Runners with a Garmin watch... What one do you have and do you like it?

I have an old forerunner 305, I don't know much about the other watches. But I love being able to see my data, and checking paces while in running, and seeing your time, how far youve gone, mile splits, great for runs, especially progression runs, even in like cross country races, idk about tracking distance on a track, I havnt figured out how to time intervals yet. I use this thing for biking too. And every day after I run I plug it into my computer, and upload my data to garmin connect, and keep my own running journal.

I'd say get the 405. The only difference with the 410 is an improved bezel. But the 405 bezel works fine for me and it's not worth another $100 just for that.

I have a 210, and I enjoy it thoroughly. I don't need all of the features the 410 has; I can do math in my head, and I don't get lost easily.

It would be nice to save runs in the watch I suppose, but I struggle to think of when I would actually use it. Plus, I run in cold weather 4-5 months out of the year, and the touch bezel on the 410 doesn't really work if you have gloves on. Buttons for me, please.

I like my 405. I like the big numbers on the watch. Love the bezel feature the best. The watch is very lightweight.

Have used the 405 quite a bit, and got a 610 last week. By far and away the 610 is awesome. Much better touch screen..easy to use but not as glitchy/touchy as the 405, and easier to navigate the watch settings. I think the screen is easier to read and there is more customization between biking and running settings. Ran with the HR monitor today and was easy to activate it. In my mind well worth the money.

I have had an old 305 as well for about 3-4 years. I love it, it gives me all the stats I need on a big screen and does HR etc. I would buy one of the new ones but I can't justify it when mine works perfectly well and does all the same things.

I never used the 405, but I did have a 301, 310xt and the 110. I now have the 610 and I did really think that it was worth the money to upgrade. It is super easy to use and gives me no problems except for some data upload problems that I have had with all of them with the ant stick. I would consider the 210 since it has the instant pace feature that the 110 didn't have. That was the only problem I had with the 110 and I would likely have stuck with it. The 610 is awesome though and I would buy it again. I haven't seen anything that can scroll through lap splits like the 610. I think that is really cool.

210. Simple and reliable. You can make it more complicated too.

Does Current Pace and if you set the Laps you get Lap Pace too.

Does Intervals, Repeats, and Fartleks easily. Distance or Time for the Run or the Rest as you need.

GPS is as accurate as anyone needs while training. And to the track, last time I used it for 100m intervals it hit them every time, line to line.

Plus the Connect software shows you a decent amount of information. Since I mentioned intervals - it shows you acceleration and top speed over the distance. Where was I slow? At the start? Was my top speed down/up? You can get that in graphs. I like it.

Get the 405 for $150 bucks, it's all you need and it's great. Don't let anyone tell you the touch bezel stinks, because it doesn't.

info wrote:

Get the 405 for $150 bucks, it's all you need and it's great. Don't let anyone tell you the touch bezel stinks, because it doesn't.

Yes it does.

I have a 405cx. I am very happy with it for the price. I think it was only $150 with the HR monitor. The size is similar to a normal watch, not too bulky.

The Bezel DOES stink a bit. It is sometimes difficult to work with when wearing gloves and it gets a mind of it's own when it is wet. You can lock the bezel and set the screen to scroll through your selected displays, so it is fine. On dry days, not wearing gloves, I rarely have a problem with it.

The size of the display and the backlighting are both great. I do almost all of my runs in the dark and have no trouble seeing the numbers.

had the 205 for a few years now - like it even if a bit bulky. starting to flake out when really wet (steady rain) so a 210 might be my birthday present in a couple months.

I have the 405cx as well and it works fine but I think I would prefer the 210 as it is simple and less bulky.

One thing, I have noticed my 210 acting stupid when it gets full of .fit files. This stops after I delete them. I wonder if that causes any of these other problems or if its strictly hardware.

Not a GPS but the Forerunner60. No need to worry about recharging it or spotty GPS tracking.

ok, silly questions from an old guy who still has trouble setting countown/countup feature for repeats:

with any of the current crop of GPS watches, can I map out a course I would like to run on my PC then link that to a GPS watch so the watch keeps me on track while I am running?

Do any of these work like car GPS units so I can set "Home" then go for a run, get lost and have the watch map out the way Home?

Thanks

I got an etrex vista hcx from ebay recently for $104.

I decided to get this instead of a watch because of the ratings, because the watch functions are mostly crap, and because I plan to use it only for measuring offbeat courses and for hikes. My usual courses are more accurately measured than a garmin could do, and I use my casio watch for all timing.

I carry the vista in my hand, but might rig up a camera harness to use it for hikes, or else stick it in a bag or pocket. It is useful for:

PROS

getting a reasonabley accurate idea of distance

the same for altitude

getting the movine average on hikes

CONS

it doesn't have an on/off button

it's bigger and heavier than a casio watch

the buttons are finicky

there are not very many useful options

I can turn the gps function off, which serves as an off button, but it takes a few seconds to do. Sometimes I need to press a button a few times to get it to work. The same happened with a timex watch that I had a short time then returned it cause of that. There are a lot of not-useful functions. The garmin in general is not made very well. If you get a new model, the software often takes a year or two to get functional.

Garmin 305 is the best of the bunch. Proven technology.

610 is a nice watch (for ~$250 more), but there are some quirky bugs that have cropped up on some of the 610's. Though Garmin is fairly decent about replacing faulty watches.

I believe the 110,210 are fairly low frills. Most watch-like than the bigger 305. The 310xt is more for multisport athletes or runners that need longer battery life.

I have heard numerous problems with the 405 series bezel. Though I have never used one. I don't believe those problems exist with the 410.

I'm on my 2nd 305 in 4 years. I had the 610 for a couple of months, but returned it as I didn't see the value and it took them about 2-3 months to fix a lot of the early software bugs.

Geezertime wrote:

with any of the current crop of GPS watches, can I map out a course I would like to run on my PC then link that to a GPS watch so the watch keeps me on track while I am running?

Do any of these work like car GPS units so I can set "Home" then go for a run, get lost and have the watch map out the way Home?

Thanks

Yes, you can do this with the 205, 305, 405, 410, and 610. Both re-tracing your exact route back to where you started the timer, or showing an arrow that points to a preset location and how far you are from it.

As for uploading a course to the watch, you can do this too but it's kind of a pain. You can do it with sporttracks or Garmin's Training Center software. You have to manually set all the notifications like turn-left, turn-right, water stop coming up, etc. I've never done that, personally.