Garmin Forerunner 245, 745 & 945 Beta 11.04 brings improvements & fixes

Garmin has just issued a Public Beta for the Forerunner 245, 745 and 945 watches. Unfortunately, version 11.04 doesn’t bring any of the new features the company has launched so far in 2022. Only improvements and bug fixes.

Garmin has been innovating this year

Many users of these devices have been posting questions on Garmin forums and social media about these new features. They are hopeful the innovative functionality that landed in the first half of the year will be coming to earlier versions of the Forerunners. Here we are mainly talking the real-time Stamina feature, native Running Power, Training Readiness and HRV Status.

The Stamina feature was unveiled at the start of this year. It is useful as it allows you to pace your effort so you don’t run out of gas before the finish line. Essentially, it is there to help users manage exertion during running or bike activities. 

The new recovery stats piqued many people’s interest. They came with the official reveal of the Forerunner 955 and 255. It is Garmin closing the gap on the likes of Whoop and Oura. These types of metrics are important to those who are serious about their training as they help you better assess your readiness to exercise. The feature recently trickled over to Fenix 7 and Epix 2.

Finally, support for native run power is a revamp of the run power solution that works through the Garmin Connect IQ store. You still need the Dynamics Pod or one of Garmin’s high end heart rate straps in order for this to function. But everything is built more seamlessly into the software ecosystem now.

Public Beta version 11.04 – improvements & fixes

Public Beta version 11.04 is a release candidate. That means it will soon go live as a public update if no critical issues are found.

Garmin has recently introduced a new way of distributing these types of updates. They come through Garmin connect, so no more manual downloading and installing. But you do need to register in the settings section of the web version of your Garmin account in order to receive Beta versions.

The change-log might be a bit disappointing to some. Because it doesn’t include any of the above mentioned features. Which means the likelihood of the Forerunner 945, 745 and 245 receiving them is decreasing by the minute.

Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets

We weren’t very hopeful about the recovery metrics because it is said that in order for this to function the watch needs to have the latest Elevate 4.0 heart rate sensor. All of these watches have an earlier version.

But we were hopeful that support for native run power would come. Instinct 2 just received this feature that so there is still a chance.

Stamina is also something we were hoping would come to these Forerunners. Last month it made the cut for the Forerunner 945 LTE. Other watches with stamina include the D2 Mach 1, Epix 2, Fenix 7 series, tactix 7 series and Forerunner 955.

fenix 7 series

tactix 7 series

Forerunner 955/955 Solar

This is the full change-log for Public Beta 11.04. Mostly improvements and bug fixes.

• Various Connect IQ improvements.
• Various connectivity improvements.
• Improvements to calculating heart rate based training metrics.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent some custom swim workouts from completing properly.
• Fixed a bug that caused truncation of some strength workout names in Garmin Connect.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the smart notification privacy setting from syncing with the Garmin Connect mobile app.
• Fix a bug that could cause a crash during a swim activity.
• Display “α” or “β” on the about page for alpha or beta software builds.
• Other minor improvements and bug fixes.
• Sensor hub version has updated to 20.04

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