Shopping CartGarmin Forerunner 610 Touchscreen GPS Watch With Heart Rate Monitor
date : November 25th, 2011Garmin Watch
Review : 3 Reviews
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List Price : $ 399.99
Price Now : $ 398.00
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Tags : Forerunner, Garmin, Heart, Monitor, Rate, Touchscreen, Watch
- Weather-resistant, GPS-enabled training watch supports customizable data screens and advanced training plans
- Touchscreen interface for quickly and easily toggling data fields, adjusting settings, reviewing run history, and more
- Virtual Partner and Virtual Racer help you plan workouts and reach goals; Training Effect measures impact on aerobic fitness
- Customizable vibration alerts for time, distance, calories, heart rate, or cadence; heart rate zone training with included monitor
- USB stick for wireless uploading of run data to Garmin Connect–map your activity, view lap splits, and explore activities from other users
The first to put GPS on runners’ wrists just tipped off a whole new race. With a touch, tap or swipe, Forerunner 610 lets you get on with your run while it tracks all the details. The first to put GPS on runners’ wrists just tipped off a whole new race. With a touch, tap or swipe, Forerunner 610 lets you get on with your run while it tracks all the details. With a touch, tap or swipe, Forerunner 610 lets you get on with your run while it tracks all the details. High-Tech Training W
Good – but still a few issues to fix,
I’m a running gadget head.
I’ve had several garmins before. I tried to like the 4xx series, but to me it wasn’t a big enough step up from my trusty 305.
When the Nike GPS+ came out – I bought that the first day, then returned it the next. It just wasn’t accurate (perhaps because of a weak GPS receiver).
I saw the 610 was coming out in time for the Boston marathon. I tried to get one at the expo, but they were gone in minutes.
So I waited. A month later, I finally got my hands on one.
I’ve been running with it daily for the past 3+ weeks.
What I like:
the looks. I can actually wear it as an everyday watch. It’s a little slimmer than the 4xx series, and has a longer battery life. Looks very nice. Not quite as ‘cool’ looking as the Nike GPS – but no where near as clunky as the 305.
the touch screen. this has a true touch screen, that works with gloves (I tested that). You can drag your finger across the screen to change views and tap to select. You press harder than on an iphone or ipad, which took a few minutes to get used to, but it works great. Very intuitive. And unlike the 4xx – the screen doesn’t go haywire when it gets wet.
the vibrate for laps / notifications. I set mine to auto-lap every mile, and could feel the vibration on my wrist each time it lapped. very nice.
the ‘tailor-ability’ of the screen. ok – I probably made up that word, but this is more like the 305 than the 4xx. You can have up to 4 metrics on your screen and tailor to whatever you want. You can have multiple screens set up, and just tap on the dial as you’re running and it’ll flip between them.
getting wet. the 610 can in theory, survive under a meter of water for an hour. I was always nervous running with my 305 in the rain. I’d heard stories of people who’d had theirs die on them in those conditions. That shouldn’t be a factor now. And again – the touch screen works fine in the wet.
the wireless transfer of data to your computer. I’m a computer geek and this is VERY cool ! It comes with a little USB dongle that you pair initially and then leave plugged into your computer, and then when you get near your computer with the watch – it automatically connects and uploads direct to gamin connect. It works very well. On the 305 I had to manually upload. No longer an issue.
foot pod – ok – so this works on others too, but I’ve got the garmin foot pod as well. You can set it up for accuracy while you’re running outside with you GPS to calibrate it, and then be able to capture and log miles done on the treadmill in bad weather.
the new virtual racer feature. It remembers previous runs of yours – perhaps your fastest loop of a course you regularly run. You can then race yourself virtually, or plug in pace goals etc – it shows you a stick character and you in front or behind and by how much. And even cooler – you can download runs from other people from on line, and race those.
What I Don’t like
there’s a bug in the software – at least that’s what I’m hoping it is. When you stop the watch – perhaps at traffic lights – then start it up again. The GPS signal is lost and the accuracy with it. For a few seconds it tries to get back in sync. This means that you often lose 0.01 – 0.03 of a mile. You can test this by making ‘GPS Accuracy’ one of the metrics on the display. When you stop and start – you’ll see the accuracy balloon. It doesn’t happen every time, but it happens enough to cause concerns. HOWEVER – there seems to be a manual fix. When you start the watch – a message appears on the screen saying ‘timer started’. That stays for 5 seconds or so then disappears. It’s during that period the accuracy goes wonky. What you can do, is immediately tap the message when it appears. It disappears (it’s a touch screen watch remember), and the accuracy seems to be okay. This is why we think it’s a software issue. Hopefully a firmware fix – SOON – will resolve.
