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Review on πŸƒ Garmin Forerunner 405: Discontinued Wireless Sport Watch with GPS, ANT Stick, and Heart Rate Monitor (Green) by Jason Man

Revainrating 3 out of 5

305 is much better for portable DVD players

I've been using the 305 for two years now and it works like a charm. When I wanted to buy my wife one, I chose Beauty and bought 405. This is a disaster. The watch has too many functions and navigation is confusing. I never opened the 305 menu to learn how to use it. It just works. But for this 405 baby, I've gone through the menu more than a few times but still had issues here and there. Yesterday this one blocked 405 and stopped responding to inputs. I figured it must have a reset pin somewhere, like almost all other electronic devices these days. But no. After consulting his menu again, I learned that my only chance was to leave him there and wait many hours for his battery to completely die. So they dream of turning back the clock. I hope they still have those brilliant engineers from the 305 team. Whoever designed the 405 should be sent to a fancy watch shop where a watch's function and usability are not important. Updated 10/16/2013. Last weekend we had a 4-way family relay marathon. Our 405 has been sitting in a drawer for a long time, but I finally found the strength to read the menu cover to cover. I generally expect a product to work well out of the box. But you definitely need to read the menu carefully for that. The default sensitivity setting is in the middle, which is too low, and neither my wife nor I can reliably control the controls. Once I set the sensitivity to high, everything is fine except that you have to be careful not to touch it unnecessarily. The watch also suffers from having too many features on such a small screen. I turned off most of the features, leaving only the basic options like time, pace, and distance. The watch is usable now and my wife had no problem using it for her 7 mile run. I raise the star to finally be able to use it. The clock is beautiful. However, you should take the time to read the menu and adjust the default settings before using it.

Pros
  • Great overall performance
Cons
  • Doubtful