With the Garmin Forerunner 410 sends another GPS sports watch for recreational athletes and professionals in the race. After all, in Germany there are about 17 million skiers and 2.5 million Nordic Walkers (GfK, 2004 figures), a GPS sports watch like the Forerunner 410 can be used to optimize their training.
Two other particularly suitable for recreational athletes Forerunner models we have reviewed in detail: the Forerunner 110 and Forerunner 210 . The Forerunner 410 stands out by his two colleagues, not only with more functionality, but also a special feature: When operating Garmin uses a combination of keys and touch ring rather than on pure click buttons.
Since the Touch Ring on the previous model Forerunner 405 still gave rise to criticism, it has the Garmin 410 revised. How effective the new technology, this review will show.
Garmin Forerunner 410: housing, service, menu
Like its sibling features 110 and 210, the 410 by a suitable for everyday elegance from. Compared to the Forerunner 210 is slightly larger in our review candidate (WxHxD: 4.8 x 7.1 x 1.6 cm and 4.5 x 6.9 x 1.4 cm), another difference is that the bracelet. Its design is less suitable for athletes with delicate wrists. However, Garmin has made provision: The kit includes two additional Velcro straps, which are suitable not only for slender arms, but also offer a comfortable fit. Before that there is a big hurdle to overcome. Replacement of the band is very easy and requires good nerves.
The Touch Ring allows different interactions: short or long tap with one finger, tap with two fingers or a caress to perform scrolling. In combination with the two keys for lap / reset / quit or start / stop / enter this game can be very confusing. But only at first, after a familiarization phase, it is fast in the past. However: If you like this operating concept or not is very subjective. Try it!
Very important are the questions : How is the touch ring reacts with moisture or sweaty after drinking a Power Bars sticky fingers? What is the use of thin gloves?
Under ideal conditions (= dry finger touch or ring), the operation works almost 1A! In pouring rain, the touch ring also makes no funny business. Only with constant bombardment from the tap, there are sometimes dropouts - while exercising, such conditions are unlikely. For training in the winter - with a thin fleece gloves - there are limitations.Complex maneuvers in the menus you should avoid using it, the change between the training pages on the other hand works very well. As an aid can be "auto scroll" - an automatic scrolling of pages - Enable.
To set the Forerunner 410 offers many options. This includes a user profile (gender, birth weight, height, resting heart rate, maximum heart rate), various system settings, alarm function, and - most importantly - configuration of pages or data fields . Of the four possible sites (Practice 1, 2, 3, and heart rate) can all be down to "Practice 1" clear, for each page is a choice between one, two or three data fields. The fields are customizable to choose from several options (pulse-graphics, sunrise, GPS Accuracy, GPS altitude, cadence, ...). Note that data fields are on display from quite small. So: less is more!
Training-related functions are abound:
· Auto Pause : The stopwatch is below a specified speed or at rest stops. Useful for routes with many traffic lights.
· Auto Lap : Automatically save the training data for a specific section for example, all 1,000 m while training at the stadium.
· Virtual Partner : Practical function to motivate (! sometimes discouraging) to set a certain pace is displayed on the display how much ahead or behind to the virtual opponent is. When training with stretching of the Virtual Partner is also used (see below for navigation), with his help, the runner can try to improve his running times on routes already ("Can I improve on my best time on the training ride?")
· Sports Mode : This lets you choose between running and cycling. Has implications for certain training settings, such as changing from running to cycling unit automatically changes the speed of pace to speed.On the transfer of activities to the PC, it also has influence as the training are identified according to activity.
