GPS Review: Garmin Forerunner 405

The Garmin Forerunner 405 is the top GPS watch for runners and bikers on the market today. The Forerunner 405 by Garmin greatly improves upon previous GPS enabled watches Garmin and other GPS companies have created in the past.

The first improvement you will see on the Garmin Forerunner 405 when compared to other GPS watches is its size. Most one unit GPS watches in the past were huge and heavy on your wrist. They were unpractical and too embarrassing to wear. The new Garmin Forerunner 405 is much smaller and actually resembles a watch on your wrist instead of a box. Now the Forerunner 405 is by no means a small watch, it is actually pretty thick when compared to a "normal" watch, with normal being a non GPS enabled watch. But for the most part if someone sees you running by they won't look twice at your wrist asking themselves what the heck that is. For the runner wearing the watch, the Forerunner 405 is barley noticed and is extremely light. The watch will not affect the motion of your arms. bikers don't even have t wear the watch on there wrist, it can be attached with an attachment to your handle bars like a normal biking computer would be.

While speaking about attachments, I will also say bikers can by a cadence monitor which will wireless sync to the watch and also give you cadence readings. Runners also have a few extras they can buy to sync to the Garmin Forerunner 405. Runners can buy an optional heart rate monitor, that will connect to the watch and give you heart rate readings while you run. Also runners can buy a foot pod for the Forerunner 405 which attaches to the runners foot for pace and distance readings while indoors when you can not connect to a satellite.

One problem many runners face when using GPS watches is acquiring the satellite. Many GPS watches on the market including older models made from Garmin, take a while to acquire a satellite. Most runners want to go outside and start their run, not wait five minutes to acquire satellites first. With the new Garmin Forerunner 405 the time to acquire satellites has been greatly reduced, and after the initial use, it usually only takes seconds. I found this to be a great improvement over older GPS watches.

The watch is simply designed and easy to use. The Forerunner 405, sports only two real buttons that you actually put in, the rest is a touch bezel face around the face of the watch. The touch bezel on the Forerunner can best be compared to the Ipod scroll wheel. Menus on the watches screen are navigated by moving your finger around the watches face, then taping the bezel to select an option. This navigation does take a bit of getting used to but, it makes what could have been a complicated interface on a watch to navigate into a easy to navigate interface. I would find it hard to use the touch bezel while on the run, but I have never had to use it while running. The touch bezel makes the Garmin Forerunner 405 the easiest GPS watch to use.

The Garmin Forerunner 405 has an abundance of great feature to aid you in training and running. You can create interval workouts, or even have a figure on the screen help keep you on pace. You can create endless amounts of workouts using the Forerunner 405 and its training mode. Not only are there helpful training feature but also helpful GPS features. The Forerunner 405 with the tap of a button can actually lead you back with a compass to the location you started your run if you get lost! Now that is an extremal helpful feature if your running on vacation or on a business trip in an area you are not familiar with. You can even upload routes onto your watch and save locations.

One of the best features about the Garmin Forerunner GPS watch is seeing all the data it collects while you run, in a visually pleasing manner. After going for a run the Forerunner 405 can connect to your computer with no wires and send your running data onto the computer, then straight to the Garmin Connect Website. On this website, you can store all your runs, and see maps on top of Google maps of where you ran. You can actually play your runs and watch the map get drawn out. Also on Garmin Connect you can analyze the data from each run, which in includes total miles ran, calories burned, elevation and pace charts. Its a wealth of information you can use to help you train better.

The Garmin Forerunner 405 is an amazing product for the everyday runner. It can collect data for up to 8 hours before needing to be re-charged. I would not recommend the Forerunner 405 for the casual runner unless they have deep pockets because its not a cheap watch. I would recommend finding one on ebay if you want to save a little money.