Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor
by Garmin
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor
Customer Review: Lots of workout data
Summary: 4 Stars
I got the Forerunner 305 to track primarily speed and heart rate for outdoor inline speed skating. I've had it about 3 weeks and so far it's worked great. The GPS reception is probably the main feature of interest, since it's just a HRM/timer without that. Outdoors the reception is fine. I've never lost reception outdoors. The rest area where I work out has a small (maybe 15x15 foot) metal shade, and my 305 even holds reception there in the shade, where people with the prior model have to take it off to avoid having to go through the satellite acquisition sequence all over again. But indoors, it's pretty much no-go. It gets spotty reception in my house (wood house with composite shingles) and in any kind of commercial building with metal in the roof or structure, it's no go at all. So if you were thinking of something like walking the mall and using this to measure the distance, it probably won't work for that. The HRM has always worked 100% for me. I don't regret not getting the 405 or 310 - I've heard the 405 is hard to control with sweaty fingers, and the 310 seems better, but not *that* much better considering the cost. There are rumors of a 505 in the works . . .
When I got my Forerunner, the first thing I did was take it for a little ride in the car to decide whether I would believe the speed and location data. It seems pretty accurate on speed, but since it's computing the speed from an average of your prior locations, it takes about 10 seconds of constant speed for the number on the display to be exactly right. If you're speeding up or slowing down, the value on the watch will be lagging your real speed, but you can get the real speed in retrospect when you download the data. Location also seems very accurate - usually within about 10 feet. Altitude info is not that great - the same location can vary by 50 feet or more, but typically that's not as important - your desktop software can correct for that.
A huge part of the experience is the software rather than the watch itself. Once you get the display configured the way you want, your regular use amounts to just turning it on and picking your activity type if you're doing more than one thing (e.g. biking and running). All the really interesting stuff happens once you've downloaded the data and you look at what you're doing on a map. For what I'm doing, the interesting part (the reason you got this an not just a Timex Ironman is that you can relate your activity to position on a map. With a timer, you'd know where you're supposed to be at certain key points, and you might note your time on certain legs, but the GPS lets you see what you're doing at every point and relate that to the terrain. I've found places that are slightly uphill and downhill that I thought were flat, and found that I slow down at certain key "mental" places, like the "ahh, halfway" point. Things like that are difficult to observe about yourself when you're immersed in your activity are really obvious when you're looking at the data. With the GPS, you don't even have to think about it - just strap it on, do what you do and get totally into the activity, and then look at the data later at home. If you want to watch your speed and heart rate all the time, it's easy to do that too.
I use Macs, so this is all from the viewpoint of OS X (Snow Leopard). The web-based software Garmin provides at [...] is really quite good for a web application. You can poke around there before you buy one to see what it looks like. You get a nice map of your track, graphical presentation of the data, and the ability to play back the course. It's not great for interacting between the map and data, just due to the limitations of web applications vs. desktop apps. It's surprisingly good but you'll probably want to use a desktop app for your own use and the web app for sharing data. The Garmin Training Center program that comes with the Forerunner is not great. The GUI is somewhat clunky and it looks like it was created first as a PC app. There are two other options I've found: Trailrunner X and Ascent. Both are WAY ahead of the Garmin software. I find myself using both because they each have their own areas of focus. If you're using a Mac, you don't have to worry about software support - there are plenty of good options.
There are way too many things the Forerunner can do to discuss in one article - you can download the user's manual from Garmin to get a feel for what it can do and how the user interface works. Overall, I highly recommend it. It gives you a way to be very precise and geeky about they way your train while intruding on your activity only as much as you want it to.
Customer Review: Excellent for most of my workouts
Summary: 4 Stars
I use this neat little gizmo for biking and running.
For running, I'm not aware of any other way to get accurate pace information for a course that includes substantial up- or down-hill sections; I think the closest contenders are accelerometer-based pedometers (like the popular Nike/Apple one), but my wife's experience is that these don't always work well if there are changing grades. Plus, the ability to record heart rate information and match it up with speed and elevation is pretty neat.
For biking, the speed information is probably slightly less accurate (and updated slightly less frequently) than a standard cyclometer, especially for rides under heavy tree cover, but I rarely really care _exactly_ what my speed is at any given moment, and the Forerunner provides plenty of accuracy and temporal resolution for my needs.
