As sports watches get smarter and smartwatches get sportier, we move closer to one perfect wearable to rule them all, but there are still notable gaps in performance on each side.
These are highlighted when you compare what I consider the best sports watch available in the Garmin Forerunner 970 to the best sporty smartwatch in the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
Both are great options for athletes and handy for general use, but the Forerunner 970 has some key advantages as a sports watch, while the Apple Watch’s smarts are more useful day-to-day.
I’ve worn both watches extensively, running hundreds of miles using them as well as cycling and doing strength workouts. I’ve also tested them head-to-head by wearing them at the same time. There’s more info on each watch in our Garmin Forerunner 970 review and Apple Watch Ultra 3 review, but I wanted to highlight the key differences I noticed between them in testing to help you decide which watch is best for you.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: price and availability
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is available in black or natural titanium and costs $799 / £749. The Garmin Forerunner 970 is available in three colors — black, white and grey/gold — and is cheaper than the Ultra 3 at $749.99 / £629.99.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: specs
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Garmin Forerunner 970 | Apple Watch Ultra 3 |
Price | $749 | $799 |
Size | 47mm | 49mm |
Thickness | 12.9mm | 12mm |
Weight | 56g | 66g |
Display | Sapphire crystal | Sapphire crystal |
Connectivity | None | LTE & satellite |
Smartwatch battery life | 15 days (8 days always-on) | 42 hours |
GPS battery life (dual-band GPS) | 21 hours | 14 hours |
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Design and display
While there are common elements to the design of both watches, like the sapphire screens and bright AMOLED displays, they have a very different style to them. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 uses more titanium and is more rugged in its design, and is of course square.
It feels a little bulkier on the wrist than the Forerunner 970, which has a titanium bezel but is mostly plastic and so lighter than the Apple Watch. It has Garmin’s classic round design with five buttons, whereas the Ultra 3 just has three buttons, with one being a dial, and so relies a little more on you using the touchscreen during and outside of activities.
Both watches have excellent displays that are bright to read in all conditions, and they’re packed with the same sensors including an altimeter, a pulse oximeter and an optical heart rate sensor. The Forerunner 970 has an advantage in that it can connect to external sensors via both Bluetooth and ANT+, while the Apple Watch Ultra 3 can only do so via Bluetooth.
A bigger advantage to the Forerunner 970’s design is that it has a built-in flashlight, which is incredibly useful in all sorts of situations. I mainly use it to see to my kids when they wake at night and to help retrieve my son’s trains when they are rolled under couches, but those who have more adventurous lives will find the flashlight invaluable in the great outdoors.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 does have a higher waterproof rating though at 100m vs 50m on the Garmin Forerunner 970, and the Ultra 3 is a diveproof watch to 40m as well.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Sports tracking and training analysis
I’ve tracked a wide variety of activities with both watches, but mostly used them for running as it's my main sport. On the tracking front, both are equally well-equipped in my view — whatever sport you favor and whatever stats you want on your wrist, both watches will almost certainly provide it.
You can also use third-party apps to improve the sports tracking on the watches. There are extra data fields you can add to the Forerunner 970 through the Connect IQ app store, including rolling pace — whereas the Apple App Store is full of great sports tracking apps. WorkOutDoors is one to consider in particular, if you want more customization options.
When it comes to training analysis, however, the Garmin Forerunner 970 offers a lot more than the Apple Watch Ultra 3, which only has Apple’s self-rated training load as a native feature.
The Forerunner 970 offers much more detailed training load analysis, as well as insights into your overall endurance, predicted race times and a recovery time advisor. It also estimates your readiness to train each day, suggests workouts to do, and rates and your running economy (when paired with a Garmin HRM600 chest strap).
There are some third-party apps you can use with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 to get more analysis and advice, such as Athlytic, but these don’t deliver the same depth and accuracy as Garmin’s training advice in my experience.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: GPS & HR accuracy
Both watches offer multi-band GPS tracking, which has been highly accurate throughout my testing. I’ve checked the GPS tracks on both watches after runs, and raced with them, and both are reliably accurate in my experience, even in tricky GPS sports like city centers.
The heart rate tracking on both watches is also generally good, but the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has been more prone to errors than the Forerunner 970 on my runs in particular. The Ultra 3 will often take a while to find my heart rate at the start of runs, and occasionally locks onto my cadence instead and so reads too high for entire workouts.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Battery life
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is the longest-lasting Apple Watch ever, and made it through an entire marathon weekend without needing a charge during my testing. It routinely lasts me over two days even when running both days, and charges very quickly as well.
It still doesn’t match the Forerunner 970’s battery life though, with the Garmin usually lasting me four or five days on a charge with the screen always-on, when running every day. If you switch the Forerunner 970 to raise-to-wake mode it will last over a week, and it also offers longer GPS tracking at 21 hours in multi-band mode compared with 14 hours on the Ultra 3.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Smart features
The Forerunner 970 has some useful smart features, like music storage and NFC payments, and it links up with Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer accounts to wireless sync your music over to the watch.
However, it doesn’t have cellular connectivity — the Fenix 8 Pro is Garmin’s only watch to offer this — and doesn’t match the day-to-day usefulness of the smarts on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, which has better native smart features and the incredible Apple App Store to call on.
When wearing both watches at the same time the gap in smarts is obvious. I can check the weather on the Garmin and get my notifications, but the Ultra 3 is great for storing travel tickets, paying for things (and using store loyalty cards), checking emails and messaging. Plus, managing and listening to music and podcasts is easier on the Apple Watch.
It's worth noting that the Apple Watch only works with iPhones, however, whereas the Garmin is also compatible with Android phones.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Maps and navigation
Garmin’s native maps and routing features are second-to-none, with the Forerunner 970 being able to re-route you and create new routes on the fly. You can see the maps alongside your stats when tracking and activity as well, and get turn-by-turn navigation when following routes.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 has native maps and routing features, but you can’t view these while tracking an activity — you have to swap between apps to see the map and your stats.
You can see both a map and your stats using a third-party app like WorkOutDoors or Footpath, but even then you’re not getting as smooth and detailed an experience as with the Forerunner 970.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Health, activity and sleep tracking
Both watches track steps accurately in my experience, and also record your calories burned throughout the day. I find Apple’s activity rings engaging and they do help me to stay active throughout the day outside of workouts, but I also like Garmin’s automatic step target adjustments, which create a suitable goal to shoot for based on past activity.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers more health tracking features. While both can take an ECG, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has hypertension notifications as a new feature that can alert you to signs of hypertension based on patterns in your blood flow.
I’ve also found Apple’s sleep tracking to be more accurate than Garmin’s, with the Ultra 3 picking out periods when I’m awake in the night more reliably. The new sleep score on the Apple Watch Ultra 3 does seem to always rate my rest a little too highly, but the actual sleep stages graph usually looks correct to me.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 vs. Garmin Forerunner 970: Verdict
These are both great watches that do the fundamentals of sports tracking well, and then each has relative strengths and weaknesses.
The Forerunner 970 is better for training analysis, battery life and navigation features, whereas the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has more impressive smart features, and better activity, health and sleep tracking.
You could decide on which of those features are more important to you, or by going on the design — both have appealing looks, but they are different styles.
Overall, I lean towards the Forerunner 970 myself as an avid runner. The native sports and navigation features are easier to use than relying on different apps on the Apple Watch, and I love its lightweight design.
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