the one other minor gripe. Garmin’s are never 100% accurate. If you’ve ever raced with one over a set course – you know the garmin invariably is off. A half marathon might show as 13.25 miles. A full marathon, 26.5 miles. It’s too much to be explained by not running perfect tangents. If you’re trying to keep a particular pace – this can be annoying. You may think you ran 7.00 min/miles for instance, but find out because of the extra distance – you were actually running 7.05. A way round this on the older garmins was to set the autolap feature to 1.01 miles. That seemed to better line up with the mile markers. Unfortunately the 610 doesn’t allow you to do that. You can have 0.95, 1.00, or 1.05. You can’t do in 0.01 increments. I’ve opened a ticket with garmin support. Hopefully this is also resolved in a…
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|Very Pleased at this juncture,
I made this purchase as soon as I heard about the product. I was lucky that the Nike+GPS was out of stock at the time or I would have ended up with one of those… funny how that works. I made the switch from the 405 (first generation) to the 610. I did enjoy the 405 and logged a couple thousand miles with it. My biggest beef was the useless bezel (you probably already know this). The 610 has blown the competition out of the water with the 610. Granted I have only done a few runs and about 25 miles with it, but my initial reaction is WOW. The touch screen works PERFECTLY on runs. Very easy to read and tap through screens. I love the vibrating alert feature (great for us audiophiles), which also can be set to back light. I run often in the darkness of the early morning so the that alert (set at 1 mile auto lap) reminds me to look down and check my split. I did have a few issues upload data to garmin connect, HOWEVER that was probably user error on my part. I decided to download the desktop software and try that out instead of the website. I attempted to send a workout to the watch, which cause the ant agent to “hold” the data and I never did get the watch to take it. I had to uninstall the gconnect and the ant agent. I am back to the garmin connect, which is just fine with me.
The training screens are very customizable, I use two screens of two data fields… pace and distance on field one and ave pace and timer on page two. You can use four fields on a page and you can have a total of three pages… that is A LOT of data. I do not use a heart rate monitor so I cannot comment on that. The watch has WAY more data than I am concerned with, but maybe in the future I could use it. I do have a foot pod, but don’t have in connected yet. Honestly, just too lazy to take it off my other shoes and also I don’t feel it is necessary. The history setting on the watch is also FANTASTIC. It allows you to review your workouts on the watch, including splits. This great for times I am traveling and work out several times before getting back to my home computer.
I saw a few reviews and a post or two on the garmin site pointing out some gps errors. I am not concerned with those. I don’t really KNOW what the most accurate GPS data even is. I have measured routes with google maps, google pedometer, my car, bing maps, garmin, nike+, etc and they are NOT identical so I expect some error. Some days with my 405 I ended up with slightly different distances running the exact same route. I compared data from my 405 to the 610 on the same route and the 610 measure a .02 difference. That could be a starting at a difference place in my driveway, crossing for a car, etc. I am not concerned at all with the GPS accuracy.
Bottom line, I love the watch and would recommend it to others.
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|Very impressed with this watch,
I’m so impressed with the 610. This is my first GPS watch and it’s a helluva watch to start out with. I’m sorta new to running so I wanted to have a heart rate monitor around. After being in the market for a watch anyways, I ended up purchasing it. (I went over a month from looking at normal thin watches for $50 to a fully functional GPS watch for $400. A lot of research led me to a great watch).
Pros: 1st – size was a big deal for me with a GPS watch. If you’re going to spend $400 on a watch, you should be able to wear it normally, this does the trick. The band is super comfortable and the retaining strap is very clever and actually slides and hooks into the band (hard to describe but well designed). The displays provide as much information as you can pull from the device (which are a lot of features). I really ended up using 1 screen to give me the data I want in 1 glance and got all the other data in my post workout review. I THINK THE HEART RATE MONITOR STRAP IS COMFORTABLE. I’ve had on a few heart rate monitor straps and while none of them are great, this one has been the best. Back light is great and buttons are great.
Cons: I’m an IT guy and I had a hard time getting aclimated to everything here. Once you have your configurations set up and you’re familiar with the menu, it’s not too bad. Expect a few workouts to nail out everything you’ll want to see. The screen takes practice. It’s durable but you have to learn which way works best for you to touch it. I started out using my nail and then figured out the correct pressure to navigate everything (again, you’ll get used to it). I had troubles syncing the device to the computer. Go to Garmin’s website and look for ANT AGENT, you’ll need this and it’s not provided with the package.
Why I love it: THE DATA YOU GET AFTER A WORKOUT. The mygarmin website has so many cool features, I’m much more impressed than the website I used for my android running GPS app (Runkeeper Pro). The watch is super comfortable and the form factor, while a little big, is more than practacle.
SO why 4 stars? It’s a bit hard to set up unless you’ve had a gps watch before. You have so much functionality with the watch, it takes time to figure out how to use it. It doesn’t pass my “dad test” where if I gave it to my dad, he’d be frustrated trying to figure it out. IF YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT THIS WATCH – get it. It’s worth the time investment. Still, may be difficult for tech challenged people.
Overall, very happy. Garmin has done a great job and I hope they keep developing on this watch. I’m super happy with the results and I know the data is really going to help with training. (Strong recommend if tech savvy)
MAKE SURE TO GET ANT AGENT ONCE YOU TRY TO CONNECT YOUR DEVICE. YOU NEED IT TO PAIR THE WATCH. I kinda had a hard time finding the software for myself so I just want everyone to know what it’s called.
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