Garmin Men's Forerunner 10 GPS Fitness Monitor

After a lot of research including the reviews here, I decided this was the watch for me. I bought it in May 2013 to train for an October 2013 marathon. I cannot say it enough how PERFECT it worked. It is accurate, found satellites quickly (this may be a regional issue, my friend's in MN had significant issues throughout his training, I had none in CO). Controls were easy, and it was absolutely perfect for my training.

Marathon came and went and at some point in the trip one side of the strap came off. There are two points it attaches to a pin on the watch, and once it comes off it will not go back on. I've tried everything. I emailed garmin support with no luck, and everyone on google is telling me this is a significant issue. I will be returning it. Would I recommend someone buying it? It may be worth it, it would be a no-brainer if REI still had the lifetime guarantee, but I can't see taking the risk since it's only a year now.

Amazing product, defective strap. Extremely frustrating.

If you care about accurate speed, this thing is a joke. It must be doing some sort of moving averaging over a wide window, so it takes it forever to catch up with your actual speed. And similarly when you slow down, it takes forever for the speed to drop. So, whatever your sport is, if you're looking for immediate feedback to changes of effort or technique, this thing is useless. I've had a 205 and a 305 before, as well as Etrex 10 and another older Garmin, so I know what I want is easily achievable, certainly has been over the last 15 years, but this thing is a huge step back.

Great opportunity for Garmin to own the low-end of the running watch market - but they blew it: FR10 wristband design is defective and breaks at junction of band and watch-body mount (like mine did). Common flaw, read all about it on Garmin and RunnersWorld forums. FR10 also unreliable and slow getting initial GPS fix when starting a route - plan on standing around/stretching for extra minutes while you wait (yes that's with clear line of sight to sky).

Being fairly new to trail running and completely new to GPS watches, I was very excited when the Forerunner 10 arrived at my door. I did my homework and this watch definitely seemed the best fit for my basic needs (distance, time, pace).

It was extremely easy to set up and on my first run (a short trail loop at a local state park) the unit synced with the GPS in less than 10 seconds. The Forerunner came back with a distance of 3.20 miles, which was about what I thought the loop length was. I loaded my run on the Garmin Connect software which is awesome. So far, so good...or so I thought...

On my second time out (same location), the watch would not sync at all. My running partner and I waited about 10 mins for it to try and lock onto a satellite, but finally had to give up and run without it. Third time out (again, exact same location), the watch synced fine, but came back with a distance of 3.11 miles, which is almost a tenth of a mile difference. This is 475 feet of difference between two separate readings on the exact same ~3 mile loop! I know that no GPS unit of any type is 100% accurate, so I'm going to continue testing and hope that this was a just a fluke. However, over a football field and a half of difference on the exact same trail loop is more variation that I think is acceptable, especially on this short a distance. I'll be using the device as a training tool, so if I can't trust the data, it's usefulness is limited.

Urban dwellers beware!

Everything about this watch is great, except the GPS reception. To be fair, I live in a dense urban environment in Brooklyn, NY which makes it difficult for all GPS watches to connect to the satillite. However, I orginally purchased a Garmin 110 and it never took more than 2 min for the signal to link to my watch. The Garmin 10 is the entry level GPS watch so it seems the GPS receptor is not as good as their higher end watches like the 110 or above. The Garmin 10 can take up to 5-10 min in my neighborhood. I end up having to turn on the GPS reception and run for 5-10 min in a more open area . This is frustrating since it's not capturing the total mileage I'm doing that day.

Otherwise, the features are excellent as it also offers real time pace that's calibrated so that it doesn't yo you in pace readings. The Garmin 110 oddly doesn't offer real time pace.

I have nothing to compare this Monitor to so my comments are just my observations. It takes a little time to secure the location and although I run the same route the milage is from 4.12 to 4.17 but the more I use this monitor the more I like it and it tracks the information that I am most interested in. It tells you your current pace as you run along with elapsed time, distance and calories burned. After the run is over you can see your time for each mile you ran, impressive for the money spent!

My daughter and I both bought one of these for a local race (I ran the 1/2 marathon, she ran the marathon). It was a good tool for helping with pace, etc., but both of them were off by 0.01 miles/mile. For short runs, not a big deal, but that's an 1/8th mile error for me and a 1/4 mile for her marathon. I'd recommend it for shorter runs and recording casual runs, but not for serious runners.

The watch does what its supposed to do. Getting the initial signal has been touch and go. Once connected the watch works flawlessly.

I connect the watch to a Mac. The autorun feature does not work so the software must be launched manually. The software is easy to use and provides the right amount of information.

This watch worked well for purpose...showing distance and such on trail runs. The Garmin software is also helpful, showing your route, elevation changes, speed, etc. However, I found the watch lacking in design (bulky, certainly not stylish) and multifunctionality (lacking several functions of most basic sports watches). I ended up returning the watch.