25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
Great tool until battery problems started
This review is from: Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS-Enabled Sports Watch with Heart Rate Monitor (3.5" and 5.25" disks)
When I first purchased my Forerunner 410 in November 2010, I thought it was the best thing ever. For the first three to four months, I was thrilled with it. Unfortunately, as my marathon training progressed I started to notice the watch doing some odd things. At first it would occasionally reboot for no apparent reason. Over the following weeks, the problem got worse and worse. As it did, the battery life also started becoming unstable. Sometimes the 410 would work OK, but the best case battery life dropped to 4-5 hours instead of the 8 I got out of it during those first months. In the worst cases, I would take the watch off the charger in the morning, shut it down until my run, and had a dead battery before I had gone one mile. The display that shows the battery life remaining is pretty much worthless now. And, it still suffers from reboots for no obvious reason - often at inopportune times, like during my marathon.
If you only do short to medium runs length runs, or are very fast, then the fact that the battery life seems to have problems might be acceptable for your situation. If you're planning on doing runs of several hours, won't be able to recharge it before every run, or won't find reboots during runs/races acceptable, then you might want to look for something other than the 410. When it works right, it really is a great tool for training. But, if you need a device you can count on, you might want to wait and see how the reviews look on the new Forerunner 610 or consider going with one of the older, cheaper, and more proven devices like the 305.
If you're still on the fence about purchasing a Forerunner 410 (or 405/405cx for that matter), I'd suggest you visit the Garmin forums (forums .garmin .com) and take a look at the posts by various owners who are having similar hardware/software related problems so you can make an informed decision.
Edited 5/1/11 - At this point my Forerunner 410 has become totally unreliable. I had taken it to Nashville to use during the Country Music Marathon yesterday. It had been fully charged and shutdown before I left. When I turned it on an hour or so before the race, it immediately said "low battery" and shut itself down. I charged it again when I got home. This morning it read 100% charged and I shut it down. This afternoon when I tried it use it, it again said "low battery" and shut itself down. I've again contacted Garmin about the problem. Maybe they'll replace it this time instead of just suggesting things like firmware updates and charge/discharge cycling.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Catastophic software/hardware issues
This review is from: Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS-Enabled Sports Watch with Heart Rate Monitor (3.5" and 5.25" disks)
Feature-wise this is an excellent watch. However, as other reviewers have pointed out, some of the units suffer from catastrophic issues with software reboots and the battery meter. As a result, I would strongly discourage readers from buying this watch. I observed the first symptoms about a month after buying the watch. It would reboot unexpectedly. About three months later the reboots were immediately followed by false battery meter reading. The meter indicated 0% charge even though the watch was really close to 100% charge. The watch would then stay on for days, but during workouts frequent and annoying low-battery warnings were displayed as the system erroneously measures the battery at 0%.
The latest firmware upgrade does not fix the issue. I called Garmin support. They are certainly aware of the issue as they already documented procedures to recommend to users to alliviate the problem. Multiple users, including me, have reported on forums that these procedures do not work. Garmin did not acknowledge this was a software problem and explicitly stated that they have no open bugs related to the issue. They said this only happens to a very small fraction of the units sold. The only conclusion is that this may be a hardware issue and readers are better off not running the risk of buying a busted unit.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Great running watch
This review is from: Garmin Forerunner 410 GPS-Enabled Sports Watch with Heart Rate Monitor (3.5" and 5.25" disks)
Had the 405. The 410 finds satellites faster and the bezel is better when wet.
Program intervals, and you can focus on your training without touching the watch. It will tell you exactly what to do when. The gps is very accurate and you get great statistics. My training got a boost.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Nice Training Toll
I could not have enought time to test all features, but after some days using the watch, main functionalities are almost intuitive and are designed by sports experts.
by Ricardo
Beware - cannot be returned to Amazon after purchase!
I purchased the 410 on Amazon after a fair amount of internet research and trying one on for weight at a big box retailer.
by bibini@hotmail.com
Garmin ForeRunner 410 with HRM
I have been running with a iPhone 3GS (with RunKeeper) for about a year. The iPhone GPS tracking is OK, but not accurate enough.
by SpaceRanger
Nice, until it died and had to return it.
This was my second Garmin. I bought a 305 last year and had to return in less than a month as the battery wouldn't last longer than 2 hours. This year I bought this 410.
by G. Kauppila
Garmin Forerunner 410
I have this item for two weeks now and so far I can say I'm pleased with some watch outs. The watch is small and lightweight (considering it has a GPS) and the basic functions...
by Rodrigo Suriani
Garmin Forerunner 410
Pros: Very fast to locate sattelites, easy to navigate in the menu.
Cons: Cannot calibrate the Bezel sensitiveness, sometimes it`s needed to turn more than a cycle to...
by heo
A bit better than OK.
I like this watch. I wish I could love it. I've been using it for a few months. The functionality is OK enough and has been rather handy. I kinda recommend it.
by Stinky
New user satisfaction
I think this is a fantastic product. I live abroad and I had a Timex bodylink before but the lack of support and unavailability of spare parts for the model I had, made the...
by Diego F. Trujillo
Utter confusion and a short battery
I bough this watch with American Express points and thought i got a real bargain. Wrong. I had the Garmin 210 GPS watch which was simple and intuitive but really just for...
by vermooti
Watch is amazing ---- Software is horrible
Garmin knows GPS. Garmin does not know software. I spent weeks installing and reinstalling the software with the "ant" USB stick to try to get my data to upload.
by J. Grant
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