Garmin Connect+ Reviewed: Still Not Worth It After a Year, and What Is To Come

Garmin Connect+ is a year old. What follows is a factual walk-through of what is on offer, a verdict on whether it is worth paying for, and a forward view on where the subscription is likely to go next. DesFit’s recent retrospective video prompted this article and is linked at the foot of the page.

Launch features, 27 March 2025

Seven features launched with Connect+.

• Active Intelligence. AI-generated prompts at wake, after workouts, and in the evening, drawing on sleep, HRV, training load, and stress data.
• Performance Dashboard. Customisable charts comparing Garmin metrics across varying time periods.
• Live Activity. Mirrors indoor workouts from watch to phone in real time and enables on-phone editing of auto-detected reps and exercise types during strength training.
• LiveTrack enhancements. Text-message alert option and a personalised public profile page, on top of the free email alerts.
• Additional Garmin Coach content. Explainer videos and articles are layered on top of the existing free Coach plans.
• Exclusive badges, challenges, and bonus points.
• Star icon around the profile photo.

My assessment of the launch bundle is here.

Features added since launch

Four features have been layered in since March 2025.

• 22 May 2025, Garmin Trails and Trails+. The browsable crowdsourced trail database is free. The Connect+ layer pushes curated trails directly to compatible watches and allows for customisation.
• 18 November 2025, 3D Maps. Topographic 3D rendering applied to logged activities, courses, and Trails routes in the Connect app, rolled out as part of the broader November firmware update.
• 3 December 2025, Garmin Connect Rundown. Year-end summary compiling activity totals, Sleep Scores, Fitness Age, and Body Battery into a shareable recap, behind the paywall.
• 5 January 2026, Nutrition tracking. Launched at CES. Global food database, barcode scanning, AI image recognition, custom foods and meals, dynamic calorie and macro targets that adjust to logged workouts, and a wrist-based nutrition widget with voice logging on compatible watches. The feature arrived roughly on the timeline my leaked-code analysis pointed to.

One feature worth noting went the other way. Garmin revamped gear tracking in the February 2026 firmware update and made it available to all users. That is the scale of free addition the Connect+ paywall commitment still permits.

Cost and scope

These features come at a cost. Worse still, as a subscription, it’s a recurring cost.

Connect+ is £6.99 a month or £69.99 a year in the UK, with equivalent pricing in other markets, and a 30-day free trial. Returning trialists currently get a 14-day extension. The core Garmin Connect app and every feature that was free on the day Connect+ launched remain free. That commitment has held for 12 months and was reiterated by chief executive Cliff Pemble on the Q1 2025 and Q4 2025 earnings calls, alongside the confirmation that additional features will be reserved for subscribers. I covered the CEO’s position here.

Verdict so Far

Connect+ is still not worth paying for as a general proposition. The launch bundle remains thin. Trails+, 3D Maps, and Connect Rundown are welcome additions but marginal. Active Intelligence continues to restate thin insights.

Two exceptions qualify that verdict.

The first is live strength training. Live Activity is genuinely useful for weight training and high-intensity interval work, where reading the watch and adjusting reps mid-rep is awkward. On-phone editing of auto-detected reps and exercise types during the session, rather than after it, is a significant workflow improvement. For anyone who trains this way in the gym, the monthly option starts to make sense.

The second is food logging, and with a specific subscriber in mind. Native nutrition tracking in Garmin Connect will appeal to people already in the Garmin ecosystem who want their calories, macros, workouts, and recovery data in one place and are currently paying a 3rd party like MyFitnessPal to do the job via a sync. The Garmin tool lags behind MyFitnessPal in depth, particularly for custom recipes, but the integration advantage is real. That is the buyer Garmin is going after, and for that buyer, the subscription has merit, perhaps even more than that – real value.

For everyone else, the monthly option remains the correct way to engage with Connect+. Subscribe when a feature is genuinely needed, cancel when the need passes. Or just don’t bother. The case for the annual plan is weak.

At least that’s the case in April 2026.

What comes next: strength features and muscle oxygen

The direction of travel over the next twelve to twenty-four months points in two linked directions.

