So true.

Whichever company you go with, make sure they have equally as good replacement policies.
Either you are terribly unlucky or very hard on gadgets.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/11/winter-gadget-recommendations.html


There is not much legit competition to Garmin, unfortunately. Suunto or Polar's latest offerings maybe? I don't think you will find better reviews/analysis than DC Rainmaker's blog though...

Curious, was it the same problem?

Similar experiences as the OP with garmin 210, 610 and 620.
Garmin's just such a household name in this type of thing that it's hard to initially break away from them.

Switched to Suunto earlier this year and never going back.
For a straight up running watch, the Ambit 2R has been great for me. Customizable display, accurate gps that locks on instantly (even in a high-rise riddled area), great battery life and pairs with all your ANT+ accessories. And most importantly for me after all those garmin lemons, just a 100% drama free device that gets the job done.

There were a couple problems. The altimeter went out on 5 of them so it would show something like 65k of climbing for a 5 mile run in Miami. The run pace was absolutely horrible. In open areas I could look once and see I was running at a 9 min per mile a couple seconds later a 7:00 mile the seconds later 11 min miles all on a steady endurance run. The swim function was screwed up from the beginning with just plain bad software. They fixed that but it took a season for GARMIN to realize it was it needed to be fixed.

Interesting. Yes there was a design flaw where the port would get dirty and cause the altimeter to be off. Had the same problem, they should of announced the cleaning solution. Dumb of them. Had the 910 from first order and never had one software issue with the swim, ever, bummer you did............

There were a couple problems. The altimeter went out on 5 of them so it would show something like 65k of climbing for a 5 mile run in Miami. The run pace was absolutely horrible. In open areas I could look once and see I was running at a 9 min per mile a couple seconds later a 7:00 mile the seconds later 11 min miles all on a steady endurance run. The swim function was screwed up from the beginning with just plain bad software. They fixed that but it took a season for GARMIN to realize it was it needed to be fixed.


So, you get a bleeding edge piece of hardware and shocked there were some issues to fix the first season. And now you are excited about a product that is a few years behind so it got to learn a few things from their competition. I personally had love my garmin 910, and both of my garmin edge computers. I did have the altimeter issue and I called Garmin. They shipped me a replacement the same day. I was 1 year out of warranty and they still fully covered it. The customer service rocks. Yes there can be some design flaws but all products have design flaws. I really wished my altimeter would have died a month or so later than it did because they would have given me a discount on the 920 during the exchange process.

i've had an edge 500 on my bike for a while and wanted a run/swim/tri watch, but hesitated to get another garmin because of reading about too much stuff like this. did some research and got a suunto ambit2 (the sapphire version) in august. it's been awesome so far. dc rainmaker's review is much more in depth, but basically, it works very well and is easy to use. navigation is great, and you can do it while recording data. swimming mode works very well in my experience, as long as you just press start and then leave it alone. it finds GPS signal almost instantly, which is a nice change from garmin. you can only download data from the watch through moveslink/movescount, but then you can export in whatever format you want, including tpx files for training peaks.


i haven't had any problems with my edge, either, and i still use that on the bike, but i'd definitely suggest taking a look at suunto for a run/multisport watch.

Sorry to hear of your longstanding Garmin troubles. I have an FR 305 that has been perfect since day 1. I also have a Polar S720i (yep, old) - also perfect and still working fine. One difference between these dinosaurs and new models? I can't update the firmware on mine. So they need to be robustly functional out of the box - and they have proven to be so. Now, however, I think that there is a real temptation to ship devices that are incomplete from a firmware POV since they can be field upgraded. Now, the degree to which functional upgrades happen and happen as expected is a big question mark. I was really ready for a new multisport watch this summer. Love Polar build quality and customer service. You would think that the V800 had may name on it. But the whole - trust us, all the features we've promised will get to you soon - incomplete at shipping idea was a turn off. Someday, the battery life of my FR305 will be less than my Olympic distance races (!) and I'll either need to do some FR305 battery surgery or buy something else. Until then, it's going to take some amazing combination of confident performance and cool features for me to part with $400-500 for a new multisport watch.

Run only watch? Timex Run Trainer 2.0 is pretty reliable, I've had one for about a year without issue. A few people said to look to Suunto and Polar but since you mentioned since you mentioned WKO and TrainingPeaks the Suunto isn't currently supported and Polar is a bit of a chore to work with.

