I have just received my new 645M and am setting it up for my first time use. I have currently got a 230, and was wondering if it was possible to add all of my activity history, vo2 max etc data from the old watch to the new watch?
If you use the same Garmin Connect Account then your metrics in the cloud or on the app will be contiguous. You won’t get your activity history on the watch (but just look at the app) and VO2 Max has to be relearnt (although history is available in GC/GCM). You can download records to the 645 from GC and import course and workouts too.
@joewillgoss: If the essense of your question is whether you would be able to (after syncing the information somehow) review your past performance on your new watch, the answer is no; Garmin's design has always been that once activity data has been synced, the cloud-based Garmin Connect service becomes the single source of truth for it, and where the user ought to be looking (in a browser, or via a Garmin Connect Mobile app) for historical information.
That said, you can send your personal records in Garmin Connect to the FR645, because the watch needs the information to determine if you've achieved new PRs and it does not need to do any re-processing of data once it has been received upon synchronisation.
As far as I can surmise, Firstbeat's method for VO[sub]2[/sub]max estimation does not rely on previous estimates of such, so there is no particular need to sync the previous estimate(s) to the watch for that feature to work properly going forward. Old timed activity records would not be re-processed in any way upon being ‘imported’ onto the watch, and as such would only be data-at-rest that clogs up the device's limited memory without feeding into how it handles new timed activities or perform future calculations, so again there would be little practical value in allowing activity history to be synced.
As a little heads-up to what is coming, DCR writes that in future some firstbeat metrics will be synced. Here is the text:
Garmin says they’re working on it, and in fact just yesterday committed that this feature will roll out starting in April to devices that support these new metrics. It’s already being used/tested internally at Garmin. Specifically, the following units will cross-transfer the advanced data:
I’ve yet to see it in action, but from talking with them they’re saying that the various FirstBeat driven metrics will then sync across the board between the supported devices listed above. So if you go for a run with the FR645, it’ll have the training load data from your Edge 1030 from the day prior accounted for. As for why older devices aren’t supported, it’s simply that none of those older devices have these specific FirstBeat training load/recovery metrics (they do have variants of other metrics though). A simple way to remember which devices are compatible and which aren’t is that it’s basically devices made from 2017 onwards that support the new FirstBeat metrics that are generally only on higher end devices.
As to syncing in general, only your user-data (age, weight, etc.) will be synced. No syncing of past activities, no syncing of how you have setup your previous watch, etc.
