No icons on training screens?

This is totally crap, I agree with you. AFAIK, there's nothing we can do to change this :(

Thanks for the info. That's too bad, I was hoping this could be "fixed" by an external widget.

I like the Garmin much better than my former Polar watches (M430 & Vantage M) but this is not acceptable for me. Usually  I train with at least 3 different screens and without any icons I can not remember what I'm actually measuring. Guess I'll have to switch back to Polar and buy the Vantage M (again)

The fr45 is a low end forerunner, and among other things, the screen is small - 208x208 pixels - and limited colors (8).  If you look at the next forerunner up in this generation (fr 245), it's 240x240, 64 color, and data fields can be shown with labels, more features and activites, etc.  You also get a bunch of things like much better support for 3rd party apps - the fr45 only supports limited watch faces.  Then you got the 645 and 945 with the 945 being a full tri-watch with open water swimming etc. 

The forerunners don't show icons in native data field, but devices more advanced that the 45 show things like labels for data fields, and 3rd party ones can show graphs, etc.

The FR245 was my first choice but I found it too expensive and I thought I wouldn't need all the additional stuff. I just watched a couple of YouTube reviews the past 30 minutes and I still don't need the additional stuff but the screen looks a lot better than the FR45, especially the training screens. I am going to switch to the FR245 as soon as it gets a little cheaper here (don't want to spend more than 240 EUR).
Thanks a lot for the info

You might find a good deal on a 645, as the 245 is a newer watch with some newer features.

Thanks for the info. But here the FR645 is around 330€ while the FR245 is around 260€

It's clearly not a resolution limitation; there's plenty of room to include small icons there. It's just bad design :(

Agreed. And is has nothing to do with being a "low end" watch, the Polar Vantage M (same price range) has that and even a cheap (~99€) M430:

forerunners above the 45 allow labels on DF's the 45 doesn't it does have less memory than the others too.

So my are you leaving Polar?

I am definitely going to buy a 245 - maybe (hopefully) within the next week.

Garmin is awesome. Polar is somewhat OK but different. Feels like they're stuck in 200?. Especially with their app.

Right now the only reasons I would consider switching back to a Polar Vantage would be

- battery runtime
- better heart rate / zone pointer
- possibility to lock a heart rate zone during a workout
- feedback on the device (burnt calories and how much of it was fat, how was your sleep, etc)
- more detailed feedback in PolarFlow

Overall I like Garmin better - even the FR45 

But I still use my good old Polar RCX5. It's built like a tank and has exchangable batteries