My favorite feature is the ability to "race against yourself": I have programmed in a few standard courses, so when I go out for a run or a ride I can compare my current performance to my previous one: "at this point in the ride, I'm 67 feet behind where I was last time." This is a great motivator, especially when I'm just not in the mood to go hard: I can't stand gradually (or quickly) falling behind my previous pace, which after all I know is within my power, so I push harder. I really like this feature.
I also like the ability to customize the various displays. For running, I like to see lap time, lap distance, and heart rate on my main screen; for biking, I like current speed, lap distance, and heart rate. On the secondary and tertiary screens (selected by a single button push), I display total time, total distance, average heart rate, and so on (up to 4 variables per screen).
Uploading the data to a computer is a snap, and although I don't do any sophisticated analyses I do like to look at my heart rate versus time (for example) to see how much time I spent at various heart rates, and how the tough sections matched up to my location on the course.
There are a few limitations, though. (1) The GPS accuracy for elevation does not seem to be sufficient to give a reliable estimate of grade (i.e. slope), at least not enough to be useful in the course of a bike ride. I had hoped to gradually learn to recognize different slopes and what they mean to me in terms of effort, but in fact the gizmo sometimes says I'm going slightly uphill when I am going slightly downhill, and such. It's fine for things like total elevation gain, but not accurate enough on a second-by-second basis to be useful for grade. (2) The GPS accuracy for horizontal distance isn't good enough to free me from the track for sprints. From my experience, on my track a lap can be measured as anywhere between 390 meters and 440 meters, which gives an impression of the level of accuracy. For a longish course, the distance will be accurate (or pretty accurate) because errors will cancel out over time, but if you are just out for a jog (not on a track) and want to do a 200 meter sprint, and you aren't willing to tolerate a 5% or 10% distance error, then this isn't going to do it for you. But that 10 or 20 meter error is utterly trivial if you're running a mile or a few miles, so for most circumstances this is not a problem.
The computer software that comes with the Forerunner is pretty rudimentary. It allows you to display heart rate as a function of time, speed as a function of time, distance as a function of time, or anything else as a function of speed, but not (for example) heart rate as a function of distance or heart rate as a function of speed. (When you choose to see "speed versus distance", it overlays a plot of distance versus time on a plot of speed versus time). It also makes odd choices for plot intervals, so each tick mark might represent 53 feet or some other inconvenient interval. And the maps included with the program show only the really major roads, so most of my road rides and all of my off-road runs just show a bunch of points off in the middle of white space. There are online services that remedy this, so that one can see a route overlain on a detailed map or satellite photo and such, but these cost extra.
There is lots of room for improvement in the included software, and the inherent GPS limitations might sometimes cause problems, so I'm not quite giving this product the highest possible ranking. But it's very good.
Customer Review: Great Value Heart Rate Monitor With Integrated GPS!
Summary: 4 Stars
BACKGROUND: I was looking for a heart rate monitor that I could use for running outside and at the gym. I wanted to be able to track my pace and distance for outside runs. I considered various models from Polar and even the Forerunner 405, but I settled on the Forerunner 305 because it had the most features for the money.
SETUP: There is not a lot to do as far as setup goes. I charged the unit for about 4 hours until it had a full charge. I took the unit outside and turned it on to verify that it could get a GPS fix, and it did so within a few minutes much like my Nuvi 205W did. The only other up front setup was to enter my gender, age, and weight. I stuck with the default heart rates for the 5 training zones.
If you just want to use the unit while exercising, you are done. However if you want to track and analyze your workouts, you have a couple of options to integrate with your computer. First is the included CD-ROM for Garmin Training Center. The other is the online Garmin Connect. I found Garmin Connect to be more user friendly, and after setting up Garmin Connect Garmin Training Center crashes after uploading workout stats.
There is additional customization that you can do with the 305 if you want to. When in use it has three screens of data for each type of activity. By default, your heart rate is not one of the fields that are displayed in larger font. It is relegated to a very small font on the top right of the screen. I customized the third screen for all three exercise modes (running, bike, and other) so that it shows elapsed time, current time, and current heart rate. You have tons of options in the data that you want to see.
