FunRunningRyan

Garmin Forerunner 405 -Retail Price: $220.00

I originally bought this watch as an incentive to go run more. I got it on sale at around $175.00, but that is still a lot of money to spend on a sports watch. Being the geek that I am, I thought it would be nice to be able to track my progress with pretty good accuracy and hopefully with ease and no hassles.

Fit

The fit of the watch for me is pretty good. The top half portion of it is molded plastic, and the lower half is a typical rubber strap. The molded plastic keeps the watch facing up so you can always see it, and it works well. The strap is also pretty wide so it can be snug but won’t feel too tight.

I could see if you had a wider wrist where the molded plastic might make it uncomfortable. It doesn’t seem like it would flex much. This could be an issue, but I cannot say since my wrists are small enough for this to not be an issue.

Comfort

This watch is pretty comfortable to wear. I forget that I’m even wearing a watch at times. When I’m running for a long distance occasionally the watch strap can feel kind of tight due to the swelling of my wrist, but I could always loosen the strap easily enough.

It is also lighter than you would expect for a watch as big as it looks. It has never felt heavy at all.

Design

I love the looks of this watch. Its simple but that is ok.  I have the black version which is shown above, but there is also a green version. I love the touch navigation. It makes the watch pretty easy to figure out. And there are only two buttons on the watch, so its simple and doesn’t get confusing.

The user interface of the watch is pretty simple to figure out and probably wouldn’t even require looking at the manual. You can easily just navigate the different menus and figure things out, its pretty self explanatory.

I also like the USB charging system. Its easily connected to any powered USB plug like a computer USB port, or you can use the USB wall charger adapter. It can even be charged using my Jeep’s USB plug that’s built into my CD player.

Performance

This watch performs really well. On a single charge I could go weeks just using it as a watch. The charge while using the GPS will last around 8-10 hours depending on how good the satellite reception is. 8 hours would be a safe guesstimate on what it could handle without risking it dying on you in the middle of a race. I wore this watch while running a 12 hour race,  so I knew the battery wouldn’t last the 12 hours, so I turned the GPS off and it easily lasted the 12 hour race, and I just hit the lap button on the watch to keep track of how far I had gone.

The GPS is also pretty good at keeping a signal. Sometimes it takes a couple minutes for it to lock on to the satellites depending on how good of reception it can get. This can be annoying because you cant start using the watch until it locks onto the satellites if you’re using the GPS function. Once its locked on you’re good to go and I’ve never had any major issues with the GPS failing to register during a run. It will sometimes lose reception for a second or two, but it gets it back right away.

The charging of the watch is pretty good too. I would guess it would take about 1 hour and 40 minutes to fully charge the watch (about 1 minute for every percent needed to charge). Most of the time I never let it get below 50% so it can be easily charged within 1 hour. The percentage battery charge indicator also seems to be very accurate and doesn’t suddenly drop the lower the battery gets like with some electronics, mainly cell phones.

Other Features

I think the thing that makes this watch well worth the money is Garmin Connect. This is where all your data gets sent and can be easily tracked online. Because its online, it can be accessed anywhere an internet connection is. It shows a trace of where you ran using the GPS information the watch took on a map. It also gives you stats on miles ran, pace, etc. that the watch took using the GPS information. It is a really nice feature and is really simple. After you set up your account on Garmin Connect and install the software onto your computer its as easy as plugging in a USB dongle and letting it do all the rest. It took about 20 minutes to get working, but after that I’ve had no issues since! It also allows you to give a title to your activity and give a summary of what it was. You can also categorize your different activities so you can easily look up your runs, bike rides, races, training runs, etc.

Drawbacks

There aren’t many things not to like about this watch.

One known issue with this watch is its touch interface. If it gets wet, sometimes it wont register your touches, or it will register touches that you didn’t do. Usually you can wipe the watch face off and it then will work as normal. Its only been an issue for me a few times, but can be frustrating if you’re trying to get information off the watch and it is stuck on time/date mode instead of the training mode.

Another thing is the charging of the watch. I don’t have an issue with it because I have many ways to charge it and wear it so much I don’t forget to charge it. Others I know that don’t wear it that often will find it is dead when they go to use it, so then they have to wait for it to charge, or just not wear it.

Another issue with this watch would be the USB dongle that comes with it to transfer the data from the watch to your computer. It is pretty small and easy to lose. At $50 to replace it, its not very affordable to replace if you do lose it.

*Special Notes*

Right when I was going to write this review, something tragic happened.  The wrist strap broke on the watch! I looked up the warranty and it is for 1 year. Lucky I still had a month worth of my warrant left so I figured this would be a great chance to check on Garmin’s customer service! After about 3 or 4 emails, and 1 week later I had a new watch strap in the mail box. After about 20 minutes and one youtube video later, I had the new watch strap on and was good to go. Garmin was very easy to deal with and gave me no resistance on getting me a new watch band. I was very pleased!

Conclution

I really love this watch. It does every thing I need it too, and plenty more that I will probably never use! It is reliable and accurate. The ease of updating my data to my computer makes it well worth the money and it isn’t a hassle. The watch has stood up well and never has given me any real issues. I originally bought this watch hoping it would be easy to track my progress, and it has done this task really well. I would highly recommend this watch to anyone that is interested in getting a GPS watch. Now I just wish I had a good reason to get the newer Garmin Forerunner 610 watch…