Garmin Forerunner 970: A Very Close Look At Garmin's Latest Watch
Garmin Forerunner 970
The Garmin Forerunner 970 is now available, and could well become Garmin's most popular high-end watch of the year.
As is the norm for the series, the Forerunner 970 combines high-end features with fairly pragmatic build, to avoid the additional cost and weight of high-end materials. Lots of titanium or steel is the top example, although this Forerunner does have a titanium bezel.
I've recently started using the watch. Just a couple of tracked exercise sessions in, I took out the camera to get some ultra-close-up views of some of the watch's core features, for those out there considering the Garmin Forerunner 970 as a watch upgrade.
This is one of the three colour variations currently available, white and yellow, while classic black and grey/indigo are your other options.
Let's get (a lot) closer.
Garmin Forerunner 970 bezel
Here's a close look at the Garmin Forerunner 970's bezel. While the casing is mostly reinforced plastic, the screen surround is titanium. Front-on, it has a matt, brushed-style finish.
Look closer and you'll see the side of this metal bezel is actually shiny, which lets it catch the light as you move your wrist around. This photo also gives you an idea of the curvature of the screen glass. The bezel offers no real protection for the screen, as it is not raised. But the glass is Sapphire Crystal, so should prove fairly hardy,
Forerunner 970 LED flash
This photo captures the top side of the watch, and the Forerunner 970's LED light. There are two white LEDs, one red one. If it appears there are nine here, it's a trick of the light caused by the diffuser lens covering here. See how it appears dithered? That layer helps to soften and spread the light.
The red LED is there for when you want to be able to navigate without flooding the area with much light at all. When using the white mode, you have four intensity levels to pick from.
Garmin Forerunner 970
Here's the other key piece of metal, bar the buttons and bezel, a colour strip of what I assume is aluminium. In the black version and the white finish seen here, it's this sort-of bright yellow-green (Garmin calls it Amp Yellow). It's indigo/purple in the grey Forerunner 970.
You can also see here perhaps the most mysterious part of the watch, the black ring that sits within just one of the five outer buttons. I can't see anything behind there, but such a black cover layer is often used for IR transmitter tech. Here's another look:
Garmin Forerunner 970 black button
I've asked Garmin if there's any additional information available and will amend this article if anything is forthcoming. It could just be a style touch, or may be a sign of a future feature to come.
Garmin Forerunner 970 speaker and microphone
On the opposite side of the casing to the LED flashlight is this odd pair of holes, behind which the speaker and microphone live. The Garmin Forerunner 970 cant use ordinary mic and speaker ports because of the extended 5ATM water resistance.
Garmin Forerunner 970 HR sensor
This is the Garmin Forerunner 970's Elevate heart rate array. At this distance you can even see the little fresnel-style patterns in the LED housing, used to direct and spread the output of the LEDs.
As in other recent watches, like the Fenix 8, this one has four light sensors and six LED light squares. The four outer ones are used during tracked exercise, to help improve signal stability when there's a lot of motion in the person wearing the Forerunner 970.
And those shiny bits that make the square HR array into a circle? These are metallic pads, required for the ECG feature the Forerunner 970 supports. They effectively complete a circuit, when you (as instructed) place thumb and forefinger on the watch bezel when requested while using the ECG mode.
Garmin Forerunner 970 buttons
Garmin Forerunner 970 charging port
Here's a final close-up look at some of the more familiar elements of the Garmin Forerunner 970. The trio of left-side metal buttons are just like those of other primarily button-operated Garmin watches. And despite experimenting with a new style of power connector in the Marq Gen 2 the better part of three years ago, the Forerunner 970 still has Garmin's classic 4-pin cable.
Let's finish off with as close a peer as I can get to the super-bright Forerunner 970 OLED screen, a 454 x 454 pixel 1.4-inch panel I'd need to get a new lens for to get close to letting you see its sub pixels.
Garmin Forerunner 970 screen pixels
The Garmin Forerunner 970 is available now, for $749.99.
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