Returning Apple Watch Ultra 4 for Garmin and Whoop

Hey guys,

Five days ago I bought an Apple Watch Ultra 4 as my first smartwatch. I mainly wanted it for sports like running, cycling, occasional skiing, and maybe diving in the future. Since I already use pretty much everything else from Apple, I thought the Ultra would be the obvious choice.

Turns out I just don’t really like wearing a smartwatch in everyday life.

Before that, I had a one-month Whoop trial and actually liked it a lot because it’s small, simple, has no screen, and doesn’t distract me at work. The only thing I missed was being able to see my heart rate while running and having some kind of live guidance/coaching without needing to use my phone.

So today I returned the Ultra 4, and I’m planning to get a Whoop membership for the next 1–2 years.

Now I’m looking for a watch that I would only wear during sports. Probably around 8 hours per week, and definitely not for sleep or 24/7 tracking since the Whoop will handle that.

My budget is around €225 max.

Right now I’m looking at the Garmin Forerunner 165 and the newer Forerunner 70, but I’m not sure which one makes more sense for my use case. Since I already have Whoop, I don’t really care about things like recovery scores, sleep tracking, Body Battery, etc.

I’ve also read that the Forerunner 70 doesn’t have a barometric altimeter, which makes me wonder whether the 165 might actually be the better choice for running, cycling and skiing.

What would you buy in my situation?