In a panic, Garmin activates GPS: its Forerunner 255 disappears with 45% off this Black Friday.

All keen athletes are likely to snap this up: Garmin’s excellent Forerunner 255 has dropped to under €195 for Black Friday-and it’s brand new. Stock levels are genuinely tight, so if you want to lock in this never-seen-before price on the smartwatch, it’s worth moving quickly.

During Black Friday, the Garmin Forerunner 255 is available for €192 instead of €349 by using the code FRBF30 or BFFR30 on AliExpress. Put simply, it’s the strongest deal currently live, and it’s hard to beat an immediate saving of 45% compared with other retailers.

AliExpress also backs the offer with a “Best Price Guarantee” shown alongside the smartwatch. If you find the same item cheaper elsewhere during the event, they’ll refund the difference as a coupon.

Beyond the headline discount and the Best Price Guarantee, AliExpress adds several practical perks. Your order includes free delivery from France, so the smartwatch should arrive within a few days, and there are no customs charges to worry about. You also get Garmin’s official manufacturer’s warranty (two years), plus free returns within 15 days for a full refund (no justification required and no fees).

Garmin Forerunner 255: the athletes’ favourite little gem

Since launch, the Forerunner 255 has been a standout smartwatch thanks to how well it balances advanced features with straightforward day-to-day usability. That combination makes it appealing for beginners and seasoned athletes alike, while its clean, refined styling means it looks just as fitting in everyday life as it does during training.

From a hardware perspective, the Garmin Forerunner 255 uses a 46 mm round case paired with a 1.3-inch (3.3 cm) colour, anti-reflective display at 260 × 260 pixels. The casing is both sturdy and lightweight at just 49 g, made from fibre-reinforced polymer and protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to help resist knocks and scratches. It also carries a 5 ATM water-resistance rating, so you can wear it confidently in the rain or during your favourite water-based activities.

Garmin Forerunner 255 for running, triathlon and 30+ sports profiles

On the sports side, the Forerunner 255 includes more than 30 built-in activity profiles and is especially popular with runners. Alongside running, you’ll find triathlon, swimming, cycling, HIIT, yoga, Pilates, surfing, and many other sports. It also brings a range of smart training tools, including daily workout suggestions tailored to your training load, recovery, and sleep quality.

For running specifically, the Forerunner 255 is particularly capable. A dedicated track running profile is designed to improve accuracy when logging laps on an athletics track. At the same time, it offers Running Power by combining pace analysis, gradient and other metrics to estimate your effort more effectively. There are also tools such as Race Predictor, which charts how your expected race times are progressing to keep motivation high.

One of the biggest strengths of the Forerunner 255 is its GPS accuracy. It supports multi-band GPS and Multi-GNSS, blending GPS, GLONASS and GALILEO signals for highly dependable positioning across different environments. You also get a compass, an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, and a barometric altimeter to better understand elevation gain and loss on your routes. For personalisation, the watch lets you install widgets, watch faces and apps via Connect IQ, helping you tailor it to your own needs.

Daily wellbeing, recovery insights and battery life

For everyday wellbeing, the Forerunner 255 is strong when it comes to delivering a full picture of recovery and fitness status. Garmin equips it with the Elevate Gen 4 heart-rate sensor for continuous heart-rate tracking (including in water), plus sleep tracking, stress monitoring, and the well-known Body Battery feature to gauge overall energy levels.

Battery performance is another highlight: the Forerunner 255 delivers up to 14 days of use, or up to 30 hours in GPS mode, making it a dependable option for long sessions as well as routine daily wear. Connectivity includes Bluetooth and ANT+ for pairing external accessories, Garmin Pay for mobile payments, and the Garmin Connect app for accessing health and training data. At around €190, it’s a genuine standout and one of the most compelling deals of Black Friday 2025.

Practical extras to consider before you buy

If you’re planning to use the watch beyond basic tracking, it’s worth thinking about how you’ll build your setup. Pairing the Forerunner 255 with compatible ANT+ sensors (such as a chest strap or cycling cadence sensor) can improve data quality and broaden the metrics available in Garmin Connect, especially for structured training blocks.

It’s also sensible to decide early how you want to use notifications and payments. Enabling smartphone alerts over Bluetooth can be helpful day to day without turning the watch into a distraction, and Garmin Pay is convenient for quick purchases on the move-particularly when you’d rather not carry a wallet on a run or ride.