Get yourself a simple snapshot of your energy with Garmin Body Battery. The feature is available on their newest smartwatches and creates a straightforward view of your watch’s most valuable data.
Body Battery, an overall energy report, is available with Garmin fitness bands and smartwatches alike. Garmin Body Battery helps make the most of your physical and mental energy. Which is part of why many people reach for smartwatches anyway.
One of the biggest perks of the Garmin Body Battery is that the feature is free with a long list of compatible devices. All you need is Garmin Connect on your phone!
What is Garmin Body Battery, and how does it work?
The goal of the body battery is to show your overall energy levels based on heart rate variability, stress, and the amount of physical activity you get in a day. Based on this data, if your Garmin smartwatch believes you have high energy levels, you’ll have a higher score out of 100.
Conversely, if your watch thinks you are low on energy and need rest, it will display a lower Body Battery score out of 100. So, your readings will be based on Garmin’s:
- Sleep data
- Overall heart rate levels throughout the day (which can be impacted by physical stressors, emotional fluctuations, and more)
- Your amount of physical activity through step-counting and workout tracking
What are the Benefits of Tracking Body Battery?
The usefulness of Garmin’s personalized energy score comes in many forms. Overall, it helps you get the big picture of when it’s best to rest or when it’s best to exert yourself. But a few more specifics make the Body Battery a handy display on your wrist.
- Knowing when to slow down and giving you an idea of when to rest or sleep, the rate of your score’s ‘drainage’ can tell you more about what tires you out or which workouts take up more energy. It can also give you an idea of when you are draining your energy the fastest throughout the week.
- Your Body Battery number can help you prepare. When you start tracking how your body’s energy reserves change with different workouts, you can begin preparing for your physical activities more efficiently by knowing when to rest or when to push it. And since Garmin is tracking things like stress and heart rate variability, you can prepare for less physical tasks or more mentally exhausting tasks.
- You can learn even more about your sleep from Garmin. Maybe you noticed from your Garmin sleep tracking that you are getting too much or too little sleep. Your morning body battery levels indicate how well or poorly you slept.
- It can help you learn what stresses you out the most. Suppose your body battery is draining quickly on your smartwatch, but you aren’t exerting yourself physically. In that case, you can probably track other sources of stress from your day to pinpoint what made you feel so tired!
What Garmin Devices offer the free feature?
A huge number of Garmin’s smartwatches and fitness trackers offer the Body Battery data for free, so a better question is: which of Garmin’s devices don’t provide the feature? The answer is most of the older models which are still for sale:
- Fenix 5 Series and Fenix Chronos
- Forerunner 25, 35, 235, 645, 935.
- Approach S20, S40, X10, and X40.
- The Descent MK1.
- Tactix Charlie.
- Vivosport and Vivomove.
- The Vivoactive 3 Series.
You can get the Garmin Body Battery free with the Garmin Connect app and the current smartwatch or fitness tracking models. If you’re looking for a smartwatch that will help you take control of your health, your energy levels, and a wide variety of workouts, then consider new models like:
- Forerunner 955 Solar, with advanced tracking for runners, swimmers, and cyclists.
- Anything from the Fenix 7 series, which offers a range of multisport, GPS, and smart features
- The Instinct 2 Series is made with multisport in mind but at a more affordable price than the two smartwatches listed above
Overall, many find the Garmin Body Battery feature to accurately reflect how they feel each day. However, getting an accurate reading of your score will depend on getting an accurate heart rate and HRV reading.
We’d love to hear your opinion. Do you use the Garmin Body Battery? Let us know in the comments.
Read Next: Garmin Rumors September 2022
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Last Updated on November 3, 2022
Bernadette has a bachelor’s degree in Communications from MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (where she lives). She has a passion for writing and we like her contribution and style to our blog. Bernadette loves the outdoors and things like hiking, camping, and biking. Wishing she could travel more.
Bernadette is an editor, writer and proofreader for Superwatches. Currently lives in Alberta Canada.