The Garmin 610 Touchscreen Still Rules at 2012
The Garmin 610 Forerunner is the best touchscreen watch for marathon runners at 2012. Until last year when new running watches showed on the markets they all seemed ‘more of the same’ – Timex, Polar and Nike all had the same features packed in different designs.. All until the Garmin Forerunner 610 Touch Screen arrived!
The new Garmin 610 rocked the sports watch niche with it’s new touch screen feature modes.
All the marathon runners got excited by this new running watch which had all the Garmin known features plus some new ones with the touch screen possibility on top. You can read some of the excitement as Aaron Chow writes about it at the GPS Watches Review:
Garmin Forerunner 610 amazed me with plenty of advanced features. Virtual partner feature lets you compete with a virtual companion in terms of distance, time and speed. Virtual racer allows you to compete with your previous best performances, performance of your friend or any other user. Garmin 610 calculates the effects of training on the basis of your profile, heart rate and difficulty of your activity. It lets you set alerts for heart rate, calories, distance and time, so that you can make the most out of your workouts. It guides you to reach your starting place, so you can enjoy the freedom of exploring new routes.
Auto lap is one of the important features I like in Forerunner 610. It marks a lap by distance or position automatically. Auto pause is another feature that stops timer automatically when you stop working out or reduce your speed. See source..
Garmin 610 – Touch Screen Running Watch
The touchscreen of the 610 Garmin got quite good reviews by many runners, as the touch display is easy to navigate with a tap of a finger or a sweep of a finger. You do not have to be too gentle with the 610 GPS Garmin touchscreen! When running all you need is a slight tap at the screen to switch between the modes.
In cold weather marathons runners wear disposable running clothes and gloves. The touch screen can be navigated through also while wearing running gloves! The watch is water resistant so it can stand rain and sweat though it is not recommended for swimming. Triathlon athletes need to get the advanced 910 fitness watch for their swimming needs.
Get it on Amazon: Garmin Forerunner 610 Touchscreen GPS Watch With Heart Rate Monitor
Racing Yourself With the 610 Forerunner
One of the most loved features of Garmin running watches is the Virtual Partner, which shows how well you are doing compared to a virtual runner inside the watch. If you set the ‘virtual pal’ to run at a pace of 8:50/mile the 610 Forerunner touchscreen will show you during your marathon training if you are ahead or falling behind the ‘virtual’ runner.
But that’s not all it even gets better, you can set inside your Garmin 610 Forerunner a Virtual Racer mode. This mode will show you how you are doing compared to yourself! The stats you will be seeing are your own stats from former running sessions. So you can set it to compete with your other day marathon training.
But it gets even more exciting!
The DC rainmaker shares the best part of the Garmin 610 touchscreen virtual features:
But it gets even better in that you can download any activity from Garmin Connect to the unit and race against that. For example – you want to head to the Boston Marathon and beat your friends exact time from last year? No problem, just download his workout from Garmin Connect onto your watch, and then attempt to best him as you virtually run ahead or (as it may be), behind him. Read more..
Sharing Garmin results can be a catchy training plan when you can race your friends who are running on other continents or have run other marathons.
More features you will find at the Garmin 610 Touchscreen Watch:
- A GPS locater, which will guide you back to your home or car (base location has to be set in advance), this might be helpful for those who run at isolated forests.
- Bright Back-light – The watch has a ‘stay-on’ mode which allows it to be lite during all the night run, so you can peek at the watch without the need to press anything to see how you are doing.
- Screen Lock – Just as you have on your iPhone, a nice little swoosh on the touchscreen to the left will unlock your watch.
- 4 Data Fields – You can choose your own data feeds you like to see while running, you can choose from the wide variety of information the watch gathers. The four levels display will show you how you are doing with each parameter.
Garmin Forerunner 610 Touchscreen GPS Watch With Heart Rate Monitor
No wonder it is currently ranked as one of the best running watches a marathon runner can have, and certainly it is the best touchscreen running watch for 2012!
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