flood. But nobody has published a list of earbuds that behave on this watch. A stutter at mile 18, with the phone at home, is the one failure this edition exists to prevent.
What's it like the rest of the week?
Garmin claims 4 days if the display never sleeps and 10 if it wakes on a wrist lift. Tom's Guide got about 3.5 days with it always lit and a run every day, half a day short of Garmin's figure. TechRadar's lasted a little over a week, screen setting unstated. Plan on charging twice a week with the screen always lit, about weekly without.
Heart rate matched a chest strap in TechRadar's runs. It lagged only in one warm interval session for Tom's Guide. No published GPS test names the Music edition, so its tracking is unmeasured. It's single-band, which matters most downtown and under thick trees. No owner past three months turned up, so long-term reliability is unknown. No recall touches it.
Should you buy the Forerunner 170 Music?
It's the cheapest Forerunner on this page that plays music without the phone. The vívoactive 6 costs less and syncs the same four services, but it's a lifestyle Garmin, not a running-first one. On Apple Music, it can't help you. If your music is on one of the four services that sync and no run with earbuds goes past a marathon, buy it.
Garmin Forerunner 170 MusicUnder $350 
