Re: Garmin 405

Just a tip for anyone about to purchase a Timex Bodylink system.....

Great system, great watch & the fact you have a separate GPS unit to the watch has its + & - 's. (its either a pain or great depending on what your training requires)

The actual GPS unit is only SPLASH proof, as I found out! In my early days of ocean paddling I had an Icon and did a fair bit of swimming! - so did the GPS unit, although it never was under water for any length of time or depth the unit got water in it & died.

Timex here in Australia don't have an agent so I had to deal with the US. After many emails regarding the so-called water resistance they stopped returning my inquiries and failed to respond when I wanted to send it back to them! ???

So sometimes the customer service is more important than the gear when you drop alot of coin on equipment!!!

My solution was to purchase a refurbished replacement GPS unit off eBay!!!

Saw the garmin 405 on a web search the other day....looks pretty good

Hey Rob is the demo Garmin 405 still working?

Hey Rob is the demo Garmin 405 still working?

Indeed it is. I've been using the 405 & 305 together for the last week. The 405 has taken a bit of getting used to but I'm almost ready to publish the review.

What I like about it:

• Smaller, lighter on the wrist for runners.
• Very sharp display - easy to read
• Quicker to synch with satellites
• A joy to synch with the PC - come within 10m and the PC automatically makes contact & downloads the data.

What I don't like:

• Had to get used to the bezel - I find it quite fiddly to use
• The battery time - have to remember to switch off GPS otherwise the battery is drained in 8hrs
• The battery is supposed to last a week in standby mode (showing time only) but it seems to drain faster than that which means it spends a lot of time on the charger.
• Wasn't obvious how to get out of GPS mode, had to look it up in the manual.
• When you lock the bezel a message keeps popping up telling you that you've locked the bezel!
• You can't select an "other" sport so your paddling tracks are stored under "running" in Training Center

Overall I like the unit - I haven't yet tried the training features, but I'm fairly sure that they'll be similar to the 305.

I think some people will prefer it, especially guys who do cross training on bikes/running.

Rob,

Doesnt the display change when water hits the bezel? Its a bit sensitive as I was told by a friend.

They briefly released a software update to address the power saving issues but was retracted later on. Guess you guys who want the 405 should wait a while. As for not having an others sports mode and simple mapping, that's what made me hold off.

Hows the readability of the the display?

Rob: Do you now prefer Trainingg Center over Sportracks? You're the one who got me using Sportracks, certainly one of it's strengths is the ability to create a wide variety of sport activities and assign to the proper category after import.

Doesnt the display change when water hits the bezel? Its a bit sensitive as I was told by a friend.

Yes it does - but you can lock the bezel to avoid this. So the sequence is:
Switch on GPS,
Switch to training,
select the view you want
Lock the bezel
Press start

Hows the readability of the the display?

Pretty good - it's a crisp, sharp display, better quality I'd say than the 305.
However, it only shows a max. of 3 numbers and the smallest is very small.

Rob: Do you now prefer Trainingg Center over Sportracks? You're the one who got me using Sportracks, certainly one of it's strengths is the ability to create a wide variety of sport activities and assign to the proper category after import.

No - I prefer SportTracks which, as you say, allows you to assign the sport type to each individual track so that it doesn't actually matter that the 405 has only Running/Cycling.

Do you think basic mapping option is a big loss for those moving from the 305 to 405?