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Garmin Forerunner 10 reviews (Read 313 times)

AlexJohnson


    It's dependable and accurate. The only problem is the strap. It breaks so easily that it almost seems like it's planned. It can be fixed easily with a paper clip. That's the only problem I've had in 3 years. As long as you charge it over night you should be good with the battery, mine's never died on me.

      Correction, the band popped off and it doesn't seem to want to snap back into the pins.  Would a new band work, or has it outlived its life expectancy?

       

      Yes a new band works. Mine broke after the watch was a year old. I put a new band on it and its worked fine for the last 11 months. I read up on it and it before buying the band and it seems to be a known issue with the 10.

      pedaling fool


        In terms of accuracy, I run with my friend who still has the FR 10 all the time and his watch always reads pretty much the same distance as mine for every run. Many of our runs are over courses of known distance anyway, and he's run plenty of  races including half marathons and marathons with it to boot. At the end of a marathon his watch is just as far off as everyone else's GPS. The two marathons he has run with his FR 10 measured 26.34 and 26.42 miles. Just like every other GPS watch on the planet.

         

        IMO the FR 10 is EASILY accurate enough for casual usage and I would say is a good watch for 95% of runners.

        I'm really curious of the accuracy factor for the FR10. Everyone seems to say it's fairly accurate, but are not specific. Can anyone elaborate?

         

        BTW, on the issue of distance for the marathon (above), I've also heard that many race routes (including marathons) are not actually all that accurate, either a little over/under the 26.2 miles, so that leaves a question in my mind if the error is from the watch or the course.

          I'm really curious of the accuracy factor for the FR10. Everyone seems to say it's fairly accurate, but are not specific. Can anyone elaborate?

           

           

           

           

          I’m sure this has been written before, and more precisely, but: Radio signals traveling at 30,000 mph are sent from at least three 17 foot long 2000 pound hunks of metal 11,000 miles up in space and orbiting the earth at insano-speed to a precisely timed receiver on your wrist bobbing and weaving around down on earth under some trees and behind the McTrump Tower of America with 40,000 of your friends and sending its own signal back into space, continuously calculating the difference in time travel of the signals down to the ten-thousandth of a second, and multiplying the travel time times the speed of light to spit out a distance.

           

          It’s fairly accurate.

          Come all you no-hopers, you jokers and rogues
          We're on the road to nowhere, let's find out where it goes

            Everyone seems to say it's fairly accurate, but are not specific. 

             

            You just described GPS accuracy in a nutshell. Uncertainty is woven into the fabric of the universe, and whatnot. That, and consumer GPS watches will tend to measure every course just a tiny bit long (usually by about 1%) for reasons that are well documented and google-able and that I don't feel like explaining.

             

            Certified race courses (and almost all marathons are certified) are measured with a calibrated wheel following a precise protocol, and are very accurate. There is a short course prevention factor of .001 that's added to make sure the course is at least the distance advertised. So a certified 5k road race will be between 5000 and 5005 meters and a marathon may be up to 42 meters longer than exactly 26.2 miles. These differences are much smaller (by a factor of 10) than the margin of error of any commercially available GPS running watch.

             

            When in doubt, trust the course, not your watch.

            Runners run


            Mmmmm...beer

               

               

              I’m sure this has been written before, and more precisely, but: Radio signals traveling at 30,000 mph are sent from at least three 17 foot long 2000 pound hunks of metal 11,000 miles up in space and orbiting the earth at insano-speed to a precisely timed receiver on your wrist bobbing and weaving around down on earth under some trees and behind the McTrump Tower of America with 40,000 of your friends and sending its own signal back into space, continuously calculating the difference in time travel of the signals down to the ten-thousandth of a second, and multiplying the travel time times the speed of light to spit out a distance.

               

              It’s fairly accurate.

               

              This is exactly what I think of any time someone complains about the measurement on their gps.  It's a watch that can read a signal from outerspace and tell you where you are and how fast you're going, for what you pay and what you get, I think they're pretty accurate.  We're not dropping bombs, we're just running, if it's off by a lil bit, I'm ok with that.

              -Dave

              My running blog

              Goals | sub-18 5k | sub-3 marathon 2:56:46!!

              LedLincoln


              not bad for mile 25

                 I’m sure this has been written before, and more precisely, but: Radio signals traveling at 30,000 mph are sent from at least three 17 foot long 2000 pound hunks of metal 11,000 miles up in space and orbiting the earth at insano-speed to a precisely timed receiver on your wrist bobbing and weaving around down on earth under some trees and behind the McTrump Tower of America with 40,000 of your friends and sending its own signal back into space, continuously calculating the difference in time travel of the signals down to the ten-thousandth of a second, and multiplying the travel time times the speed of light to spit out a distance.

                 

                It’s fairly accurate.

                 

                I like your description; fixed one quibbly point.

                pedaling fool


                  After reviewing various stats on Garmin Express, I noticed that they give two separate averages for pace, one being simply Average Pace, but the other being Average Moving Pace. What's the difference? Not that it really matters, because it seems like most of the time the values are very close, within a couple seconds of each other and sometimes they are exactly the same.

