Here’s Everything You Get With Your New Garmin Connect+ Subscription

Garmin now offers a Connect+ subscription for $6.99 per month, which provides “premium features” including artificial intelligence, on top of what you already get for free with the Garmin Connect app. Nothing is behind a paywall yet, but it feels like the end of an era. Garmin watches were one of the last wearables where you pay for the device and then all of its features are free to use forever. (The hardware also has an impressively long lifespan.) I signed up for Connect+ to see what’s inside, so let’s take a look.

Subscription details

The new Connect+ subscription costs $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. It only adds features beyond what you already get in the Garmin Connect app; no existing features are chargeable .

Garmin has hinted that “premium enhancements may be made to existing features,” leading users to speculate that any new features coming in the future may only be available to paid members. Garmin has a habit of adding new features quite often and often includes them even on older watches. In the last year alone, we’ve gotten strength training, a new type of running workout , and the ability to measure lactate threshold heart rate without a chest strap, all of which have appeared on my watch or app at one point. I wouldn’t expect this to impact watch firmware updates – it’s a premium subscription to the phone app – but I have to wonder if there will be fewer new app features for free users in the future.

By the way, Connect+ isn’t Garmin’s first subscription offering. They have long offered a range of services for a variety of specialty purposes , including hiking and hunting maps, nautical charts, search and rescue insurance, dog tracking, kids’ smartwatch tracking, and more. But this is definitely Garmin’s first step toward premium subscription health and fitness features, in the same vein as, say, Fitbit.

Garmin says the Connect+ subscription will include:

• Active Intelligence (analysis of your activities using artificial intelligence; consent required)

• Improved LiveTrack (also available with an Outdoor Maps+ subscription), allowing you to text contacts when you start an activity or set up a public tracking page.

• Live Activity , which allows you to follow your workout from your phone, not just from your watch.

• New web performance dashboard with new charts and comparison features.

• Social features , including double points on badges and the ability to earn badges from anywhere in the world (some badges are only available in certain locations). Immediately after signing up for Connect+, I noticed a small yellow star in the corner of my profile photo in the app.

• Additional training tips if you follow the Garmin Coach program.

What do you get with Live Activity

Until now, the workouts you do on your Garmin watch stay on your Garmin watch, at least until you complete the activity. At this point, it syncs with your phone where you can view and edit the details.

But with Live Activity, you can now use the Garmin Connect app while you exercise on your watch. This is especially useful for strength training , which previously required you to edit weights and reps through a clunky interface on your watch after each set.

To test this, I did some quick workouts on my Garmin Forerunner 265S . One of them was a mini workout with kettlebell swings and squats that I created in the app and sent to the watch.

I started training on the watch. Nothing was happening on the phone—I could have expected a notification—but when I opened the Garmin Connect app on my phone, a tile for live action appeared on the home screen. I clicked on it and the same workout I was doing appeared on the watch. I could see my heart rate, time elapsed, and what exercise I needed to do.

I didn’t see the promised videos with exercises right away, but it turns out that on the heart rate graph you need to swipe to the left. There you can watch a video of the exercise (or a rest timer if necessary). Swipe your finger again and you’ll see your heart rate zone. The bottom half of the screen displays your current stats, including reps, sets, heart rate, and a timer.

It’s important to note that if you’ve turned off rep counting or weight editing on your phone (because they’re super annoying during normal use), you’ll need to turn them back on to do so. The watch counted my kettlebell swings and at the end of each set prompted me to edit my reps and weight. This editing screen appeared on both the watch and my phone, and of course this information was easier to edit from the phone.

With Live Activity, you can do the following from your watch or phone:

• Pause or resume your workout

• Editing reps or weight in a strength training session

• Move on to the next set (strength) or start a new circuit (in activities such as running).

• View stats such as heart rate, time elapsed, reps, pace, and more.

But only the watch can do the following:

• Start training

• Complete and save your workout

• Creating Custom Data Screens

Live Activity definitely improves the usability of a strength training watch. I don’t really see the point in running training, but there may be a use case I haven’t thought of yet.

What’s in the Performance Dashboard

One of Garmin’s best kept secrets is the web dashboard. You canlog in here and view all your activities and data—essentially a web view of everything in the app.

The Performance Dashboard is a new element in the Web Dashboard sidebar. To set it up:

1. Hover over the black sidebar on the left side of the screen.

2. Select Performance Dashboard , which I see as the last blue item, right under the Reports section.

3. Click “Add Panel” and choose whether you want to use the panel for running, cycling, multisport, or a custom panel. (You can have more than one.)

Some of the charts in the Performance Dashboard are also available in the free Reports tool, although the reports will only show you one chart at a time. A performance dashboard is definitely the best tool if you want to really understand your data.

For example, I can get a simple report using the Reports tool that shows my mileage over the last six months. This gives me a histogram with one bar per month. On the other hand, the productivity dashboard can give me a bar for each week and I can choose my own time frame instead of just choosing from several options. There are also more options for the data types you can view. Did you know how your watch will ask you at the end of every run how hard it was? Now you can see this in the “perceived effort over time” graph.

What do you get with Active Intelligence

There’s good news here for people who want AI in everything, and for those of us whose reaction is “oh god, not here ” ( this meme sums up my personal position). Artificial Intelligence (“active intelligence”) is the only Connect+ feature that requires your consent even after you have signed up for the entire package.

But I did it, dear readers. I followed you to let you know what AI can actually tell you about your workouts – and whether it’s better than Strava’s notoriously clueless AI.

Unfortunately, there’s not much to say at the moment. My “insight” on the main screen (which, by the way, can be turned off even with AI turned on) at first simply told me to come back later. My recent runs are not accompanied by AI comments. Garmin says, “As customers use Garmin Connect+ more frequently, the information they receive will be more tailored to them and their goals.”

As I was finishing this article, I noticed that I now have an idea of ​​the home screen. He tells me that I hit 255 minutes of intensity this week, surpassing my goal of 150. (I think I set that goal for myself at some point? Okay.) He then tells me that consistency is a good thing (not a bad thing) and gives a few sentences of encouragement.

The AI ​​feature is marked as “beta” with a thumbs up or thumbs down icon that allows me to rate the information I just read. I can say it’s interesting or not interesting, or “report an issue” if it’s inaccurate, confusing, or poorly written. (You can also provide your own answer.) I’ll keep an eye on these notes and let you know when the AI ​​gets to know me better.

Garmin is asking for your permission to train its AI on your data

To enable AI features, you need to click the agreement where you allow the AI ​​to access your workout and health data (so it can perform analysis). It also allows you to use your data as training data for AI.

I asked Garmin if this meant the AI ​​only learned from people who agreed. A spokesperson confirmed: “We only train based on data from users who have given their consent.” The existing model was trained on users who had previously given permission to use their data to improve the product. Garmin has a short AI transparency policy .

You can revoke permission at any time in Connect+ settings, which will also disable your access to AI features.

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