USAGE: After getting things setup, the 305 is pretty easy to use. I get my fingers wet at the sync and rub water on the sensors on the heart rate chest strap. After six weeks of usage, I have immediately gotten a heart rate reading every time.
The other thing to do is turn on the wrist display/receiver unit. One thing that I find annoying is that you have to turn the GPS off every time you use the unit indoors. I wish that it would remember this setting as I use the unit indoors more than out. It would be more user friendly to be prompted to turn it on when you unit comes on rather than having to navigate a series of menus to turn it off. If your primary usage will be outside, this will not likely be an issue.
I tested the accuracy of the heart rate reading by comparing the reading that the treadmill takes from the hand grips in the gym. The readings either agreed or were within 1 bpm. That is pretty good in my book.
For my trial outdoor run, I took at route that I knew to be roughly 10k in distance. When I completed my run, the unit registered the route as being 6.22 miles. The speed readings seemed reasonable to me, but I have nothing to compare these against for accuracy.
As far as tracking workout data goes, Garmin Connect gives me mixed results. I cannot figure out why, but it I only get a detailed graph of my heart rate some of the time. When it is there, it is easy to see how my heart rate tracked during interval training.
One thing that is probably different from other heart rate monitors is that the 305 only tracks calories burned if the GPS is on. I found the reason on Garmin's knowledge base that the algorithm uses speed and activity along with your weight and heart rate to calculate calories burned. I'm not sure how the other units do this. It makes sense to me that the same heart rate running vs. cycling could result in different calorie burn rates.
There are more advanced features to the unit, but I really didn't need these.
Finally, the chest strap transmitter will not register with equipment in your gym that requires "Polar Compliance". This may or may not be important to you.
CONCLUSION: The Garmin Forerunner 305 is a great value for the price. If you take full advantage of the features it has, it is even better. The equipment is very reliable. I would like to see some improvements in the software for tracking your workouts, but this is a minor requirement.
Customer Review: Excellent workout tool
Summary: 4 Stars
I like this thing quite a lot. I've had it for about three weeks, and have used it on 12 workouts so far. I use it primarily for running, with biking a secondary usage. The main reason I wanted it was for the instantaneous readout of distance, running pace and heart rate, the latter needed for the speed work I want to do this running season.
The core functionality (distance and heart rate monitoring) works perfectly. There's none of the signal drops I've had with other heart monitors. Once the satellites are initially acquired, I've only had one dropout when I was outside. The initial acquisition of the satellites can be quirky and can take some time. The accuracy (according to the readout) is +/- 25ft, depending on how many satellites can be found. I've compared the distance measurement on the GPS with a known, measured distance on one of the trails I run on (the Chicago lakefront path). The GPS always increments a mile when I'm within 5 or 10 feet of the mile marker sign on the path. Well, I guess that's the least I should expect from a $350 GPS unit! Of course it's bigger than a normal running stopwatch, but that hasn't bothered me at all. The heart rate strap is also very comfortable and well-designed.
The display is crisp and has one outstanding feature: The information presented on the various pages can be completely user-customized. The default screen layout is rather poor, but in just a few steps I could replace it with the information I wanted to see while I run. There are almost 40 different data fields you can choose from for display. Examples: current pace, average lap pace, average run pace, heartrate, distance.
The only disappointment is the point-in-time (instantaneous) pace measurement: It varies wildly during a run. I see swings as big as +/- 3 minutes/mile. I'm a marathoner and I know my pace is fairly consistent during a run. I just looked at my run today, and according to the data the first mile varied from 5:57/mile to 12:06 mile. I suspect the problem is either in the averaging algorithm (too short a distance?), or in the uncertainty that results from different satellites coming in and out of view. The variations seem to get worse under tree cover compared with an open area. Luckily there's a lap-average pace that can be presented, and at least that value is useful and more accurate. The bottom line is that you can't look at the watch and say "right now I'm running 9 mins/mile". There is the ability to specify a pace smoothing factor, but I have it maxed out and still see the variations. The elevation readout also seems inaccurate, but that isn't important to me.
