Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor

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Category: GPS Navigator

Published on Monday, 25 April 2011 07:28

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The Garmin Forerunner 305's design is a radical departure from Garmin's previous generation of wrist mounted GPS devices, which reached a pinnacle with the Garmin Forerunner 301. While the Garmin Forerunner 301 delivered accurate heart rate monitoring, good performance tracking, and decent GPS reception, it didn't quite deliver in the design department. The form factor was bulky and wearing it wasn't much different than duct taping a full-sized GPS device to your wrist.

Not so with the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver. Garmin's engineers obviously burned the midnight oil and have come up with a waterproof design that, while certainly not as small as a sports watch, feels just as comfortable. The curved casing allows the unit's antenna to face the sky when you're running, while the widescreen display is perfectly positioned for viewing when you need it. And the display certainly deserves a few kudos. While it's smaller than the display found on previous Forerunners, its resolution is far higher, offering incredible clarity and crispness.

Garmin has smartly given the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver a simple button layout and the buttons have a nice tactile feel with good pressure response. The right side houses the menu selection and enter buttons, while the left houses a power/backlight button and a mode button. This simple and elegant solution is a big improvement over the sometimes confusing button functionality of previous Forerunners.

The underside of the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver is pretty nondescript, except for a row of contacts that interface with the included charging and data cradle. The cradle is small and unobtrusive and its single mini-USB port connects to either an included AC adapter, or a USB cable that connects to your PC. In addition to data transfer with the USB cable, you can also charge the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver's embedded lithium-ion battery via a powered USB connection from your computer.

GPS Performance
The big news about the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver is that it features an integrated, high-sensitivity SiRFstar III GPS receiver. What does this mean? It means that the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver's ability to both track, and maintain a lock on, your position is better than anything before it. After an intial battery charge, the tester had the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver on his wrist and was tracking speed and distance with GPS satellites within 3 minutes. The next time we used the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver, satellite acquisition was nearly instantaneous. A run through dense trees didn't faze the unit either; tracking remained true and steady. Performance on a bike was equally impressive. Whatever witchcraft has been cooked up by the designers of the SiRF technology, we like it!

Training Functions
The Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver is first and foremost a training tool, and its ability to organize a ton of data types into a user experience that is intuitive and simple is no small feat. Whiz-bang technology aside, if you can't use it and make it a natural part of your exercise routine, it's worthless. When it comes to these factors -- and here's the take home message on the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver -- this device is successful where many other devices fail.

The heart and soul of the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver can be found on the data screens, which give you real-time information about all aspects of your workout. In fact, the Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver can display a dizzying array of data, such as calories burned, distance, elevation, grade, and heading, as well as multiple lap and pace modes. The Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver adds the ability to track heartrate, lap heartrate, average heartrate, and heartrate zones via the included coded heartrate chest strap. With the purchase of a separate wireless cadence and speed meter, you can also track bike performance data.

Find out more details about Garmin Forerunner GPS Receiver.

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