Garmin Forerunner 970 and 570 Get 12 Features in Update 16.28

Garmin pushed stable firmware 16.28 to both the Forerunner 970 and 570, delivering 12 changes that range from quality-of-life tweaks to genuinely useful training tools. This is not a cosmetic patch. Battery manager insights alone make it worth installing tonight.

The battery manager update gives you a clearer picture of how your settings affect runtime, something Coros has done well for years and Garmin was overdue to match. If you regularly toggle music, always-on display, or GPS mode mid-activity, you will finally get honest feedback on the cost of those choices. Concrete numbers beat guesswork every time.

Smart notification delays are a quieter win for athletes who race or do structured workouts. Your watch stops buzzing mid-interval because your partner texted. The 970 and 570 now hold non-critical alerts until a rest period or natural break, which is how Apple Watch handles focus modes but baked directly into the sport context here.

Expanded multisport profiles matter most for triathlon and Hyrox athletes using the 570 or 970 as their primary race device. More profile flexibility means fewer workarounds and less time buried in Garmin Connect menus before an event. The bug fixes also address GPS drift issues reported by trail runners, which is the kind of fix that does not make headlines but absolutely affects your Strava segment times.

Solid update. Not a reinvention of the watch, but the kind of firmware that makes an already strong device more reliable. Install it.