Here’s Everything You Get With a Garmin Connect+ Subscription

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Garmin watches have never required a subscription to access any core features, and that hasn't changed. But starting in 2025, Garmin is offering a price of $6.99 per month. subscription called Connect+ which provides “premium features” including artificial intelligence, beyond what you already get for free with the Garmin Connect app.

So far, no pre-existing features have remained behind a paywall, despite concerns from some Garmin users. But what does Connect+ do for you and is it worth it? I signed up to find out.

How does a Connect+ subscription work?

A Connect+ subscription costs $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Again, this is only adds features beyond what you already get in the Garmin Connect app; after almost a year, none of the previously existing free features were paid for.

Garmin previously teased 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 paying members. Garmin has a habit of adding new features frequently and often includes them even on older watches. Just in the last year we've gotten strength training, new type of running trainingand the ability to detect heart rate with lactate threshold without a chest strap – all of which appeared on my watch or in my app one day. I didn't expect this to affect watch firmware updates – this is a premium subscription to phone app— but I have to wonder if there will be fewer new app features for free users as Connect+ subscribers increase.

Connect+ isn't Garmin's first subscription service. They have already proposed list of services for various special purposesincluding hiking and hunting maps, marine 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.

What does Connect+ include?

Here's what you get for that $6.99 per month:

• Active Intelligence (analysis of your activities using artificial intelligence; consent is required for this). Seems quite dim.

• Improved LiveTrack (also available with Nature maps+ subscription), which allows you to send text messages to contacts when you initiate an activity, or set up a public tracking page.

• Live activitywhich allows you to monitor your workout from your phone, and not just from your watch.

• A Performance Dashboard online with new charts and comparison features

• Social featuresincluding 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 (mostly in the form of additional videos)

• Garmin Routesfeature that looks like it should compete with AllTrails but there doesn't seem to be enough data for that (yet?)

• 3D maps for events, courses and routes

• End of the year Brief description of Garmin Connect which collects all your statistics for shared viewing

Of all these features, Live Activity and Performance Dashboard seem to be the most useful, so I'll go into them a little deeper.

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 thanks to Live Activity, you can now use the Garmin Connect app. Bye you are doing something on your watch. This is especially useful for strength trainingwhich previously required you to edit weights and reps through a clunky watch interface after each set.

To test this, I did a few quick workouts on my Garmin Precursor 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 telephone:

• 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:

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 can login 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. Choose Performance Dashboardwhich I see as the last blue item, right in the Reports section.

3. Click Add a dashboardand choose whether you want a running, cycling, multisport or custom dashboard. (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 past 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, no” Here too much” (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. When I first tried this, the “understanding” of my home screen (which, by the way, can be turned off even with AI enabled) initially just told me to come back later. My recent runs were 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.”

I wrote a little more about the AI ​​function here. As you might expect, it summarizes, sometimes hallucinates, and tends to repeat information available in more readable form elsewhere in the application. I'm not impressed.

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.

At the very least, Garmin will ask 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 means A.I. only training on people who agreed. A spokesperson confirmed: “We only train from 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 description AI Transparency Policy Here.

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