Garmin Forerunner 210 Unboxing

Three weeks ago my Garmin Forerunner 110 broke while out running. It hadn't had a trouble free existence and I had already had to have it replaced once under warranty (condensation inside the watch and a dying battery). Of my five friends with GPS watches, three of us have had issues with our Garmin's. A pretty poor reliability record in my book.

Due to this fact I was a reluctant purchaser of a new Garmin. However, there are very few alternate brands to Garmin and I've become pretty attached to running with GPS.

When choosing my new watch I referred to the encyclopedic DC Rainmaker. The choice came down to the Forerunner 210 (at $260) or Forerunner 610 (at $400). I decided on the 210 for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'd prefer to spend less on a gadget that might break as soon as the warranty expires. Secondly, my old 110 does everything I needed, so there seemed little sense in spending a lot of cash on a watch with features I might never use.

So what do you get in the box?

 

The watch comes with Garmin's premium heart rate monitor strap. It's smaller, thinner and lightly than the strap which came with my old watch. While I didn't find the old one overly uncomfortable, I'm hoping this will be an improvement.

 

The charger and cable / clip are identicle with the Forerunner 110.

The usual selection of manuals in different languages. The Garmin manuals are very slim and scant in any real deal. It's learning by trying!

Finally the watch itself. The watch is very similar in size and form to the Forerunner 110. It has some additional features (such as the ability to connect a foot pod and show instance pace).

It's not ideal to be changing watches so close to a bit race, I'll only have two practice runs with the watch before the big day. Hopefully everything will be ok!

Once I've been using the watch for a few weeks and tried out some of the features I'll post a fuller review.

If you want to read a full review of the watch check out DC Rainmaker's review.