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Rodney
TrainingPeaks | Altra Running | RAD Roller
http://www.goinglong.ca

Garmin is one of those company's that know their quality is so shitty that they need an awesome customer service center just to keep customer. If they ever have a hiccup with their customer service they are doomed.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

 
So, you get a bleeding edge piece of hardware and shocked there were some issues to fix the first season. And now you are excited about a product that is a few years behind so it got to learn a few things from their competition. I personally had love my garmin 910, and both of my garmin edge computers. I did have the altimeter issue and I called Garmin. They shipped me a replacement the same day. I was 1 year out of warranty and they still fully covered it. The customer service rocks. Yes there can be some design flaws but all products have design flaws. I really wished my altimeter would have died a month or so later than it did because they would have given me a discount on the 920 during the exchange process. [/quote]
I can't speak for everybody but when I spend this much money on something I do expect that it works properly and as advertised. I didn't buy a device to constantly be sending it back and being without. As said, their customer service is good, very good and may even set the standard however their quality control has quite a bit of room for improvement. It is hard for me to believe that they don't know the problems exist when they start selling them and it's much easier for me to believe that some corp bean counter said to ship them, take the sales and fix things as they come up.

There is enough people over YEARS with MANY products of theirs that proves your comment is b.s

FTFY

+1 on Suunto.

The Ambit line is well designed & constructed—all in Finland—and the software is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend them.

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#cureMS

Kenny, what reason would I have to bs somebody? For you though, here is a screen shot of my garmin connect upload screen with all seven 910xt s

I do believe you. I replied to TheGuptster who said
"Garmin is one of those company's that know their quality is so shitty that they need an awesome customer service center just to keep customer."

as my post stated, their ratio of complaints to satisfied customers with all their products over the years makes that statement b.s.
Are you saying because you have a bad unit(s) that means the quality of all their products is shitty? .........out of hundreds of thousands, and if all their products, millions?

The 910 had an issue with needing cleaning off the port that screwed up the altimeter. It was/is a design flaw. Worse, for whatever reason the did not give the solution of cleaning and just replaced units. But with all the products Garmin sells, I would not say the quality of all their products is shitty. From years in retail, its just not the case. For example, the 305 is bombproof. I still have one I bought in 06 I think

I have to agree. We had FR305s that gave us no hassle then upgraded to FR310XTs. Couple of hiccups with not holding date when switched off but swapped out with no hassle, then a couple of years trouble free. Updated to the 910XT and have had no issues with them for 2.5 years until very recently, the barometer played up on one of them. Currently working through that with cleaning the port and a possible exchange with Garmin (because we want to sell the 910s). Now have two 920s on order...

I do read the forums, but then that is where people go to complain, very rarely to praise. And there are not really many people in there. It is indeed very unrealistic to translate the complaints in forums and extrapolate that to conclude that anything Garmin sucks.

But then that's what some people do...

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

Garmin certainly isn't discounting the price because it is a "bleeding edge" piece of hardware. The price reflects a finely finished product that should work and users expect it to. Unfortunately they are a bit notorious for having issues with first releases.

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Pete Githens
Reading, PA

+1
Every Garmin Product I have owned has been a fail in terms of quality

Funny that no one is bashing Polar (which I also think is great), you think they would with the 28 pages on the V800 thread. They also have not tried to get as many features as Garmin

That's to be expected. Garmin is the huge giant in terms of market share. That has 2 implications:

• 90% of the device failures will be reported and 90% of the happy users will stay silent. There are so many more Garmin users, that the mass of complaints will always have greater volume, independent of actual failure rate. Plus, people are unlikely to want to be the first persons to complain...something of a 'king's invisible clothes' situation.
• If a Garmin goes bad, then it is WAY WORSE. They are the big stalwart who is supposed to sit on a piece of hardware for 9 years, wear testing it in secret for millions of hours covering every possible usage and potential failure scenario. If a Polar goes bad, well...technology is tricky. They are the plucky underdog who should be excused for a few hiccups.

Because of these, scanning through forums cannot ever give an accurate picture of the reliability of either device. It would be much better if Amazon (or any other large retailer) waits 6 months or a year before sending out a satisfaction questionnaire. If they bribe people with a gift card for completing it, that may paint an accurate picture of long term reliability.

nice post.......as I have stated I have been happy with both over the past, i do not know how many years. Funny i think with training log support, I liked what came with my 625 best, must have been ten years ago now.

Exactly. For the record, I've been very happy with my Garmin 310XT. It is what the 305 wanted to be when it grew up. I'm a bit less happy with Garmin's requirement to use a different piece of software or different website to update every new device that comes out . . but it is what it is.

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Pete Githens
Reading, PA

Begin rant...Sorry to rehash an old thread but have always had good experience with them replacing my 910 XT due to the elevation issues but when I called today, to see what they could do now that my device doesn't vibrate or tell distance, they said that because I have had the device for over 3 months (5 months) I would have to pay $100 to get another refurbished one. I get that they can't just give devices out but there are known issues with the 910 so they should replace them. End rant.

