Cheaper Garmin smartwatches receive new software update with display improvement

Garmin has returned with a new update for its Forerunner 70 and Forerunner 170 smartwatches. Cheaper alternatives to existing Forerunner smartwatches, the pair arrived in May with $249 and $299 MSRPs, respectively, or $50 more for the Forerunner 170 with Wi-Fi connectivity (curr. $349 on Amazon).

Recently, Garmin issued Public Beta 18.19 for both smartwatches. Their first beta update, Public Beta 18.19 was said to address various outstanding issues that remain on v9.xx stable firmware. While the company has now released a new stable update, it does not follow on from recent beta development.

Instead, the new update directly replaces v9.xx software, which started with Software Version 9.17 and then reached Software Version 9.19 towards the end of July. According to Garmin, Software Version 9.21 addresses one outstanding issue. Specifically, the update should improve display gesture responses by eliminating unexpected but unspecified behaviours.

At the time of writing, the new update should have reached around 50% of eligible smartwatches automatically. Typically, Garmin takes a few days to finish a stable software rollout. In the meantime, one can request Software Version 9.21 manually by navigating through the Menu to System and Software Update before selecting “Check For Updates”. Please see Garmin’s forum post for more details.