Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS Only -

I picked this up almost as soon as it came out, as been desperate from an upgrade from my forerunner 305. Avoided the 405 due to the huge amount of criticism on the bezel control format.

Did have to think twice about spending such an amount on a running watch, but I'm pleased to report I've very happy with my purchase.

My main reasons for upgrading from the Forerunner 305 were, firstly, the very slow GPS pickup. If I had moved a fair distance, and started running, it could easily take anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes to get satellite reception.
The 610, despite it's far smaller size, blows this out of the water. My average time so far has probably been about 30 seconds. Often less, though more a couple of times - but never more than a minute.

Secondly was the battery on my 305. Would only take a few decent sized runs before recharging was required. The 610 can manage about 8 hours. From what I've read, this isn't much better than a 405, but definitely better than my 305.

My worry on the 610 was the control mechanism. I was happy with the 305 controls, and the "improvement" on the 405 was regarded as a bit of a disaster.
The 610 has 3 hard buttons on the sizes (for power, start/stop, and lap/reset), everything else is touch screen. I'm finding it very useful. In particular, swiping between screen you've pre configured by tap or swiping is great, much better than the hard buttons on the 305.
I've not had any issues with rain/sweat affecting the connection between your finger at the screen either.

Other features I'm enjoying over the 305 -
- Wireless Sync. When the watch is on near the ANT USB stick, data automatically gets transferred (have tried on Windows and Mac, with success on both). really nice feature.

- Virtual Partner. This has changed from my 305. Partner used to be a virtual character from a previous run (which I thought was a great feature). This is now called Virtual Racer. Virtual Partner is now a pacer - set it to run at 8 minute miles, and you can see distance/time behind (or on a rare occasion, ahead :-)

- Easy changing of data fields during activity. You don't even have to preconfigure the screens - holding a data field will change the information available on that field.

In summary - a superb running watch. The only downside is that it is a pretty steep price. But if you're doing a lot of miles, this great bit of kit is definitely worth the money.

After about 3 months of loving the watch, it has now stopped charging and gone completely blank. from looking at other forums (amazon US, and garmin users forum), it seems this is pretty common, called 'reverse charging' i.e. the watch drains when you plug it in. Now there is absolutely nothing i can do apart from send it back to Garmin, paying for postage, and wait for a new one. I wouldn't mind as much but my response from customer serive said they were 'not aware' of it being a common problem, which is nonsense!

Before buying the 610, I used a Garmin FR60 (also excellent) together with iPhone apps to do GPS tracks of my runs. The data from both never quite matched up. I was hoping to integrate the FR60's HRM and footpod with the the iPhone but didn't have much success with the Wahoo dongle. I also found that the iPhone app GPS tracking was a little off, not very good at pace based coaching and risky to use in the rain. I wanted something that would combine the best of both devices and I was glad I had experimented with cheaper things first so that I knew what I was looking for. The lower end GPS Garmin models would have been a mistake for me.

I've been using the 610 for nearly two months now and I'm delighted with it.

I've found the GPS tracking much more accurate than the iPhone apps I tried. The pace based coaching features like custom workouts and virtual partner are very good. I also really like that you can make the watch vibrate to alert you instead of beeping.

My only slight criticism is that when using a custom workout you can't simultaneously use the standard alerts. However, even had I known beforehand, it would not have changed my decision to buy. This limitation may even be addressed in future software releases.