Forerunner 210 Unit Only Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)My first Garmin GPS sports watch was a Forerunner 305. Worked OK but I was not too fond of carrying a canary cage around on my wrist. And I found most of the menu choices and options irrelevant to what I really needed, which was just to know my pace, distance and elapsed time. I eventually sold it on EBay and "upgraded" to a Forerunner 405. That I found to be a very frustrating piece of equipment: non-intuitive, complicated menus plus a very cranky touch-bezel input method. In a year or so of using that watch, I never got anywhere near comfortable with it. The touch-bezel seemed to have an evil life of its own; I really never could make it work right. And the battery had to be re-charged constantly. Finally, in a fit of frustration, one day I jerked it off my wrist, stomped it to death and threw it in a trashcan. No more Garmin for me for the last year or so.
But, finally, I could no longer deal with not knowing my current pace and started checking out sports watches again. Liked the reviews for the 210 and decided to try one, albeit with great misgivings. Now, after two racewalks using the watch, I can say that I highly recommend it. (Caveat: of course, at this point, I have no idea about long-term dependability.)
I had read that Garmin moved their headquarters and, in the process, got rid of a bunch of their programmers. If that is the case, then perhaps this Garmin 210 is the happy result. Best thing, the irritating touch-bezel is gone! Hooray! Here we have 4 physical buttons. The complicated, hard-to-use menu system is gone, replaced by something easy enough to learn in just a try or two. (Alternatively, you could break down and read the instructions.) The screen does not divide up into slices and offer you choices of what to put into each slice. It just shows you distance at the top (set for miles for kilometers), elapsed time in the middle and pace (set for current or average) at the bottom. Period. Which is all I ever want to see on the watch face, anyway. Fancy stuff like a "virtual runner" is not there. But it saves your history and you can upload runs to Garmin Connect if you want. And it does a few other things that probably some, but not most, users ever actually use. Bottom line is that it's user-friendly, simple and straight-forward -- everything the Forerunner 405, in my opinion, is not. And the battery, unlike the 405, seems to go for a while -- they say at least a week or more, depending on use, of course -- without having to re-charge.
I give it 4 stars instead of 5 only because of the cable USB connector which ends in a 4-prong clip that has to be aligned with 4 connectors on the back of the watch. Takes some attention to clip it in right and looks to me like an area that might develop trouble. I notice that Garmin makes a big deal out of telling you to clean those connections, which probably means they tend to get unclean very quickly and not work right. Would be great if there was just a simple mini-USB plug to go into the watch, like a camera uses, instead of that bulky clip. But, for now, the clip works fine for me and may never give any trouble, for all I know. Also, I have no idea how the watch will hold up over time.
For anyone who mostly needs just the basic information about their run or other activity and especially for anyone who has become frustrated with one of the touch-bezel models or with other Garmin watch operating systems, this watch could be just what you are looking for. BTW, there is also a Forerunner 110 that is very similar and $50 less but my understanding is that it only shows average pace, not current. That would not work for me.

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