Garmin Forerunner 50

DazTheSlug
Reviewed: 02 June 2010

Nearly a Great Bit Of Kit!

Price - I bought the watch only from USA off eBay for £12 inc s/h!
Look/Feel - Stylish design - nice size - good build quality - nice large/clear display
100 Lap Memory

Eats Batteries
Battery Ludicrously Difficult To Replace
Stop/Start Button easy to press by accident

re Battery Life: I don't have the hrm/footpod/antstick and it flatted a new battery in 4 months - it was indicating "Battery Low" after 3 months, so at that point you're loathe to go out with it for an important sesh in case it packs up half way round.

re Battery Replacement: think it was designed as a bet to see what the longest possible time was that could be taken to replace a battery - I actually managed it in 25 minutes last night, but I've had plenty of practice!

re Stop/Start Button: positioned in middle of front edge, and only light touch required to trigger it. If you're wearing a long-sleeved top and/or gloves, it's VERY easy to accidentally stop/restart/restop... etc...etc... which screws up all your splits/display - again, if you wanted to design a worse Stop/Start button you'd be hard pushed.

Overall: I bought it mainly cos it was the cheapest watch i could find with such a large Lap Memory, which is my main concern.
It looks/feels great, and when it's working smoothly it's perfect for my needs.
The Battery Life and the Stop/Start Button are VERY frustrating - I'm learning ways to cope cos I'm lumbered, but wouldn't recommend it to anybody else.

martingale
Reviewed: 04 November 2009

UNRELIABLE

Price
Ease of use

The battery life was awful. First time I bought the watch and went to a watchmaker to get the battery changed, the watch literally died. Nothing could be done to make it work again. So I bought another watch and after 6 months, when the LoBatt message irritated me enough, I went to a different watchmaker to get the battery changed...and the second watch died and nothing I did made it work again. I am not buying a third watch.

It's a good entry level running watch but unreliable and with an awful battery life.

Darren Dempsey
Reviewed: 09 September 2009

INCREDIBLEY ANNOYING

Looks good

Buttons randomly pressed during exersize, rendering watch useless.

This became unusuable, I had it all setup at the start of a run or cycle, but by the end the time would've been changed, clock stopped. Useless.

Chris BK
Reviewed: 15 July 2009

SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE

Easy to use, works with my Mac, HRM & footpod work well, records all I need.

Graph on laptop can be hard to read and user can't set the increments on the axis.

I bought this after a week of running, so very green. It helped me a great deal and stopped me over exerting myself. I use it every run and it has built up a great record over the last 7 weeks. It's currently a bargain on Amazon at £35, but the foot pod is an extra (hefty) £45. I bought it as an extra as I want to know how far I have run, with pace and speed - extremely useful. I would like to be able to program it, but can live without this feature. A GPS would be gadget heaven, though unnecessary!

MaggieS
Reviewed: 27 June 2009

GOOD VALUE ENTRY LEVEL HRM

Large display numbers, easy to upload data, has a good chunky feel!

Buttons a bit annoying, took too long to figure out how long to depress for different options. OK once all set up.

Good price, particularly as the replacement FR60 model costs well over one hundred pounds.
Excelent for HRM base training etc.