Garmin 010-00658-10 Forerunner 405 with ANT+ Sport Wireless Technology (Black)

Share Wirelessly
With Forerunner 405 you can share your locations, advanced workouts and courses wirelessly with other Forerunner 405 users. Now you can send your favorite workout to your buddy to try, or compete against a friend’s recorded course. Sharing data is easy. Just select “transfer” to send your information to nearby units.

Cross-Train
Take your training inside with the versatile Forerunner 405. Pair it with an optional foot pod to track your speed, distance and running cadence indoors when a GPS signal is unavailable. This new design clips onto your laces for easy removal and automatically turns on when you start moving. You can also add a speed/cadence bike sensor to track the speed and distance of your cycling workouts.

Be Part of A Community
In 2007, Garmin acquired Motion-based, the largest shared repository of customer-generated gps-based routes, courses and maps. This was a significant move for Garmin to support the gps user community and bring a wealth of route options to gps users. With a simple connection to your computer, you can join a worldwide network of cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts through Garmin Connect our new, one-stop site for data analysis an sharing.

You can also upload to optional Garmin Training Center software for further analysis. Garmin Training Center stores large quanities of workout and ride data. Some of the things you can do are

• Review your workout data, including pace/speed, distance, time, calories burned; and if available, heart rate, cadence and detailed elevation.
• View a detailed graph of your workout data, plotted over time or distance.
• View a map of your workout that shows the exact path you traveled.
• Categorize your workout history according to type of activity.
• Review previous workouts, which are saved by day and week.
• Create customized workouts with specific goals and rest intervals. Then send them to your fitness device.*
• Schedule workouts for a specific day with calendar.
• Get custom workout templates designed by the experts at TrainingPeaks.com

What’s In The Box
Forerunner 405, USB ANT stick, AC adapter, Charging clip, Owner’s manual, Quick reference guide

Customer Review: Works great, but has four negatives
I have been using this for awhile now and am posting this review of the Forerunner 405 in Black. Mine came with the heart rate monitor, the ANT+ USB stick, and the charger.

First the negatives:

1) the watch band may be uncomfortable for those with small wrists. The inch above and below the face are hard and inflexible. For most people, the fit will be acceptable. For those with thin or very thick wrists, the band will not fit comfortably. I would highly recommend you try this on in person before purchasing. My wife is a normal sized female and finds the band acceptable, but just barely so.

2) The altitude is inaccurate. It uses GPS to tell you the altitude, and that is used to measure % grade increases and decreases, and a handful of other measurements. I can only say that it is inaccurate - sometimes very inaccurate - to the point the information based on altitude is useless. It seems many others have found this same issue to be a problem. For example, I am running up a 1/2 mile long hill and a couple of minutes into the hill it still says the current grade is -2%. That can’t be correct.

3) The battery life is limited. The stats say the battery will last 8 hours with the GPS on. That is probably just about correct. Overnight, without the GPS on, or any activity at all, it loses about 30% of its charge. This means that you always need to keep the charger with you - even when traveling and competing in early morning races.

4) Why is this not waterproof? It just seems silly that they couldn’t give this a better waterproof rating. It is something like one meter for 30 minutes - swimming is not advised. Come on! One nice route I run has me end at the beach and I love to go for a dip at the end. A sport watch should be waterproof to at least 100 feet. Enough said.

The positives:

1) This is completely customizable. There are four customizable screens of information with three items available on each screen. You can choose exactly what you want and where you want it.

2) The technical glitches encountered by some were not experienced by me. I was able to load the software from the website and use all of the functions without issue on my XP SP2 computer.

3) The maping and statistical software on the computer end are really cool! I especially like the playback feature that tracks you along the map while providing all of your stats (and you can select which stats are shown).

4) The watch does not have maps and does not work like the GPS in your car. That said, you can load a “course” (need a fair amount of technical know-how to do this) and the watch will point you in the correct direction. It will also always point you back to the start of your run (as the crow flies). This is useful when running in parks and the like where you can get a bit disoriented on the trails.
Customer Review: Works great, good support, great to track progress…
I find this to work pretty well, it’s accurate enough. The HRM works well.

My wife has a Forerunner 201. In contrast this is smaller, which is nice, tho not small enough for me to wear daily. The 201 has a more traditional GPS map/track page, which this lacks. Given the screen size, I’m not sure it would be useful.

Compared to my past Polar HRM’s this is SO much easier to use. With the Polar I’d often not use the advanced features without looking back at the manual. The Garmin is really easy to use.

The touch wheel hasn’t been a problem for me yet.

The Ant+ upload is also fantastic. Compared to the polar sonic upload and their SW this just seems to work better. I’d suggest keeping records both in Garmin TC and Garmin Connect. TC has more detail and allows more features. But it’s harder to use. Connect is more user friendly.

Garmin support has answered all my questions within less than 24hr. Most faster.