I always wonder what my neighbors must think about these walking challenges, as I head out the door wearing multiple devices on my wrist, clicking every time I take a step. Last week, I put the Garmin Forerunner 570 vs Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 to the test, but with the Apple Watch 11 arriving on my doorstep, this week I set out to repeat the test, comparing Apple’s newest smartwatch with Garmin’s mid-tier Forerunner.
It goes without saying that both watches are designed to do a lot more than just count your steps. The Apple Watch 11 is the best smartwatch on the market and is an extension of your iPhone on your wrist. The newest watch runs on watchOS 26, which includes Apple’s latest hypertension alerts and sleep score. It looks identical to its predecessor, the Apple Watch 10, but has a tougher screen and longer battery life.
The Garmin Forerunner 570 launched in May and is my favorite running watch to be released this year. It features a bright, beautiful AMOLED screen and most of Garmin’s top-tier training and recovery metrics. It’s one of the best Garmin watches on the market, and is around the same price point as the Apple Watch 11.
That said, the step-counting abilities of the watches often indicate how accurately they calculate cadence. To find out more, I strapped both to my wrist and walked 13,000 steps, manually counting each step I took. Read on to find out which watch came out on top.
I walked 13,000 steps with the Apple Watch 11 and Garmin Forerunner 570 — here’s which was more accurate
For this test, I used my trusty $5 clicker tool from Amazon, and manually clicked each time I took a step. I wore both the Apple Watch 11 and Garmin Forerunner 570 on my left wrist, and held my clicker in the right. Both watches count your steps by using an internal accelerometer, which measures the swing of your arm.
Each swing counts for two steps. It doesn’t matter whether you wear your watch on your dominant or non-dominant hand, or whether you’re walking with your hands in your pockets, or holding something; the accelerometer should still measure your body’s movement.
As with all of the best Apple Watches, the Apple Watch 11 doesn’t tell you the number of steps you’ve taken during a specific workout; instead, you see an overall number of steps throughout the day. You can see your overall steps for the entire day, but not how many steps you took on a particular walk (probably because steps aren’t actually that useful a metric, but annoying for me when writing these articles.) For this comparison, I downloaded a third-party Pedometer+ app onto my Apple Watch 11.
When I got home, I downloaded the data onto my phone and compared the results. I split my steps up into three different walking workouts throughout the day:
Walk one
Manual recording |
5,345 steps |
Apple Watch 11 |
5,204 steps |
Garmin Forerunner 570 |
5,358 steps |
Walk two
Manual recording |
5,020 steps |
Apple Watch 11 |
4,842 steps |
Garmin Forerunner 570 |
5,032 steps |
Walk three
Manual recording |
3,505 steps |
Apple Watch 11 |
3,467 steps |
Garmin Forerunner 570 |
3,568 steps |
Totals
Manual recording |
13,870 steps |
Apple Watch 11 |
13,513 steps |
Garmin Forerunner 570 |
13,958 steps |
Like when I did this test with the Apple Watch 10 and Garmin Forerunner 570, the Garmin watch came out on top when it came to accurately counting my steps. The Garmin overcounted by 88 steps, and the Apple Watch 11 undercounted 357 steps. The average person takes 2,000 steps in a mile, so missing 300 steps isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but in this case Garmin is the clear winner.
Plus, to really compare these two watches, you’d have to do a lot more testing, and look at a lot more than just steps. Both watches accurately measured the distances of the three walks pretty much identically — for the second walk, the Apple Watch 11 recorded the walk as 2.3 miles, with an average heart rate of 109 beats per minute. The Garmin Forerunner 570 also recorded the walk as 2.3 miles, and my average heart rate as 106 bpm.
Without getting into the smartwatch vs sportswatch debate, there are a few key differences between the two devices. Firstly, the battery life of the Garmin Forerunner 570 vastly outshines that of the Apple Watch 11. The Forerunner 570 lasts 4-5 days with the always-on screen enabled, or around a week between charges without. The Apple Watch 11 lasts 24 hours.
Next up, from a training perspective, the Garmin Forerunner 570 has a huge number of excellent features, including Garmin Coach, Body Battery, and Training Readiness, as well as suggested workouts and a morning and evening report. Even with the new sleep score, Apple’s device doesn’t have as many tools to help you monitor how well your body is coping with training.
As a smartwatch, however, the Apple Watch 11 is exceptional and beats the Forerunner 570. You can download endless apps to your watch, reply to messages on the move, and it truly is like having a phone on your wrist. In contrast, the Forerunner 570 is a little clunky, and other than Garmin Pay and Spotify, it doesn’t do anywhere near as much.
We’ll continue testing the two watches, but whichever you’re considering, rest assured, they’re counting your steps accurately, so unlike me, you don’t have to.
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