What changed after launch, issue by issue
How long does the Forerunner 970 battery really last?
Credit first: Garmin's manual prints six GPS figures, by satellite mode, with and without music. What it skips is the setting that decides your week: whether the screen stays on.
In my old job, a part arriving without its tolerances went straight back to the supplier. A battery hour without its screen setting deserves the same. Fill that column in and the picture is reassuring. Garmin's battery updates and lower brightness took always-on from 2.5 days to four to six. DC Rainmaker's in-depth review, the one most buyers land on, was written on launch firmware. Its 2.5 days no longer describes this watch.
On race day, a marathon uses a fraction of the multi-band battery. On paper, a back-of-the-pack Ironman fits inside it with charge to spare. The gap: nobody has run one down from full in multi-band on current firmware, so the race figure is a projection from one 10K. If your longest day is an ultra needing two days of GPS without a charger, this isn't your watch. Our GPS watch battery planner points that runner to the Suunto Vertical 2 instead. For a marathoner or triathlete, this is battery we'd buy without a second thought.
Is the Forerunner 970 good for open-water swims?
This is the catch. DC Rainmaker swam in the sea against a GPS unit towed in a buoy. He found the 970's tracks weaker than Garmin's recent watches, and slow to recover whenever he stopped to tread water. Three months later, he called it "still not fixed" and arguably getting worse.
A calmer test is kinder. the5krunner swam one steady lake lap in a wetsuit. The 970 logged 833 yd (762 m) on a course listed at 820 yd (750 m), 1.6% long. Its track was smoothed straighter than he swam. Put together, stop-start sea swims trip it up, while steady lake swims land close.
Garmin's forum has pool threads too: lengths added or missed, and one swim cut by nearly a third. No tester has published a pool lap-count test. Nor has anyone run an open-water test on current firmware. That test is what would change our mind.
The race software is the strong part. Garmin's manual says the touchscreen switches off for swims, and transitions are timed separately by default. Auto Sport Change can detect each change of sport. Lock Device locks touch and buttons for the whole race. Our best triathlon watch roundup weighs the swim evidence across every watch. If your races start in a calm lake, we'd buy it as it stands. If they start in surf, buy it knowing the swim map will look rough.
Are the ghost touches something to worry about?
Scrolls registering as taps fill the busiest unresolved thread on the 970's Garmin forum, at 27,334 views. Views measure attention, not how many watches are affected. A replacement cured it for some people, and Garmin handles it case by case. Shower water has also started a workout through the touchscreen, which is more initiative than most of us show at 6 a.m.
Early crashes faded with updates for at least three people who reported them; one still freezes. Two displays failed, and Garmin replaced or exchanged both. The CPSC database shows no recall of any Garmin watch. This is a watch that may need a warranty swap, not one to steer around. We'd still buy it.
