June 25th, 2007

 Garmin Forerunner 205 took me through my first half marathon in under 2 hours and later helped me hike the Grand Canyon Rim-2-Rim in May 2006. I bought this after a friend, who is an avid adventurer as well as an ultra runner, recommended it to me. He told me that it helped him keep track of his pace, download and analyze run statistics, and overall improve his running as he was now able to measure and compare everything little aspect of his running.

Garmin Forerunner 205 Wrist-Mounted GPS - My observations.

Note: This is Work-In-Progress. I will update this review as and when I test out additional features of this awesome running gadget !

Form Factor:The form factor is the best I have seen so far, and definitely beats its predecessor, the Garmin Forerunner 201 Wrist-Mounted GPS Navigator. The Forerunner 205 is also very light weight; you barely notice that it is on your wrist when you are running.
Satellite Reception:I am undecided on the verdict on this. When I ran my Avenue of the Giants half marathon, the satellite reception on my way to the half-stop at 6.5 miles was very accurate and less than .1 miles off the expected distance. However, on my way back on the same route to the finish line, I kept losing reception, and the dial showed a distance of 11.3 miles when in reality, it was 13.0 miles. I also noticed - when I could - that the Garmin Forerunner 205 prompts you to hit Enter whenever it loses satellite signals. From my experience, I think that if you don’t hit the Enter, the distance measurer stops even though it may have reconnected to a statellite after initially losing the signals.
Battery Life: During my Grand Canyon Rim-2-Rim hike, I found that a fully charged battery lasted about 10 hours or so. I wish that it either comes with more battery life in future versions, or Garmin provides a replacement battery that you can separately charge and carry with you for the really long distance ultra runs and hikes.
Display:Some hard-core runners have expressed some dislikes about the display. I on the other hand, totally love the display on the Forerunner 205. Why ? Because the default display shows the things that matter to me the most; the total time, total distance, pace. The pace is probably the single most important metric because it lets you decide whether you should increase your speed or decrease your speed in order to meet the deadlines you set for yourself at the beginning of your run.
USB Cradle / Battery Charger:I am also pleased with the USB cradle/battery charger that the Garmin Forerunner 205 comes with. I seems faster than its predecessor, from what I have read other people say about this.
Wishlist - #1: It would be nice if the Forerunner 205 had some sort of real-time GPS tracking, i.e. something that can be used to trace a device if the person wearing it gets lost  or goes missing. I think this would be useful for runners and hikers who get into the remote / inaccessible areas of National Parks, where emergency phones are sparse and cell phones don’t have reception.