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Garmin 245M for Walking/Hiking

Chris.J.Hart
over 5 years ago

I'm thinking of getting my wife a 245M to replace her 230. However, we do a bit of walking/hiking and I wanted to know the options for tracking these sort of activities on the 245.

I realise the don't have the built-in Garmin Walk/Hike Apps but can you add them through Connect IQ? 

Otherwise I think you could just use a custom App profile and change the activity type in Garmin Express afterwards?

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    The 245 does have a built in Walk activity, but if you want to record it as a hike (it shows in Garmin Connect as a hike), I have Hike2:

    https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/116a5b59-29ae-4397-a70e-907d7e5f8e44

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

    Thanks, sounds perfect.

  • 0 over 5 years ago

    FYI, we've seen some success "transplanting" sport profiles from other Forerunners.

    See the attached ZIP file. It contains the "hike.fit" Hike profile from a Forerunner 945. Unzip the file, connect your 245 to a computer, copy "Hike.fit" to the Sports folder on the 245 and restart the watch. See if it works and let us know - this will be an interesting test.

    Hike.zip

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to Otto-Destruct

    First, note there really is nothing different about a hike vs a walk, except how it gets classified in GC.  If you care how it is classified, you can always go into GC and change it after the fact. But the available settings will be identical.  Not sure if the default page layout is identical or not, but that is fully configurable.

    I did just played around with copying the Hike sport from my 945 to 245.  It turns it into "Walking" no matter what I try.  I tried both placing Hike.fit in the NewFiles folder as well as directly in the Sports folder.

    It'll still show up as "Hike" on your watch list, but it will record it, and display it in Garmin Connect, as a Walk.

    Or, the other option is to use Jim's Connect IQ Hike2 app.  You do lose some other advanced options by doing this, but what gets recorded should be the same. Plus you might like the interface to his Hike2 better than the native interface.

  • 0 over 5 years ago in reply to ekutter-dnu

    Walk impacts FirstBeat VO2max calculations where Hike doesn't; its best to avoid using walk for hikes as it'll skew VO2max.

    Thanks for confirming the behavior of the transferred sport file ekutter. It sounds like Hike2 is the most practical option for device that don't have Hike natively.

    Interestingly, some apps will transfer properly: Indoor Track and Walk Indoor seem to correctly display on even the 45.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to jim_m_58

    I'd like to buy the fr245 and do a bit of hiking .I know there is the "hike+" available that can record my activity as a hike (instead of walk) but apart from this what other functionality does it have? For example I'd like to have functionality similar to garmin instinct where I can load a gpx and have breadcrumb navigation and elevation map so I can see what's coming next. Can I have it with this or any other app or must I buy a dedicated outdoor watch for this?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Otto-Destruct

    i tried but it does not work unfortuntely...

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Otto-Destruct

    Hi, I tried this today. Unfortunately my FR245 music doesn't "see" it, although it is saved in the Sports folder.  Wish I could get a hike profile that would work.