Garmin Gets Its Sports Groove On: The Forerunner Line

Posted by Jonathan in EQUIPMENT on 04-19-10    No Comments

Looks like the iPhone is having a positive effect on sports watches: Long-time GPS maker Garmin, feeling the pain of smart phones getting all navigational, is cranking off some sport watches.

And they actually don’t suck.

Earlier this month, Olathe, Kansas-based  Garmin International (now that’s a small town where getting lost is just not an excuse)  came to market with the Forerunner 110. A sport watch in a condom sort of thang which at first blush, could not be any more throwaway for GPS. The wrist-mounted unit comes with a positioning chip built in, some decent access and data technology branded as Garmin Connect, and some features like heart monitors and such. But with Suunto, Seiko and now Nike in the game, I personally was asleep before I finished the press release.

But …

The clipping sat on the desk and I finally got around to reporting on this thing and sure enough, Garmin is becoming a GPS-enabled training device sleeper. Besides being not bad looking, its line of wrist-mounted computers has  some nice add-ons. Most important is the claimed 8 hours of battery life! EIGHT! Being the uber-nerd I am, I have been messing with GPS-enabled wrist computers for about a decade, and I can tell you as Dick Tracy as they all seem, almost all GPS watches share one sorry little secret: crap battery life. The idea that I could actually get a full day out of this sucker, well that’s a game changer.

What is even more interesting is Nike, Suunto and Seiko are, for sure, feeling this pressure. And you can expect them to fight back with slick nav watches of their own. So this summer, I plan to let my geek flag fly and start wearing more wrist-mounted nav.

It’s good to be a geek.

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