I’m a bit on the data-geeky side of normal. What’s coming already has my knees trembling with excitement – either that or it was those VO2max intervals. Could be either.

The first is a deeper native strength ecosystem. Garmin has already restricted third-party strength platforms at the API level. Hevy was granted a Connect API integration that specifically blocked the ability to push completed sets, reps, and weights back into Garmin Connect as a recognised session, a restriction I analysed here. A branded Garmin research survey circulated in April 2026 then named eight specific neuromuscular features in development, including a Neuromuscular Readiness Score, Acute Strength Load, and a Muscle Map for Recovery, structured into three capability tiers. The details of that survey are covered here. The direction of travel is clear. Garmin will build Live Activity into a full strength workflow covering programme templates, progression tracking, set-level history, and a content layer closer to Fitness+ or Peloton than to the current mirroring tool. A stronger gym-facing offering is the most commercially obvious next move for Connect+, most likely limited to one or two of the identified strength capability tiers.

The second is muscle oxygen. Garmin removed native SmO2 sensor support from the Forerunner 965 in 2024 (a pattern of ecosystem denial similar to the HEVT example in the previous paragraph), as owners documented on the Garmin Forums after Moxy sensors stopped connecting following a firmware update. Roll forward to February 2026, and Garmin filed a trademark application for Muscle Battery with the application’s language laying out an algorithm for capturing, processing, and analysing muscle oxygen saturation as an integral component of a wearable fitness device. That points to dedicated NIRS hardware, not a wrist-based model, and a direct physiological metric rather than a proxy.

The Muscle Battery filing is covered in detail here, and the distinction between Muscle Battery and the separate CIRQA product here. Whoop is moving in the same direction, with a patent for a muscle oxygen sensor granted days before the Garmin trademark surfaced.

Advanced Muscle oxygen data lands naturally inside Connect+. The metric is technical and lends itself to complex and proprietary algorithms for threshold detection and zone-based insights. NNOXX has already shown how SmO2 and nitric oxide can serve as clear pre-workout readiness signals in their own right, compared to the current estimates found in Garmin Training Readiness. A Muscle Battery hardware launch paired with Connect+ analytics is the kind of combination that would move the subscription from marginal to compelling for the serious endurance and strength training audience. It is also the kind of combination Garmin has every commercial reason to place behind the paywall.

That’s a lot of excitement, and we haven’t really mentioned Garmin CIRQA or speculated about adding Ventilatory Thresholds (a good zone-based metric).

For now, the verdict stands. Connect+ is not worth it in general, but with exceptions. The forward view is shaping up to be highly interesting, and the remainder of 2026 is part 1 of the test.

FAQ

Q: Is Garmin Connect+ worth it?

A: For most Garmin owners, it is not worth paying for on an annual basis. The subscription makes sense for two specific groups: athletes who do structured strength training in the gym and want real-time workout mirroring and on-phone rep editing via Live Activity, and Garmin users who currently pay MyFitnessPal to sync food data into Garmin Connect and would rather have nutrition tracking native. For everyone else, the monthly option is the correct way to subscribe when a specific feature is needed and cancel when it is not.

Q: What features does Garmin Connect+ include in 2026?

Connect+ includes seven features from launch in March 2025, and four added since then. Launch features: Active Intelligence AI prompts, Performance Dashboard, Live Activity workout mirroring, LiveTrack text alerts and profile page, additional Garmin Coach content, exclusive badges and challenges, and a profile star icon. Added since: Garmin Trails and Trails+ routing, 3D Maps, Connect Rundown year-end summary, and native nutrition tracking with AI image recognition and barcode scanning.

Q: How much does Garmin Connect+ cost in the UK?

£6.99 a month or £69.99 a year in the UK, with a 30-day free trial for new users and a 14-day extension available for previous trialists. Pricing is broadly equivalent across other markets: $6.99/$69.99 in the US and AU$12/AU$120 in Australia.

DesFit’s video that prompted this piece is here.

Last Updated on 20 April 2026 by the5krunner

the5krunner

tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors.