Tuesday 11 June 2013

Garmin Forerunner 10 GPS sports watch

The Garmin entry level GPS sportswatch comes in a few different colours, the black version being slightly bigger than the pink and lime versions, as its aimed at the male market.
I have been using it for over a year and a half now and am very happy with the functions of the watch, its GPS usually finds satellite signal quite fast and the display is very clear with options to show pace, speed, time and distance with two data field screens accessed by a button to show further information.

 I usually display the activity time and the pace underneath with the second data field displaying pace and distance.In the many races I have had it, it has performed very well, but strangely the only problems I have had with it happened during big races.

During the Two Oceans Marathon, the watch could not find satellites at all, I'm assuming because I had driven from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and only switched it on on the morning of the race, none the less, I could not use it during this race.

Before the Comrades Marathon, the strap broke in transit, but was easily fixed with a bit of superglue. The other problem is that the battery was flat, although I could swear I did charge it. I'm going to give the watch the benefit of the doubt and say it was my fault and I must have not charged it properly, as it has worked fine so many other times even after that. The battery power is one thing that is lacking on this watch as it is said to only last for 5 hours in training mode, but I've taken it closer to six hours on runs. It charges easily via USB, which is also used to connect to your computer and is quite easy to customize fields, and the information is available on Garmin Connect, showing all the information about your run like the route, distance,various speeds and paces.

The virtual pacer function is a nice touch, as during training you can set your intended pace and start running and the watch will tell you if you if you are ahead or behind this pace.
As a entry level  GPS watch, it has performed extremely well on all the other runs I have done, (numbering over 200) and really adds to the experience of the run. At the time of writing this review Sportsmans Warehouse is offering an online special until the 7th July of R1350