Last week we reviewed the Garmin 305. Today we bring you a review of the newest Garmin the 405 courtesy of Jan Musil.
So far I ran only once with the unit and as a matter of fact it was my first A-race of the season. The Garmin watch really helped me a lot to keep even splits during the half marathon as you can see on Garmin Connect record. I'm not yet ready to do a full review of the watch since I can not really judge it after just one run. But here are few observations I made so far.
The good
- The form
factor of this new watch is just great. It looks like watch, is small
as a watch and still has the Garmin GPS capabilities built in. It also
looks good - understated design - not much showing while in the power
save mode.
- Navigation in the menu is very easy and using
the bezel of the watch is very intuitive. Watch has only 2 buttons and
4 touch areas on the bezel. Navigation and access to the menu is very
easy.
- The fit is great - it snugly fits around the wrist
and is very easy on the hand even in long races (I had it on my right
arm where I usually do not have a watch).
- The GPS signal gets picked up very fast (compared to regular car GPS units or the Polar GPS sensor that I use).
- The
watch is little bigger than the Polar RS800, but not much bigger. It
feels very sturdy - something like Suunto T6 or Polar S625X. With the
RS800 I sometimes fear that the watch is to fragile.
- The
ANT connection to the computer is in one word amazing. When I got home
I walked into my office and the computer picked-up the activity
recording and transferred it to the Garmin Training Center and Garmin
Connect. Without me even logging onto the machine (it was locked from
last night).
- Garmin apparently built in capabilities to
program guided workouts - seems very similar to RS800. I have not used
it yet, but from the pre-delivered workouts it looks very easy to build
the workout and execute it.
- According to the manual the
405 can calibrate foot pod based on the GPS data during the run.
Something Suunto and Polar users were asking for their manufacturers.
I'm not sure how good it is as I do not have foot pod to test it.
- The watch lets you setup virtual partner which was what kept me on pace today during the race.
- The
accuracy of the watch is very good - all the splits came within a meter
or two of the official race mile markers. The only exception was the
mile 10 where I was about 20 meters behind the marker when the lap got
recorded. I think it may have been the tree cover or just misplaced
mile marker. In any case I did not seem to lose the GPS signal even
while running under the trees. I did not check the accuracy for obvious
reasons, but I may do that on one of the training runs.
- Battery
life is rated as 8 hours of running with GPS on and about 2 weeks in
power safe mode. I can only tell you that after being fully charged
last night I used the watch for the half marathon, transfer to the
computer and it shows 80% battery life left. I also left the default
settings of 55% brightness and beeping of the buttons, bezel and while
running.
Stuff that can be annoying to some people
- The
bezel is extremely touch sensitive. One needs to remember to lock it
when you put your shirt over the watch otherwise it may lead to some
unwanted actions on the watch. Like switching on the GPS when you are
indoors. But learning to press the two buttons to lock the bezel is
very quick. I had the watch only 12 hours and knew what to do.
- At
this point the 405 is not supported on Mac, but I assume that will get
corrected over time. I do not mind as I use PC for my workout
recording, but some Mac zealots may find it disturbing.
- I
did not find anything that I would not like about the watch. I actually
had to think long time to come up with the two above items. But hey I
used it only for less than 24 hours so there may be things that pop-up
later. I'll post them here.
Please visit Jan's blog HERE for more great reviews.