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(More customer reviews)When I first purchased my Forerunner 410 in November 2010, I thought it was the best thing ever. For the first three to four months, I was thrilled with it. Unfortunately, as my marathon training progressed I started to notice the watch doing some odd things. At first it would occasionally reboot for no apparent reason. Over the following weeks, the problem got worse and worse. As it did, the battery life also started becoming unstable. Sometimes the 410 would work OK, but the best case battery life dropped to 4-5 hours instead of the 8 I got out of it during those first months. In the worst cases, I would take the watch off the charger in the morning, shut it down until my run, and had a dead battery before I had gone one mile. The display that shows the battery life remaining is pretty much worthless now. And, it still suffers from reboots for no obvious reason - often at inopportune times, like during my marathon.
If you only do short to medium runs length runs, or are very fast, then the fact that the battery life seems to have problems might be acceptable for your situation. If you're planning on doing runs of several hours, won't be able to recharge it before every run, or won't find reboots during runs/races acceptable, then you might want to look for something other than the 410. When it works right, it really is a great tool for training. But, if you need a device you can count on, you might want to wait and see how the reviews look on the new Forerunner 610 or consider going with one of the older, cheaper, and more proven devices like the 305.
If you're still on the fence about purchasing a Forerunner 410 (or 405/405cx for that matter), I'd suggest you visit the Garmin forums (forums .garmin .com) and take a look at the posts by various owners who are having similar hardware/software related problems so you can make an informed decision.
Edited 5/1/11 - At this point my Forerunner 410 has become totally unreliable. I had taken it to Nashville to use during the Country Music Marathon yesterday. It had been fully charged and shutdown before I left. When I turned it on an hour or so before the race, it immediately said "low battery" and shut itself down. I charged it again when I got home. This morning it read 100% charged and I shut it down. This afternoon when I tried it use it, it again said "low battery" and shut itself down. I've again contacted Garmin about the problem. Maybe they'll replace it this time instead of just suggesting things like firmware updates and charge/discharge cycling.
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