The news that Garmin was launching a subscription service was met with anger from its core userbase, but the long term success of Garmin Connect+ will largely depend on whether the extra features it offers are worth the price.
At the moment Garmin Connect+ costs $6.99 a month or $69.99, and you can get a free 30-day trial to test out the features it adds, which include a new AI-powered advisor called Active Intelligence as the standout.
I’ve been using the best Garmin watches since 2017, when the Garmin Forerunner 935 made me a loyal convert to the brand, and was surprised to see the brand bring in a subscription service.
To see if it’s worth the outlay, I’ve been testing it out over the past week and my initial takeaways — both good and bad — are below.
So far I’ve not been able to test the new LiveTrack service and haven’t seen much added to Garmin’s training plans, but I have some thoughts on the other new features, especially Active Intelligence.
Garmin Connect+ Like #1: Performance Dashboard
The new Performance Dashboard feature is available on the Garmin Connect website, rather than in the app, and it shows a whole load of useful performance and health stats on one page.
These are visualized through a series of graphs, with my favorite ones being the Endurance Score Performance which shows stats like your acute and chronic training load along with your overall endurance score.
It’s not new data but a new and engaging way to display it, and stats-obsessed athletes like myself will enjoy poring over the graphs.
Garmin Connect+ Like #2: Live activity for strength workouts
When you start an indoor workout on your watch a live activity will appear in the Garmin Connect app on your phone, and if you tap this it shows live workout stats.
For indoor runs and bike rides this is similar to the Extender feature that’s available as standard on Coros devices, and it’s also something that the Apple Watch offers for free, but Garmin’s Live Activity feature does go further than live stats when it comes to strength workouts.
If you follow one of the guided workouts available in the Connect app on your watch you can see short animations demonstrating how to do moves like squats as well as showing which muscles are being targeted and info on sets and reps.
It’s a handy feature for those who aren’t sure how to do the exercises in the workouts and it’s easier to see your workout stats and the animations on your phone than your watch during moves like push-ups and planks.
Garmin Connect+ Like #3: Being able to say the AI isn’t interesting
I’ve not been impressed by the Active Intelligence feature so far, which means my main ‘like’ about it is that you can rate the info given as either interesting or not interesting.
Hopefully my regular reports that the AI-powered advice given is not interesting will help to improve this feature over time.
Garmin Connect+ Dislike #1: Active Intelligence is not very smart
As a Strava Premium user I’m used to seeing AI summaries of my activities that are comically useless, but even so Garmin’s AI is a let down.
Throughout the day all I get from it is basic summaries of a few stats that I can see myself in the app or on my watch, and after activities you once again get very basic insights into stats like pace, heart rate and calories.
This is the flagship feature of Connect+ and it’s providing very little right now, and actually throughout the Garmin user interface you already get similar short summaries of things like training load for free.
It also completely missed the point of one of my runs, saying I maintained a moderate pace throughout when I’d actually progressed the pace from very easy to a fast effort.
It was clearly just looking at the average overall pace rather than the breakdown of the run — even Strava’s AI is smarter than that.
Garmin Connect+ Dislike #2: Active Intelligence only shows for recent activity
Another quick dislike about Active Intelligence — as far as I can tell, it only shows a summary of your most recent activity, and you can’t look at the AI report on past workouts, which you can do on Strava.
I often will do a short strength workout after a run, or do a run and an indoor bike ride back-to-back, so I then only get the AI summary of the second activity. If you do a cool down as a separate activity you also only see the AI for that, not your main workout.
As mentioned, so far the summaries haven’t been much use, but if they were I’d want to see them for all past activities.
Garmin Connect+ Dislike #3: Trial is too short
Garmin is not the first company to add a subscription service on top of the price you pay for one of its smartwatches, but others tend to offer long free trials to show off the extra features you get.
When you buy an Apple Watch Series 10 or Apple Watch Ultra 2 you get a three-month trial of Apple Fitness+, which gives you access to hundreds of instructor-led workouts, and you get a six-month trial of Fitbit Premium when you buy a Fitbit fitness tracker or Google Pixel Watch. By comparison, Garmin only gives you a 30-day trial.
Especially given that Active Intelligence is still described as a Beta feature and will be improved (hopefully) by user feedback, a longer free trial would be a good move from Garmin.
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