Hi everyone, I just completed my first major trail run with the Forerunner 970 – a 118 km route with 7800 m of elevation gain, including aid stations marked as POIs. Unfortunately, I experienced a lot of disappointment and frustration, especially considering the price of the watch and compared to my previous Forerunner 255, which I’ve sadly already sold. Here’s what happened: After loading the route and starting the activity, the track took several minutes to appear on the screen The watch freezes when switching screens, and then the screen goes black The buttons become completely unresponsive The watch emits random "beeps" without any clear reason Occasionally, it seems to come back to life for a few seconds, then freezes again Thanks for your help

Forerunner 970 – Very slow, freezing, and unresponsive...

Hi everyone,

I just completed my first major trail run with the Forerunner 970 – a 118 km route with 7800 m of elevation gain, including aid stations marked as POIs.
Unfortunately, I experienced a lot of disappointment and frustration, especially considering the price of the watch and compared to my previous Forerunner 255, which I’ve sadly already sold.

Here’s what happened:

After loading the route and starting the activity, the track took several minutes to appear on the screen
The watch freezes when switching screens, and then the screen goes black
The buttons become completely unresponsive
The watch emits random "beeps" without any clear reason
Occasionally, it seems to come back to life for a few seconds, then freezes again

Thanks for your help

Top Replies

socorsu 2 months ago in reply to Igor Petrov +6

Garmin is also using the same SoC (CPU) since 2021 for all their models and families

4 years later it is not suprising that this SoC is now unable to deliver enough power for all the software and hardware…
socorsu 2 months ago in reply to Yuri +2

no need to ask so far away :-)

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https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/351371/garmin---benchmark---f7-e2-comparison-positioning

http://www.f-blog.info/garmin…
Igor Petrov 2 months ago +1

I won't say that the watch freezes for a minute or something like that. However, the 970's screen response time during activity is slower than the Forerunner 965's response time under similar conditions…

All Replies

0 Normar 2 months ago

I feel the same!

0 Igor Petrov 2 months ago

I won't say that the watch freezes for a minute or something like that. However, the 970's screen response time during activity is slower than the Forerunner 965's response time under similar conditions. The chest strap, card, cadence/revolutions sensors, radar, Bluetooth headphones, and screens switch very slowly. I haven't had any freezes yet, but it's close to v.12.72. I think any Fenix 3 or earlier model is faster than the 970 today, but unfortunately, Garmin's programmers don't have enough time to work on the software, and by the time they finish, the marketers will have released the 980. In the watch face and widget mode, the screens work at the 965 level, with some lags, but fewer than before.

0 socorsu 2 months ago in reply to Igor Petrov

Garmin is also using the same SoC (CPU) since 2021 for all their models and families

4 years later it is not suprising that this SoC is now unable to deliver enough power for all the software and hardware features to control....

The price increase, not the performance of the watch

0 Yuri 2 months ago in reply to socorsu

Does the same apply to the Fenix 8 lineup? It seems like there aren’t any complaints about poor performance there — or maybe they just got lost among the other bugs.

0 Yuri 2 months ago in reply to Igor Petrov

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/privet-na-forumakh-garmin-v-po-RU1hyUtuRWWsuljHKI.1gQ

0 socorsu 2 months ago in reply to Yuri

no need to ask so far away :-)

---

https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/351371/garmin---benchmark---f7-e2-comparison-positioning

http://www.f-blog.info/garmin-fenix-6x-pro-disassembly-or-teardown-whatever-you-say/

http://www.f-blog.info/garmin-fenix-7x-solar-teardown-non-destructive/

http://www.f-blog.info/garmin-fenix-8-review-but-only-the-internals/

0 edco17 1 month ago

Same. My experience with the 970 is bittersweet. I jumped from the 745 (which was a SOLID workhorse) but the 970 has been very unusable in some of my runs when I have Spotify connected to my headphones during a run. The watch starts freezing and being very unstable alongside screeching audio that eventually just stops playing music. Spotify music sometimes doesn’t work even after a restart.

0 Yuri 1 month ago in reply to socorsu

Very valuable information, thank you.
I have a pretty good impression of the Edge Explore 2.

For comparison, I ran the CIQ Benchmark 2 on it.
The result was 24.4/142.9 – almost 4 times higher than on the top Fenix models.
I posted a screenshot in this thread: https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/fenix-7-series/351371/garmin---benchmark---f7-e2-comparison-positioning