                   

                  However, curiosity killed the cat, so I gotta know

                   

                   

                   

                  .

                    After reviewing various stats on Garmin Express, I noticed that they give two separate averages for pace, one being simply Average Pace, but the other being Average Moving Pace. What's the difference? Not that it really matters, because it seems like most of the time the values are very close, within a couple seconds of each other and sometimes they are exactly the same.

                     

                    However, curiosity killed the cat, so I gotta know

                     

                     

                     

                    .

                     

                    I actually just googled this yesterday because I was like wtf, garmin? Apparently (according to the garmin forum) Garmin connect is estimating how much of the total time you were moving vs waiting at a stoplight or whatever. Theoretically useful if auto pause is off, I guess?

                     

                    modified because duh, you asked about pace not time. So I guess it's taking the distance and the average moving time (instead of total time) and telling you the pace.

                    GinnyinPA


                      The odd thing is my watch often tells me I was not moving for a few seconds each mile, even when I was moving continuously.  I assume that is because of interference from buildings or trees or something.  It is a bit odd though, especially when it says I was stopped for 10 seconds or more.


                      an amazing likeness

                        From a previous topic discussing the "moving time" on Garmin Connect:

                        Moving often makes no sense at all. Even the Garmin Connect service has, over the years, hidden moving time from display since it cause so much confusion. 

                         

                        The basic time values are:

                         

                        Elapsed Time = the time from when you pressed start to the time you pressed stop. Simple 'calendar' time.

                         

                        Time = the Elapsed Time minus any time you had the device paused at stops for intersections, adjusting your shoes, etc. Auto-pause stops are included here. To Garmin this is your "time running during the elapsed time".  Unless you stop the watch, should match elapsed time.

                         

                        Moving Time (is absolute crap...) = a time computed by the Forerunner that is its best guess at paused time. Its intent seems to have been to come up with an equivalent to Time (above) when the user didn't apply auto-pause. It is useless - simply going around a sharp corner and this value will assume you stopped due to a computed slow pace between the data points.

                         

                         

                         

                         

                         

                        Only one minor correction to what Mr. Truck has spelled out above.  Garmin Connect attempts to parse the data after the fact to discriminate "moving time" from stopped time.  Sometimes it gets it right and sometimes not.  I have seen the Moving Time drop several seconds before for a run where I knew for a fact that I NEVER stopped.  I have also occasionally seen it actually indicate MORE time than the total timer time... not sure how that should be able to happen in our universe (I suspect some rounding error somewhere in some buried subroutine, actually).

                         

                        Some of the Forerunners (including the 10) have a feature that can be enabled called Auto Pause that will stop the timer for you in real running time when it detects that you are not moving, and I recommend this feature for those who want their stopped time automatically removed for them.  Personally, I'm a bit of an old school control freak when it comes to my timer.  I stop it when I want to stop it and I start it when I want to start it and I never rely on Auto Pause and I only look at Moving Time for amusement.  Smile  Really Moving Time is a throwback to the days of yore when there was no Auto Pause feature on the products themselves.

                        Acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.

                        pedaling fool


                          Another question on the accuracy of the Garmin Forerunner 10. I've now have used my Garmin for about a month and have a pretty good feel of its accuracy in distance. However, I've noticed that it doesn't seem so accurate in measuring elevation gain/loss (seems much less accurate than measuring distance), but I'm still trying to figure out a way to measure this with another device. I live in Florida, so there's only one place I have where this elevation thing catches my attention and that's when I do my hill runs on a bridge that goes over the intercoastal waterway, which is about 60 feet above the surface of the water, and I do get fairly close to the water during my run, since I run on a service road that serves as a lap between bridges (one east and one west direction).

                           

                          Long story short... has anyone seen a difference in their elevation gain as measured by various GPS models?

                          Just for those interested I run across the Beach Blvd bridge in the center of this map, just west of Adventure Landing

                          https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2800145,-81.4177184,6585m/data=!3m1!1e3

                            I've gone through 2 Forerunner 10's and now have the 15.  The main reason I switched to the 15 is because Garmin told me it has more battery power and that I need for the long runs I take.  Otherwise both the 10 and 15 are great watches.

                              GPS is notoriously bad at measuring altitude. I always let RA or whatever online tool I'm using replace the GPS elevation data with survey data from the map. If you want a watch that measures elevation somewhat accurately you'll need one with a built-in altimeter. They tend to be expensive, like the Garmin Fenix.

                              Runners run

                              GinnyinPA


                                I haven't compared different watches, but I have compared my Garmin with different mapping software.  Running Ahead is the most sensitive to elevation, then Mapmyrun, then the Garmin.  On our local HM course, there is as much as 500' difference between them (350, 456,  811+).  It probably comes from the base maps.  There is a big difference between 30' contours and 30 meter contours.  When I run a hilly neighborhood near my home with 20 or 30' hills, the garmin will say I neither gained nor lost elevation.  I know that's false.

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