Upload of workout data to the PC software (Training Center) is transparent. The PC software is very good for presenting time/distance/pace/heartrate/calorie data. However the maps it shows are very crude. I've worked a bit with one of the online, subscription services (MotionBased). That looks really good and provides some additional functionality beyond the included Training Center software, although I still haven't decided if it's worth the $$$ yet for long-term data storage. MotionBased allows export to Google Earth, and it's tremendously cool to see your running path superimposed on a satellite image. You can recharge the unit through the USB port on your computer, although it's slower than using the dedicated recharger.
I had hoped that owning this device would prove motivational for me, and indeed it has. I can't imagine running or biking without it. Updating my training log is trivial now: Plug this thing into my computer, and it's done. My hope is that a future software update will do something about the pace calculation (maybe a few additional levels of smoothing?). If so, the Forerunner 305 would earn 5 stars+++.
Positives:
Flawless heart rate sampling
Great distance measuring and lap-average pace calculation
Seamless integration with a PC
Fully-automatic training log update
User-customizable display
Negatives;
Wildly-varying pace readout.
Customer Review: We've tried 3 models - this is great for a dedicated runner and/or asipiring marathoner
Summary: 4 Stars
We bought this a few years ago after having the clunky Forerunner 100 for a couple of years. We now have 3 Garmins we can use for running and other sports. The original Forerunner 100, this model the 305 with HRM (pd $299 at the time- much cheaper now) and the new 310 xt so I'll share my recommendations between the 3 (although they've made some really nice upgrades to the 100 since we bought the first model, so that comparison may no longer be accurate). As some background my husband and I are both avid runners having gone from basic running for exercise 4 years ago to multiple marathons and ultras now. So here goes. Each time we upgraded was due to a need for new functionality. The basic model is good for a basic runner, we upgraded to get better satellite reception when trail running or in cities with tall buildings and we weren't disappointed. When we upgraded to the 305 it turns out we never really used the software and training programs. But we did like the better satellite reception, fancier screens, recharging station (no more batteries - yeah!), history, multi-sport and map features. There's been more than once we've use the map to find a quicker way home when out on a long run in a new area. The interval training was used quite a bit during marathon training, but have to say the menu to set the values can use some help. The buttons take some strength and you have to used the up and down arrows in a cumbersome way, but once you get the hang of it you live with it. The two year history has been nice to note the long term progress. I had trouble with getting the heart rate monitor to register but that may have been a bad battery. We can now use the HR strap with both the 305 and 310XT after putting in a new battery. My husband did have one instance with the 305 having trouble not registering the HR. I'm not sure if it's the strap or the ability of the 305 to read the signal. I suspect the technology of the 305 for the HR is not as robust as the 310XT. We upgraded to the 310 XT for three basic reasons: 1-we both wanted something better than the 100 and were tired of sharing the 305, 2-the 20 hour charge life and 3- the ability to swim with it. We considered buying another 305 as it was much cheaper but we were willing to pay more because we do ultra running and 6 hours of charge time is not enough. Also as a female runner the 305 gets a little heavy after running for hours if you have a small wrist plus we really liked the idea of the waterproof feature for swimming. I'm very pleased with the 310 XT. The buttons are easier to push, it feels lighter and more balanced on the wrist, the screens are very similar and you get more options of what fields you want to display, the virtual partner is extremely easy to use, however if you start the virtual partner after beginning your run it will not "back calculate" where you stand. It will only display from the point you start the virtual partner, so make sure you remember to set it at the start. It also doesn't seem to remember the last pace you set, so you have to reset it each time. I also really like the vibrate feature on the 310 XT for laps. (for both running and swimming) Instead of a chime it vibrates so you can feel it underwater. We did have some trouble swimming laps in a mid size small pool, the tracking wasn't fine enough to note our exact laps. We have also tried the easy wireless workout synchronization and like the ease of set up and detail, but haven't spent a lot of time playing with the software features yet. For the price the 305 is a great tool if you're looking to achieve new running goals. Fairly easy to use once you get used to it, more reliable satellite signal than cheaper models. I'd only recommend spending the extra for the 310 XT if you are an avid athlete who needs the charge life, you are a distance swimmer or want to make more use of the multi-sport features. If you fall into one of those categories I'd recommend looking for more detailed reviews on the swimming accuracy and some of the biking features.