Walking the Garmin Plank

Many months ago I purchased the Garmin FR60 for my triathlon training. It turns out that if you do not want GPS this is the perfect watch for you. It has everything a triathlete needs to train (when not in the water). It a has heart rate monitor, can connect to a cadence monitor (it effectively can serve as your bike computer), pacing capabilities, and can connect to a foot pod. See the Garmin site for more information. I, of course, decided that GPS is a must have.

Since I have already bought Garmin compatible add ons I will be sticking to Garmin. After weighing in on everything I wanted the choices came down to the Garmin 310XT and the Garmin 305. The main difference between the two watches is that the 310XT is water proof and is supposed to be able to be used on the swim. After reading many complaints about how this capability just does not work as advertised I decided to hold off on this technology until it matures (especially since the 310 XT is $350 and the 305 if $127 on Amazon.com).

Both watches are extremely large. I happened to be in Best Buy and saw a 305. You will not be winning any fashion contests wearing either watch. Swimming with one on your wrist seems like it would be annoying. Nearly settling for the 305 I looked at the FR410 and the FR405CX. Both are much smaller and would be the perfect GPS watch for a Triathlete. There is nothing different between the two outside of color and a slight price difference. Both have all of the same capabilities as the FR60 plus GPS and some other fancy pants features (such as Waypoints, "workouts", and custom courses) that you will likely never use. That being said I would still go for one of the GPS watches right off the bat.

In the end it turns out that I really wanted a GPS for my bike so I decided to get a bike specific computer instead. Which one? It is most likely going to be the Garmin Edge 500.