
I purchased this monitor while I was stationed at FOB Warhorse in Iraq. My intent for the watch as two-fold, 1) I wanted an easy way to keep track of where I had been during dismounted patrols and 2) to replace my aging and dying Polar RS200sd heart rate monitor.
The Garmin Forerunner 405 (with Foot Pod!) is very good at what it does, which is keep track of where you were, how fast you went, and roll all that up into a neat little software package that lets you do a virtual tour of it all. Very cool. Just not very practical. The GPS information (i.e. location and altitude) is not displayed on the monitor. You can get heart rate, speed, average speed, average HR, etc but no location information. You also can't easily get that once you've downloaded the data to your computer (you have to get pretty clever with Google maps to make that happen). It takes a bit for to get a decent satellite lock, but once it does it has no issues with tracking. As a GPS device, this monitor is rather lacking. Don't misunderstand it does keep track of where you are and what you are doing, it is just impossible to figure it out while you are doing it. Its not like a dedicated GPS that you glance at and know where you are and where you've been.
But wait! Its not a GPS device, its Heart Rate Monitor! It says so right in the title! And yes it does that! But it doesn't do anything with the information it tracks. Its programming is based upon your age, weight, height, and...distance traveled. Heart rate doesn't play into its calculations at all, or if it does it plays such a limited role that in my four months of using it I never once varied from burning 103 kCal per mile traveled. Not if it took me 7:30 with an average HR of 178, or if I dawdled along and did it in 18:00 minutes @ 107 BPM, it was 103 kCal. And if I didn't move? Let's say I was rolling on the mats, or lifting weights, or doing step-aerobics, no matter how high my heart rate got (188), my kCal expenditure was exactly 0. So it doesn't exactly give you the fitness information that other monitors do.
Now, where this system excels is in the bundled software. The Garmin software is outstanding and its integration with Google maps is impressive. The ability to compare heart rate with speed/effort is very nice. It is also easy to customize and tweak to generate reports that fit exactly what you are looking for (HR over time, speed, and elevation for example so you can see just how much that hill really sucked at the end of your run, compared with how easy it felt when you did it at the beginning of your run). The software isn't without its limitations, for one thing you can't edit the raw data, or even view it in any meaningful form. I know the data is there, buried among the software's xml files, but trying to sort it out was just about impossible and not worth the effort.
Another plus is just how robust this watch is. Where my Polar was scratched up, beaten up, and giving in slowly and painfully to the rigors of Iraq the Garmin kept right on going. It took four months of use and abuse with nary a complaint and as a watch there is a lot to be positive about, the display is easy to read, the back light is bright but subtle, the ability to synch its time with the satellites overhead was a real time saver for me.Get more detail about
Garmin Forerunner 405 (HRM) GREEN with Foot Pod (Bundle).