So I've been looking at buying a Garmin watch but I can't decide between the 405 and the 210. The 410's a little out of my price range.
The hear a lot about problems with the bezel in the 405 but it has a lot more features than the 210. I don't care about messing with it during my runs, mostly just knowing my overall or lap pace
Any suggestions, 210 or 405?
I have the 110 and it's great. It's simple, picks up satellites quickly, measures time and distance, and tells you your pace while your're running, which is all I want in a GPS watch. You can do more with other versions, but if all you are doing is measuring time and distance, I would go with the 110.
I recently bought the Garmin Forerunner 305 for a little over a $100. I have nothing, but great things to say about the watch--it changed the way I train.
P.S. It's on the large side and I thought that would bother me, but it hasn't at all.
I have the Garmin 405 I bought off of Ebay a few years back now. It has been "okay". I run a trail near my house that has markers every 1/2 mile. My Garmin can be as much as .25 off by the time I get to the end, even on clear days at the 4.5 mile mark. The currently battery life is down to about 4 hours of continuous use. Would I buy it again? that is a toss up. I like the fact it looks like a watch.
I've had a 405 for a couple years and recently got a 110 as a replacement. If you're anything like me then after the initial excitement of all the features of the 405 (advanced training programs, etc) you'll probably find that you don't really need them. I found that I don't even really need to know instantaneous pace. I mostly mostly use the watch as a recording device to record the running that I do by feel. Occasionally it's nice to know pace for intervals of 6 minutes or less, but average pace is fine for that.
After about a year of every day use, the battery on the 405 will not hold a charge for very long. My 405 also spontaneously resets every now and then. At this point it's still functional but not reliable any more. I would not count on it to work if I really needed it. This may be the case for all garmin watches, which are basically disposable. I think Garmin counts on people replacing their watch every year, so they don't design them to last much longer than that.
The 110 is great because it's cheap and it has basic functionality. If you consider that basically they're disposable watches that will have problems in a year, you might as well get the cheapest one. It's going to get banged up, rained on, sweated all over and the built-in non-serviceable battery has a limited lifespan.
I would get the 210. I like the 110, but it is missing really basics functions that are supposed to have been added to the 210. The 110 has no option for instantaneous pace. Also, it can't recall lap splits on the watch. You can see them on the computer, but a $10 watch can recall lap splits. I assume the 210 added this too. I have never used any of the other weird training features, so the 210 should be good.