Two watches. One question. You are running your first sub-4 marathon next October. You have ₹50,000 burning a hole in a fixed deposit. Do you spend it all on the Garmin Forerunner 265 at ₹49,990, or do you spend less than half of it on the Coros Pace 3 at ₹22,499 and keep the change for shoes? This article does not pretend the answer is the same for everyone. It tells you which watch wins for which runner, on the conditions you actually train in, with the body you actually have.
The verified specs
Pull them out of the marketing copy and put them next to each other. Nothing here is invented. These are the numbers from each brand's own published spec sheet.
| Spec | Garmin Forerunner 265 | Coros Pace 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Tier | Marathon / long-run premium | Mid-range running watch |
| GPS battery (hrs) | 20 | 38 |
| Smart battery (days) | 13 | 24 |
| Weight (g) | 47 | 39 |
| GPS bands | Dual-band L1+L5 | Dual-band L1+L5 |
| Display | 1.3in AMOLED | 1.2in MIP |
| HRV | Yes | Yes |
| Music | Yes | Yes |
| Payments | Yes | No |
| Maps | No | No |
| India price | ₹49,990 | ₹22,499 |
Notice what is the same. Notice what is not. Both watches run dual-band GPS. Both track HRV. Both stream music. Neither has full maps. The Coros is lighter and lasts almost twice as long on a charge. The Garmin has a brighter screen and you can tap it at a coffee shop to pay for your idli.
Now the parts that actually decide your run.
GPS accuracy on Indian routes
Both watches use dual-band L1+L5 GPS. That is the same satellite hardware. It is what almost all current premium running watches use. So the GPS chip is not a tiebreaker.
What is a tiebreaker is the antenna and the firmware. Run both watches through a half-marathon in central Bengaluru, weave through Cubbon Park and out onto MG Road and back, and you will see tracks that drift apart by 50 to 150 metres over 21km. Not by a lot. By enough.
In practice. Most Indian race courses are urban. You will run past tall buildings on Marine Drive, under flyovers in Hyderabad, through the gully shadows of Old Delhi. Dual-band GPS is the spec that keeps the watch honest in those environments. Both these watches have it. Older watches in your friend's drawer with single-band GPS do not. That is the upgrade story.
Between the FR265 and the Pace 3, I have not seen one consistently beat the other on an urban course. The differences are within the margin of how tight you wear the strap and which side of the road you ran on.
What dual-band actually changes
L1 plus L5 means the watch listens on two satellite frequencies. When one frequency bounces off a building, the other usually does not. The watch uses both to triangulate. Single-band watches cannot do this. They guess. Both the FR265 and the Pace 3 stop guessing in places single-band watches start.
Battery life for your target distance
This is where the spec gap actually matters.
The Garmin FR265 gets 20 hours of GPS-on battery. The Coros Pace 3 gets 38 hours. Almost double.
For a sub-4 marathoner, both watches will finish the race with charge to spare. The race itself is 3 hours 50 minutes if you nail your goal. Neither watch breaks a sweat on race day. So why does the gap matter?
Because the gap matters everywhere except race day. You forget to charge the FR265 the night before a 32km Sunday long run, and at 9pm Saturday you are scrambling. You forget to charge the Pace 3, and you can run two more long sessions before you need to plug it in. That is a quality-of-life difference, not a race-day difference. Quality of life adds up over a marathon block.
And for ultra-distance, the calculation changes entirely. A 24-hour ultra, a Malnad-style mountain ultra, anything north of 50km on trail — the Pace 3 finishes. The FR265 needs a charging strategy. If your race calendar is 21K and 42K only, this gap is convenience. If your race calendar drifts into ultra, this gap is decisive.
The 24-day smart battery question
Outside of GPS use, the Pace 3 holds charge for 24 days. The FR265 holds it for 13. If you wear the watch for sleep tracking, recovery metrics, and HRV trend lines through the week — and Saumya thinks you should, because the body that runs sleeps too — the Pace 3 disappears into your wrist for almost a month. The FR265 needs the cable every two weeks.
Training metrics and what they actually tell you
Both watches now offer the metrics most runners actually use. Heart rate zones. Pace zones. HRV in the morning. Recovery scores. Training load. Race predictor.
The Garmin ecosystem is older, deeper, and more polished. Garmin Connect has been refining what these numbers mean for over a decade. The platform talks to a generation of third-party apps. Garmin's Body Battery and Training Readiness scores are the most mature versions of these features on the market.
The Coros ecosystem is younger and sharper. The app is fast. The training plan builder is genuinely useful. EvoLab, Coros's training analytics platform, gives you most of what Garmin's deeper metrics offer, with less of the noise. For a runner who wants the body to talk back without drowning in a dashboard, the Pace 3 wins on signal-to-noise.
For a runner who wants the deepest possible read on every variable — sleep quality, stress, training load, recovery, race readiness — the FR265 wins on depth.
The ecosystem question for Indian runners
Garmin India has a stronger service presence. Authorised service centres in the metros. Coros has been quietly building distribution but the after-sales network is thinner. If you are far from a metro and your watch goes wrong, the Garmin is the safer bet for getting it fixed. If you are in Mumbai or Bengaluru, the gap is small enough to ignore.
Both apps work fine on Indian Android and iOS. Both will pull your Strava data the way you expect. Browse the deeper FR265 review or the Pace 3 review for the long version of each.
Where to actually buy each one in India
The Garmin FR265 is widely available. Garmin's official India store, Croma, Amazon India through Garmin's authorised seller, and the Garmin brand stores in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad all carry it. Pricing at ₹49,990 is consistent across authorised channels.
The Coros Pace 3 has narrower distribution. Coros India's official site is the safest source. Amazon India through Coros's authorised seller is acceptable. The watch sometimes shows up at specialist running shops. Avoid grey-market listings, which are common for Coros because the watch is harder to find through official channels. Use the watch comparison tool to read either of these against the wider field.
The verdict
One watch is not better than the other. They are calibrated for different runners and different budgets.
The Coros Pace 3 wins for the value-driven marathoner. If you are running 21K and 42K races, want dual-band GPS at the cheapest entry point, want a battery that disappears into your training week, and do not need contactless payments on your wrist, the Pace 3 is the buy. Browse the Coros comparison hub for what pairs with it. You will spend ₹22,499 and keep ₹27,491. Put it toward shoes.
The Garmin Forerunner 265 wins for the data-deep marathoner. If you are training for a sub-3:30, you live by Garmin Connect's training readiness scores, you want the brightest AMOLED screen for early-morning runs in winter darkness, and you want to pay for chai at the coffee shop without your phone, the FR265 is the buy. Browse the Garmin comparison hub for what fits beside it.
Once the watch is on your wrist, the next question is what training to run on it. Feed your race goal and weekly availability into the STRIDD plan generator and it will build a block that uses the watch's metrics correctly. Or browse the wider Running Lab for the next piece of gear before you spend.