I wore the Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro for a month — which was better?

The Garmin Forerunner 965 and Coros Pace Pro are two of the best sports watches available, and two of my personal favorites to use while marathon training. I’ve worn both of them for the past month while training for the Seville Marathon, using them for daily runs, plus bike rides, strength and yoga sessions, and activity and sleep tracking.

Both watches have impressed me with their accuracy, sports tracking and training analysis tools, and both have enjoyable designs to wear 24/7, partly thanks to their bright AMOLED displays.

There are some key differences between them that will make each more attractive to certain users. The Forerunner 965 offers a wider range and greater depth of features, while the Pace Pro is more affordable while matching the Garmin on most key sports tracking features. You can get more info on each watch in our Coros Pace Pro review and Garmin Forerunner 965 review, but here’s my take after comparing them directly over a month of use.

Garmin Forerunner 965 Coros Pace Pro: specs

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Price

Price is a big factor when picking between the two watches, with the Coros Pace Pro being $349 / £349, which is $250 / £250 cheaper than the Forerunner 965’s list price of $599 / £599. However, Coros rarely discounts its watches, whereas Garmin devices are regularly in sales and the Forerunner 965 has dropped below $500 in big sales periods like Black Friday.

Winner: Coros Pace Pro

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Design and comfort

The Garmin Forerunner 965 has a more elegant and durable design thanks to its titanium bezel, with the Pace Pro having an all-plastic design. The Forerunner 965 also has a slightly larger screen at 1.4in vs 1.3in, while being similarly lightweight to the Pace Pro.

Both AMOLED displays are impressively bright and easy to read in all conditions indoors and out, and I found both comfortable to wear 24/7, though the Pace Pro is a little smaller and better for those with skinny wrists.

I prefer the five-button design of the Garmin to the two buttons on the Coros, one of which is a digital dial. Both systems are fine most of the time, but sometimes when wearing gloves the dial on the Coros would catch, and it has no dedicated backlight button, which I do find handy on the Garmin.

Winner: Garmin Forerunner 965

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Sports tracking

Both watches have a wide range of sports modes and extensive training analysis, but the Forerunner 965 offers more on both fronts. It has extra sports modes like golf, and its training analysis is more detailed and includes features like heat and altitude acclimation guidance which you don’t get on the Coros.

Another feature you get on the Garmin is Bluetooth and ANT+ connectivity to link up external sensors like heart rate straps or cycling power meters. The Pace Pro only offers Bluetooth connectivity and while this is usually enough because all modern sensors offer Bluetooth, some users with older products might value the ANT+ connectivity on the Garmin.

Winner: Garmin Forerunner 965

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: GPS & HR accuracy

I used both watches in the most accurate multi-band GPS mode during my testing, and checked the GPS tracks for any errors. I also raced a 10K wearing both watches, as well as doing an accurately measured 5K parkrun twice.

Both watches have impressed me equally for GPS accuracy, with no notable errors during my month of testing both. On almost all runs they logged very similar distances, and both recorded distances very close to 5K and 10K during those races, so I’d call it a draw on this front.

To test the heart rate I also wore a Wahoo TRACKR chest strap for a more accurate reading during activities to compare with the watches. For the most part, the watches did match the chest strap fairly closely, but during interval sessions they lagged behind the chest strap and when the weather was colder I saw more errors from both watches.

I don’t think either watch outperformed the other on heart rate accuracy though. Both were OK, but for the best results I’d prefer to pair a chest strap to them, especially for hard workouts and during the colder months.

Winner: Draw

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Navigation

Both watches offer offline maps; you can create routes within the Garmin Connect or Coros app to send them to the watch. They both also show elevation plots of planned routes, and can direct you back to the start of your activity if you get lost along the way.

However, Garmin’s navigation tools are more detailed and impressive. The maps show more detail, and they are routable maps, so you can create routes on the fly, whereas with the Coros the routes are just lines overlaid on the map — it can’t create a route without the app.

The Forerunner 965 also has Garmin’s excellent ClimbPro tool, which shows the climbs and descents on a route separately, so you can judge your effort on uphills in particular. I find this very useful when doing long hilly routes because you see how long each climb you have to tackle is.

Winner: Garmin Forerunner 965

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Battery life

Given that both watches are fairly small and have large AMOLED displays, the battery life is impressive on both the Pace Pro and Forerunner 965. I had the screen set to always-on with both and used them quite heavily, running every day using multi-band GPS, and both lasted me around six days on average.

The Coros Pace Pro usually had more battery life left than the Garmin Forerunner 965 though, and the more activities using GPS I did the bigger the gap, since its GPS battery life is more impressive. Battery life is always a strong point for Coros watches and this remains the case with the AMOLED Pace Pro.

Winner: Coros Pace Pro

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Smart features

The Garmin Forerunner 965 is certainly a smarter watch than the Coros Pace Pro, offering support for music streaming services Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer as well as file storage, and also having NFC payments via Garmin Pay.

The Garmin Connect IQ app store also has a few useful extras — the parkrun barcode app is always handy for me — and you have more customization options with Garmin, so you can show things like the weather forecast on your watch face, which you can’t do on the Coros.

While the Pace Pro does offer music storage, this is only for drag-and-drop files, you can’t link up a streaming service. You also can’t control music playback on your phone, which you can with the Garmin, and NFC payments aren’t available.

Winner: Garmin Forerunner 965

Garmin Forerunner 965 vs. Coros Pace Pro: Which is better?

The choice between the Garmin Forerunner 965 and Coros Pace Pro largely comes down to whether any or all of the upgrades you get on the Garmin make it worth an extra $150-$250 (depending on sales).

I found both watches to be excellent sports trackers during my testing, being accurate and having useful training analysis, but the features surrounding these essentials are better on the Garmin Forerunner 965, and it also has a more elegant design.

If you just want a reliable AMOLED sports watch with maps, the Pace Pro is the one to get, but if you value the extra smart features, training analysis and navigation tools on the Garmin in particular, it might be worth the upgrade.

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