Garmin 945 or Garmin 245 and 530

I am looking to get an activity tracker to help with my recovery as that is something that I really want to work on right now.

Right now I am looking at the Garmin 945 that is pretty much an all in one solution vs the Garmin 245 to track my daily activities/occasional runs/recovery and the 530 to cover the cycling end of stuff which is my main focus. Pricing wise, both solution are very similar in pricing.

Question is, if I wear the Garmin 245 while biking and use 530 to record, will it affect the stress and recovery metrics on the Garmin 245?

I don’t do triathlon, if not it would be a clear choice which option to go with.

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Good question. The only answer I have really is ‘I don’t think so’. Once you have ‘physio true up’ enabled on each device they should stay in sync.

I have the 945 and have used it for biking. It works perfectly fine. The only problem for me is that I can’t read it’s relatively tiny screen without my glasses. Also, if you keep it on your wrist it is a pain to read while riding.

That is my concern too, it is far easier to see the screen on a 530 as compared to the 945 on the wrist. Well as far as I can tell from the online reviews anyway.

Absolutely true. I can read the 530 without glasses. Can’t do that with the 945. YMMV depending on how lousy your close in vision is. Mine is pretty bad these days.

I had the same dilemma a few weeks ago. I went with the 945 and I’m very happy with the decision. I do my structured training inside and when I get outside, I don’t want to watch any numbers, just enjoy the great outdoors. The watch is incredible, I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do.

You should be able to get a quick mount for the Garmin 945 if you want to have it mounted on your bike during your ride. Just another option to consider if you’d like to use your 945 on the bike but don’t want to wear it on your wrist during the ride.

I was in that same boat a little while ago.

I have a 910, and have used it for two Ironman races with the use of a quick connect, and it worked great. But it had to be on the stem of the handlebars. If i moved it on to the areobars, ontop of a water bottle between my arms or on my wrist it would loose the signal for the powermeter.

Now the newer ones may have solved this issue, but i think its just the smaller units have less room for an antenna? either way I went and got a Bolt for the bike, and use the old 910 for swimming and running now.

I’ve got a slightly different set up. I’ve got the 935 and a 530, but any work I do on the 530 comes over to the 935 and vice versa. You’ve just got to make sure that physio true-up is enabled on both devices.

Would recommend getting two separate devices, as while the 945 can do cycling as well having the larger screen is soooo much better. I’ve had a couple of instances where I forgot my 530 and just ran with the watch and the UX is just not as good.

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Garmin also do the 130. Which if you don’t need navigation seems like a good budget choice. It can screen mirror the watch as well I believe.

I’d get the 245 and 530.

I bought a 235 a number of years ago as I was only running at the time. Within 3 months I’d sold it and bought a 735XT as I wanted something to support ANT+ power from a Wattbike; however, since discovering TR it is really rare that I use my 735XT on the bike rather than my EDGE 810 as, like others have said, the UX isn’t anywhere near as good.

Also, on the few occasions I haven’t had my 810 with me I’ve suffered a number of power dropouts from my P1 pedals - not something I typically see on my 810.

Screen mirroring would only work with the 945, not the 245. 130 doesn’t have live TSS if that’s something you want. Also I’d say the extra stuff (Climb Pro, MTB dynamics, Trailforks) make the 530 worth it,

Thanks guys for your feedback. I guess cycling being my main focus, it would be better to get 2 different devices, especially since it is possible to sync up activities between the devices.

I guess the main tip over point is that the 530 has a far bigger and clearer screen which I can just glance down to have a quick peek at the metrics. I foresee it might take a little longer to do the same with the smaller screen of the 245.

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