Is it worth buying FR265 now?

For the vast majority of users the watch works fine (me included). People come to the forum with a problem, so you're getting a very one-sided (negative) view of reality here.

If you are attracted by all those training/health assessment stats and training suggestions then it is not worth buying. Having suffered through many disappointing firmware updates myself I have reached the conclusion all these numbers are semi random.

The watch automatically sets unrealistically high Max HR even though the first thing I did after buying it was to disable auto MHR detection. Then it uses this skewed number to guess your lactate threshold which will be all over the shop between various firmware versions.This obviously impacts daily suggested workout pace ranges which may be not what you expect, and again, will differ between firmware. And when I say 'guess your lactate threshold' I literally mean 'guess' - I could see it sometimes update it after my easy runs where I was nowhere near a threshold kind of exertion.

I do not use Daily Suggested Workout feature and plan my training calendar myself. But even then it is highly annoying to see a watch worth a few hundred euros to show you so called training effect summary which does not make sense at all (but sometimes does - remember, these things vary between firmware versions). Yesterday I did a easy run with 5:40min/km pace. The watch told me it was Tempo run. The day before I did 800m intervals with 4:15min/km (+400m jogs in between) - also Tempo. A week before - marathon pace run at 4:59min/km assessed as VO2Max.

I am now waiting for Suunto to enhance their workout mode so that it vibrates before each step (sadly, it doesn't atm) and once it's released I am jumping onto Race S wagon.

I've tried the Forerunner 265, Instinct 2 Solar, Vivoactive 5, and Edge 840 Solar. The 265 is the most stable of them all and brought me the least regrets about buying it.

I'm a triple decade Garmin user, Auto, Cycling, Running. The only other running watch I tried was one that was put out by a company name Bryton and it wasn't great. There is a lot I like about the 265, the display is great, GPS seems solid, connectivity with my Iphone 13 has been good. If Garmin can get their act together on processing the HR sensor data, it would be a great product. Unfortunately, so far it does not seem to be as reliable as the firmware that was on my FR245. But you have to take into account that I turned off automatic updates on the 245, and it does not have the last released version of the software (for that watch).

And that seems to be the rub with the watches, getting to the point of having an installed version of the software that works well for the functions you need. If Gramin gets the HR data sorted without breaking something else, I'll be golden again.

Long ago Oregon had a company named Central Point Software with the mantra in the user community of "Built by Central Point, Debugged by Users. I'd be happier if I saw less of a parallel with the Gramin watch software. 

imho the FR165 is a better choice. my GF has a 165, i use a 265

Overall in my opinion the main issue with the FR x65 is the optical wrist HR sensor.
its not accurate and displays (in cold environment/ skin ) often (completely) wrong values.
this falsifies all the training advices / analysis !

in the meantime i only use the following features of the FR265 (for running, cycling, swimming):
- as a gps tracker for the activities (training log)
- sleep analysis
- as a watch / weather / baro.
- all notifications/alarms: off (except before sunset - but there is currelty a bug)
- i removed all training pages like readiness, recovery stats, training load etc.
- a simple gps mode is sufficient (gps only) to save battery
- pulse Ox only on demand to save battery

unfortunately its not possible to switch off optical wrist HR for an activity without losing the training effort stats completely (like aerobic / anaerobic effort). for running it would be possible to derive ist quite good from the running power, mor accurate as the HR itself
therefore i said goodbye to all the training advice / stat pages of the FR