Is the Garmin Forerunner 165 Good for Swimming? (2026 Review)
An honest swim-focused Forerunner 165 review: pool lap accuracy, SWOLF, open water GPS, and the real limits — plus how to add structured swim workouts.
The Forerunner 165 is the cheapest current Garmin that tracks open water swimming, and it's the watch Garmin now points Swim 2 buyers toward. But "cheapest that does X" and "good at X" aren't the same thing. Here's what the 165 nails in the pool, where it falls short, and who should spend a little more. For recreational and fitness swimmers, the Forerunner 165 is an easy recommendation.
It counts laps accurately, detects all four strokes, tracks SWOLF, and offers a genuine open water GPS mode — all on a bright AMOLED screen, for well under the price of a triathlon watch. As a do-everything first Garmin that happens to swim well, it punches above its price. The catch is at the serious end. There's no Critical Swim Speed test, no stroke-rate data field, and — the big one — no way to build structured swim workouts on the watch itself.
If your training revolves around precise pace targets and complex sets, you'll feel those gaps. The fix is cheap (build sets in AquaPlan, export to the watch), but it's worth knowing before you buy. You're a fitness or recreational swimmer, you want one watch that also runs and tracks daily activity, and you don't need on-watch CSS tests or complex structured sets.
You race triathlon and want multi-band open water GPS, or you live and die by Critical Swim Speed and stroke-rate data on the watch. Then look at the 265, 570, or 970. Forerunner 165 Swimming Scorecard Here's how the 165 performs across the metrics that actually matter when you're staring at a pace clock: In the Pool: What It's Like Set your pool length, pick the pool swim profile, and start.
The 165 handles the rest — no button presses between lengths, automatic rest detection when you pause at the wall, and a clean post-swim summary of distance, pace, stroke breakdown, and SWOLF. The AMOLED screen is genuinely easier to read through goggles and splashes than the old MIP displays on dedicated swim watches. The honest limitation: it's a tracker, not a coach, in the water.
It records what you did beautifully, but it won't walk you through a "8×100 on 1:45, descending" set on the watch face unless you load that set as a workout file first. For a lot of swimmers that's fine — they follow a plan on a whiteboard or a printout. For interval-heavy training, you'll want the export workflow below. Open Water: Good, Not Flagship The 165's open water mode is one of its best surprises — many budget watches drop it entirely.
In clear, open conditions it tracks distance and pace accurately enough for training and most recreational racing. Where it shows its price is GPS band: it's single-band, so swimming a course tucked against cliffs, under bridges, or beside dense tree lines can introduce small distance errors as the signal bounces. If open water is your main event and you care about precise track accuracy, that's the single best reason to spend more.
See our guide to the best Garmin watches for open water swimming for the multi-band picks. If you mostly swim pools with the occasional lake session, the 165 is more than enough. The Fix for Its Biggest Weakness The 165's one real frustration for training swimmers — no structured swim workouts on the watch — has a clean workaround. The watch happily accepts Garmin FIT workout files; it just can't author them itself.
Build your session in the AquaPlan workout generator — drag in your warm-up, main set, intervals, rest, and target zones — then export it as a Garmin FIT file and sync through Garmin Connect. Now your "8×100 descending" shows up on the 165's screen length by length, exactly like it would on a watch three times the price. The FIT export guide walks through it in two minutes.
Should You Spend More? The Upgrade Path Two upgrades make sense depending on your gap. If you want on-watch Critical Swim Speed, richer training metrics, and an AMOLED touchscreen, the Forerunner 265 is the natural step up. If you want full triathlon and multisport support plus multi-band GPS, the Forerunner 570 (the successor to the now-discontinued 255) adds transition modes and dual-frequency accuracy.
But don't over-buy. If you're a fitness swimmer who exports workouts from AquaPlan anyway, the 165 closes most of the gap for a lot less money. Compare the full lineup in our best Garmin watch for swimming guide . Frequently Asked Questions Turn Your Forerunner 165 Into a Training Tool
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Written and maintained by AquaPlan Team, Swim Training & Product.
The AquaPlan team builds swim-training software for structured pool workouts, Garmin-compatible FIT export, printable workout PDFs, and progress tracking.
Focus areas: Structured swim workout design, Garmin-compatible FIT file export, Pool training plans and workout-library systems, Swim training tools for web, iOS, and Android.
Editorial standard: AquaPlan training guides are checked against the current workout builder, workout library, Garmin export workflow, and product limits before publication.