Garmin Forerunner 210 Review: Great Toy After Replacing Lemon

Initial Disappointment!

UPDATE: Most of the issues I had with the original watch are much better. I have taken each section of the review and created an update where appropriate, but I’ve left the original comments so people know what they’re in for if they get a bad unit. At this point, I’m actually really pleased with my 210. If my first unit had performed like my second unit, I would have given it a much better review.

Okay, I’ve wanted one of these toys for years and finally settled on this one. It was on sale at REI, but was available cheaper elsewhere. However, after twenty years as a member and knowing how strong the customer service is at REI, I decided to buy there to support my coop and in case something went wrong. Good decision!

I had read reviews complaining about slow signal acquisition and about the heartrate monitor going bad very quickly. I was not prepared for anything like this piece of junk though.

1. Signal acquisition is ABYSMAL. (Update: Excellent)

There have been times when I’ve gone for a run and gotten decent tracking, then gone out and done the same run under clear skies and gone for 30 minutes without getting a signal. This has been true in dense forest in Yosemite where I live,  but also in more open areas in Yosemite, as well as running along the open road by fields and meadows in Vermont, and along a hilltop road in Minnesota. Once, I ran to the top of a hill in Yosemite and stood in an open area for 3 minutes with the thing above my head and got no signal. Then, a few minutes later, while bushwhacking in dense underbrush, I suddenly saw it was tracking!

One thing that’s frustrating is how it says “Acquiring satelites” and shows a progress bar, which progresses across the screen, getting tantalizingly close, making you think it almost has the satelites. Then, with one pixel left to go on the bar, it resets back to the middle. So it’s not actually a measure of the number of satelites it has, just a measure of the amount of time it has spent trying to acquire a signal.

It is incredible how bad this is. I have noticed that with a 100% full charge, I can often pick up satelites quickly, but anything less and it won’t get them at all. Example. Yesterday I ran from my house for 3.5 miles. It took about three minutes to get a signal (good for the Garmin) and tracked me perfectly through the forest. The watch was on for about 30 minutes, so drained a little, but not a lot. Three hours later, I decided to run to my lunch appointment. The first half mile was along the same route, then I veered into open meadows (where signals should be better) and still, after over a mile of running, I had no signal. Strangely, after lunch, I stood stock still in an open area and it eventually picked up a signal and tracked me home.

Update: The new unit is so much better. Lesson: if you have truly terrible signal acquisition, bring the thing back. Not all Garmin 210s have this problem, but my first one did. It still does not acquire a signal well if it’s on your wrist. It really needs to be stationary. So I put it on the dash of the car, on the ground, on a fence, wherever and leave it until it gets a signal, which is usually less than one minute with the new one. With the old one, one day I literally left out in the yard with full view of the sky for 30 minutes and it never got a signal. It was THAT bad. Also, it takes much longer to find satellites if you travel. If I turn it on in the same spot where I turned it off, it may find its location in 15 seconds. When I recently travelled to Miami, it took about 3-4 minutes (while running, which as I say also slows it down) to figure out it was thousands of miles from its last location.

2. Heartrate Monitor Really Is That Bad

I had read complaints where people said the heartrate monitor twinked out after a month. I think mine literally lasted three uses. I thought the battery had gone bad, but today I tried not one, but two new batteries and could not get the watch to recognize the heartrate monitor.

Update: Again, the new one has been trouble free. It is reliable and has had no problem over many uses now. Even when it feels loose like it might fall down, it keeps monitoring.

3. No coordinates display.

Friend are often surprised to find out my GPS doesn’t give you your location, only your speed and distance, so I figured I should mention it. Very few GPS watches actually show you where you are with coordinates (or a map). The ones that do are mostly either extremely expensive or extremely large or both (or they don’t actually function as a watch). One exception is the Garmin Fenix ($400). It’s still a lot more expensive than the 210. When shopping for our second 210, we decided that the money is better spent just getting a true navigation GPS. For just a little more than the price of the Fenix, you can buy a 210 and an eTrex 20 with full color maps, a decent sized display, changeable batteries and everything.

4. Average pace readings.

These are pretty weird and all over the place. They use some averaging algorithm that seems to average over about a minute (but it’s more complex than that; hard to get a bead on really), so you don’t have an instantaneous display and, play with the averaging settings as you will, I couldn’t get anything that seemed to respond quickly enough to make sense for doing quarter mile intervals. If you want to do intervals where you, for example, stay above a certain pace, you can’t really do that because of the substantial lag time in the display (even when you say not to average things).

Update: I have since gone to using quarter-mile averaging. It gives a more meaningful and stable number. Of course, it has its drawbacks, but it works pretty well for quarter and mile repeats.

5. Battery life.

10 hours and you’re done. You lose your GPS. You lose your watch. If you’re doing something longer and want to know what time it is, you need a backup watch. This is just the nature of GPS devices because of the power draw, so nothing against Garmin on that point. With my old Garmin eTrex Legend, I could bring extra batteries, but of course that’s not practical with a watch. The battery is built in so you can’t do a field battery replacement. In fact, I don’t think you can replace the battery at all. So it is what it is. GPS units just eat batteries by their very nature.

Bottom line:

When it works, it’s a pretty cool toy, but it doesn’t work so often, you just have to take it as a bonus if you actually can use it. Given how unreliable it is and the fact that the HR monitor appears to be broken, I’ll be returning this. Update: Which I did and have had much better luck with the replacement.

If you’ve gotten this far and you’re still thinking of buying this, good luck! Let me say one more thing. I read the reviews like you’re doing now and knew that people had problems with the signal acquisition. I said “Well, what’s the big deal if I wait a minute or two for a signal or miss the first two minutes of my run?” I read the reports where people said the HR monitor broke almost immediately. I said “Well, any piece of equipment can fail, it’s a small percentage though, right?”

In short, I thought it would be a ton of fun to have device that does what the Garmin does (and when it works, it is), so I allowed myself to discount all the negative reviews and charge on with the purchase in the face of the evidence. Sure, REI has a great return policy and I’ll get my money back. No problem there. But it is a pain in the butt for me (and REI), and it’s just been a frustrating experience.

I must say, ten years ago I had a Garmin eTrex Legend and it, also, was an utter piece of junk, with terrible signal acquisition. And again, I had a friend who owned an identical unit and we would go out hiking and his worked like a charm. Mine wouldn’t pick up a satellite to save itself. So my experience with Garmin is that they have essentially good products, but terrible quality control (if you’re counting, two out of the four Garmin units with which I have personal experience did not work).

Update: As I say, I am not more of a fan than a critic, though a bit soured by my initial experience. I would not say “Don’t Buy! as I did initially. In fact, I actually love the Garmin and since I don’t live in convenient distance from a track, it’s great to be able to do mile repeats and quarters. It’s fun to hook up to Garmin Connect and have it map the run. I’ve even taken it out downhill skiing. I would no longer say it’s just a toy. I would say it’s a useful tool. I think it’s in part due to the Garmin that the slow slide into laggardly middle age has reversed. I’m not as fast as I was 20 years ago, but doing workouts with fast intervals and measured speeds like the Garmin allows has improved my running fitness substantially. So rather than saying “Don’t Buy”, I would now say that “Bring it back as soon as it underperforms”. The Garmin 210 is a good product, but Garmin turns out some duds.

Garmin 210 at REI