Bottom line: Almost never buy a Garmin at full price. They discount constantly. But the popular advice to wait for Black Friday is not quite right either, because several Garmin watches have hit their lowest-ever prices outside Black Friday, sometimes beating their own Black Friday deal. The better move is to know the model’s price history and buy when it drops. Right now the Forerunner 165 is $225.30 and the Forerunner 265 is $442. Prices checked July 2026. Our fitness Black Friday hub tracks the wider picture.
The One Rule That Always Holds
Garmin discounts more predictably than almost any brand in this category. A Tom’s Guide writer who has covered the brand for a decade put it as the advice he has given most consistently: do not buy one at full price unless you need the newest model the week it launches.
That is worth internalising before any of the timing detail below, because it does most of the work. If you are looking at a Garmin at full MSRP today and you are not in a hurry, waiting is nearly always right. The question is only how long.
Why Black Friday Is Not the Automatic Answer
This is where the standard advice gets sloppy, and the receipts are easy to find.
The Forerunner 570 hit its lowest-ever price of $501 before the Black Friday sales had properly started, then later fell to $427. Tom’s Guide noted that second price was a much better deal than Black Friday, when the same watch was $499. Anyone who waited for Black Friday paid roughly $72 more than someone who watched the price.
The Forerunner 965 did something similar, dropping to a lowest-ever $499.99 from $599.99 a full two weeks before Black Friday. And at the time of writing, in August, that same Forerunner 965 is back at $599.99. So the same watch has swung $100 within a year, and the low point was not Black Friday.
Prime Day tells the same story. In the July event, the Forerunner 165 dropped to around $190 and the Fenix 8 Pro fell from $1,199 to $849, with the Venu 4 hitting its lowest-ever price. Several Garmin models genuinely bottom out in July rather than November.
Where Black Friday Genuinely Wins
None of that makes Black Friday a bad time. It makes it the most reliable time rather than the cheapest.
In the 2025 event, essentially every watch in the Garmin range was discounted at some point, most of them to their lowest price ever. The Forerunner 265 hit $299, the Fenix 8 fell to $749, and the Fenix 7X saw a $450 saving. If you want a specific Garmin and you only want to check prices once, Black Friday is the single window where the odds are best that your model is included.
One more useful detail: those discounts frequently persist. Coverage in the weeks after Black Friday 2025 found most of the deals still live, with the Forerunner 265 still at $299. Missing the day itself is not the disaster the countdown timers imply.
The Other Reliable Window: Launch Season
September and October bring Garmin’s refresh cycle, and the interesting effect is not on the new watch. It is on the one it replaces.
When a new model arrives, the outgoing generation gets cleared, and those clearance prices are sometimes lower than the Black Friday price that follows two months later. The Forerunner 255 illustrates the endpoint of that curve: superseded by the 265, it later sold at a lowest-ever price roughly 30 percent below its original cost. Buying one generation back is the most consistent way to pay less for a Garmin, and our Forerunner 165 versus 265 comparison covers what you actually lose by doing it.
What To Actually Do
If you need a watch now: check whether your model is already discounted, because Garmin runs sales year-round and there is a reasonable chance it is. Buying at MSRP is the only clearly wrong move.
If you can wait a few weeks: watch the specific model rather than the calendar. Price-tracking tools show a product’s history on Amazon, and the useful question is not what month it is, but whether the current price is near that model’s floor.
If you can wait until November: Black Friday gives the best combination of breadth and depth, and the discounts usually hold for a couple of weeks afterwards. Just do not assume it is automatically the lowest price of the year for your model, because for several watches it has not been.
If you are flexible on model: buy last generation. That is the largest and most repeatable saving available in this brand.
One thing not to do: trust the slash-through price on its own. Inflated reference prices are common across this category, and a watch marked down 40 percent from a number it has not sold at in months is not a 40 percent saving. Check what the model has actually traded at over the past year rather than what the retailer claims it was worth. That single habit will save you more than picking the right week.
How We Evaluate
We do not have access to Garmin’s internal pricing and we do not claim to predict future discounts. Every figure above comes from named retail coverage of specific sales events, including Tom’s Guide and TechRadar reporting on Prime Day 2026 and the Black Friday 2025 period, and from live Amazon prices checked in July 2026. Where we describe a pattern rather than a single price, we say so. Discount behaviour can change, and a pattern across two or three years is a reasonable guide rather than a guarantee.
Which Garmin Should You Be Waiting For?
Timing only matters once you know which watch you want, and for most runners the honest answer is a cheaper one than they expect.
The Forerunner 165 at $225.30 covers what the large majority of road runners actually use: GPS, wrist heart rate, an AMOLED screen, Garmin Coach adaptive plans and the full Connect platform. The Forerunner 265 at $442 adds multi-band GPS, a barometric altimeter and running dynamics. Those are real differences and they matter to a minority. We broke the decision down in our 165 versus 265 comparison, including a free self-test that tells you within a single run whether the upgrade is worth it where you actually run.
It is also worth knowing what the competition does at these prices before you commit to waiting for a Garmin discount at all. Several cheaper watches include dual-frequency GPS the Forerunner 265 does not have, which we covered in our COROS PACE 4 comparison. If raw specification is what you are optimising for, waiting for a Garmin sale may be the wrong game entirely. If you want Garmin’s ecosystem, it is the right one, and our running watch roundup and sub-$200 guide cover the field.
One last piece of arithmetic that gets forgotten in deal season. Garmin charges no subscription, so the sticker price is close to the true cost of ownership. That is not true of every recovery device, and a $442 watch with no ongoing fee can work out cheaper across three years than a $239 device carrying an annual membership. Our three-year cost breakdown runs those numbers and is worth reading before you decide what counts as a good deal. For how seasonal timing looks in a very different brand, our Oura discount history is the contrast.
FAQ
Is Black Friday the best time to buy a Garmin?
It is the most reliable time, not always the cheapest. In 2025 nearly every Garmin was discounted over the Black Friday period, most to record lows. But the Forerunner 570 and 965 both hit lowest-ever prices outside that window, and the 570 later beat its own Black Friday price by about $72.
Does Garmin discount at Prime Day?
Yes, and sometimes more deeply than at Black Friday for specific models. In the July 2026 event the Forerunner 165 fell to around $190 and the Fenix 8 Pro dropped from $1,199 to $849.
Should I wait for the newest Garmin?
Usually not, unless you want a specific new feature. The bigger saving comes from buying the outgoing generation when it is cleared, which often costs 25 to 30 percent less for hardware that is very close.
How much do Garmin watches typically drop?
Discounts commonly run from roughly 15 percent to more than 40 percent depending on model and age, with older and higher-end models seeing the deepest cuts. The Fenix 7X saw a $450 reduction in the 2025 sales.
Do Black Friday Garmin prices last?
Often yes. Coverage after Black Friday 2025 found most Garmin discounts still available in the following weeks, including the Forerunner 265 holding at $299. Missing the exact day is rarely costly.