Now it is March and I've had time to fully use the watch/gps/heart rate monitor functions. I've logged about 25 runs and 5 bike rides with the watch.
The great thing about the watch is it downloads to your computer and you can use the Garmin provided software to keep track of your history. Also, as in my case, I'm keeping my records on www.mapmyrun.com where they have a link that will allow you to upload directly to their website and training history.
The features on the watch are fantastic. Heart Rate, Distance, Speed, Average Speed, heck it even tells the time of day! The GPS is very accurate when you have a strong signal and I would recommend this watch to any runner.
However, I have found some weaknesses with the watch. The GPS aspect of the watch suffers from common GPS problems. It takes a few minutes to calibrate at the beginning of a run and if you are impatient like me, it will not record the first quarter of a mile or so of your run. Not a big deal, but the missing data makes your first mile look really slow, and sets your pace markers off.
If you are hiking or mountain biking with heavy tree cover, you may not get a solid signal causing your coordinates to be off. On a recent bike ride, the bicycle computer registered 11.28 miles where the GPS only picked up 9.8. When I imported the map and overlaid it on the Google Maps with the Satellite images, you could see where the GPS was cutting corners. Personally, I always keep a computer on the bike, so the Garmin was more for heart rate than distance and speed.
The only other problem I have had was user error, when I would forget to turn off the watch and later when I would be going for a run it was not charged.
All in all, it is a great product, hopefully I'll be using it for years.
