Has anyone made this purchase? Thoughts on features and performance?
Has anyone made this purchase? Thoughts on features and performance?
bump
$400 is way too much for this type of thing.
I have the money but you might be right. Maybe no one has purchased it yet. I am hoping to get some reviews but maybe it is too early.
About as in-depth of a review as you'll find.
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/04/garmin-forerunner-610-in-depth-review.html
DC Rainmaker has a very good review about the overall functionality of the watch and everything it does.
I got the watch at the Boston Marathon and had it for a little more than a month before it got shipped back to Garmin yesterday for replacement.
The issue I was having was that the GPS accuracy on my watch would go from `` 20ft at the start (displayed on the screen) to %% 250ft after hitting the start button and occasionally after an auto-lap occurance. I managed to actually document this on video. Garmin has stated they are looking into the problem. Don't know if its hardware or software, but others have seen the problem.
So what does this problem cause. Most of my courses were coming in 1% less distance than my 305 on courses I ran for 3 years. Now, at first I didn't think twice about this as this was within the GPS error and I thought the 610 might just be measuring the courses better. However, I dug a little deeper and looked at the GPX tracks and displayed GPS accuracy while running and found the bug (and others have found the bug).
For example, it wouldn't register a lap pace for about 25-30 seconds after I hit start. And then it would be way too slow or way to fast. Whenever this GPS accuracy bug hits you lap pace (usually a mile) will probably be off by 10-20 seconds for that mile.
I've also had it tell me that I was running 2 min/mile pace about 0.1-0.2 miles into a mile lap....
The GPX showed definitely GPS errors with points doubling back and looping while the 305 GPX would be smooth.
It appears that Smart Recording does a better job or smoothing these errors out versus 1 sec recording. And Garmin posted a temporary solution on their website.
The functionality of the watch was/is great, but the GPS problems just drove me batty. So I would wait until the GPS accuracy problems have been solved. When they are solved, it is a great watch and if you are looking for a GPS watch replacement the 610 would be a good one.
So the only problem with the GPS watch was the GPS, but other than that it was great?
What a bizarre endorsement.
Fickle,
I've been "accused" of having an agenda against Garmin because I have told people not to buy the watch until the GPS problem is fixed. Let's just say that the above is a tamer version of what I though about the watch about a week ago.
Would I recommend someone buy the watch right now? No.
When people criticized me for saying this, I told them when the watch can't correctly perform its critical function (GPS) then the watch is all whizz-bang and doesn't have any meat. Most people just love all the new functions, the touch-screen, the size factor and the vibration alert. They don't like to be told that that doesn't matter when the GPS doesn't work so well.
My guess is people don't really care all that much about the accuracy of the GPS, just that the watch looks cool and has cool functions.
Here my video of the watch losing GPS accuracy....
Another,
Does Garmin recognize there is glitch and did they correct it or give you a time frame on correcting it?
For $400 I hope it has a feature where you can wrap it around your middle leg and it will rub one off for you while you download the data from your workout into the computer.
Tootsie wrote:
Another,
Does Garmin recognize there is glitch and did they correct it or give you a time frame on correcting it?
They have just said that they are looking into it, but they do know there is some sort of glitch. No time frame for correction, but they did mention today that if you tap the screen after the start to get rid of the "Time Started" screen it seems to improve/get rid of the start GPS bug.