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Twitter - Instagram

Just adding my 2 cents. I've had a garmin 405 and 310xt. No issues with either. Some people have bad luck and others probably use more features than I do an notice flaws. My garmins have always worked well.

I am a dude and I am very happy with my BIA sport watch. It doesn't do cadence or power, but I have a bike computer for that. The BIA has live tracking, and after every workout it automatically uploads to strava and training peaks... even before you finish stretching.

The watch itself never needs charging (but there is no backlight) and the GPS/GSM stick battery lasts 17 hours.

It is fairly new so they are making upgrades to it regularly, but I think it is well worth the price and a great replacement to my Garmin.

When my Fenix2 pooed itself it took Garmin over a week to respond to my email to support, and even then that was after going back to them. Then I had to send it away and I got an email saying they'd received it and would update me in 72 hours... a week later nothing so I call them to be told that they are shipping a replacement but there is no stock so it will come from the next shipment to NZ which might be the following week, but I'd get an update. I didn't get an update, but about a week later I received a refurbished watch and all my old paraphernalia back.

The refurbished unit works now, but from when the unit failed to when I got a replacement was over a calendar month which isn't really good enough for something of that price. I went out and bought a TomTom Cardio Runner in the meantime and am happy with that, only downfall is the phone sync isn't working with Android 5.x.. sigh

How about a 310?

Other than garmin, the magellan switch up always seemed like a pretty well featured product at a good price point.

We should start a positive, I love my garmin....thread

If you are a total data geek and can live with quality issues then go with Garmin. They are the cutting edge when it comes to features. However, I find most of these new features "too much" for me. I'm an Age Grouper that wants to improve but I also have a life outside triathlon. The data overload is not enjoyable as part of my training. I would rather have a quality product with depth of data. However data-wise all I need is: GPS, swim metrics, bike, foot, and powr pod compatibility (Ant +, not ready to go Bluetooth exclusively), recovery metrics, heart rate, Vo2Max, recovery estimates. The caveat is that all of this needs to be displayed in a good looking watch that I can use as an everyday watch. Oh, and it has to be somewhat affordable. I will not pay $500 for a watch. I just can't bring myself to doing that yet. This is what I was hoping the Polar V800 would be since they are quality watches and they look beatiful for every-day use. However, I went with the SUUNTO Ambit 2S.

Best decision I ever made on a watch. It looks good (not as good as the v800 but good enough) and has all the data I need. It can even export to Strava, which I love. The only feature I wish it had was vibrating alarms but I can live without that. Since this is also the older Ambit model (the latest is the 3) you can find it for about $250 anywhere. Best bang for the buck out there right now for a quality-built, data-rich watch.

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http://dontletitdefeatyou.blogspot.com

Suunto and trainingpeaks are compatible on 3.3.15
Information was published today.

Hope this helps for any triathlete to also consider suunto when there is no need to stop using trainingpeaks.


Janne Kallio, from suunto

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Janne, I've tried to contact you in several ways with no luck...any hope that Suunto will open usage of the API up again any time soon? Nobody I know has been able to get API keys for over a year now.

Hi fisherman

Sorry for the communication hicups.

We are currently not openly providing the API. The issue is that when looking the number of users woth current partner service range and compare the effort needed to provide developpers support, documentation, communicate about ongoing changes etc. The open api is challenging.

Today we can open API for services that are able to offer considerable value for our product users. Also the services that are attracting lot of users, can get the APi access. So global services/apps with unique value that will have a food case..

These things are changing over time, so as our capabilities are growing/changing this might change over time.

Janne

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Update: Sunnto and TrainingPeaks will work together as part of an update coming on March 3rd :)

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Rodney
TrainingPeaks | Altra Running | RAD Roller
http://www.goinglong.ca

Is there a way to turn off GPS on an AMBIT 2 for riding the bike on trainer rides so that uploads to strava will be recognized as a bike activity similar to a Garmin ?

edit. awesome news on trainingpeaks

Personally not tested that with version waiting for launch.

But, yes you can have a mode without gps and use it indoor ride (and track heartrate, power, cadence). The data goes automatically to TP then when data is synched.


Janne.

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you sold me on these comments and I also read DCRain's review on it so I just picked one up on amazon. $255. I couldn't bring myself to pay $500 for the new Fenix 3 and this Suunto model seems to cover most of the features I'll use and I can use as everyday watch. Thanks.

Suunto watches are, in my opinion, vastly superior to Garmin ones in build quality, stability, and performance. There are a few features the 920XT and Fenix 2 and 3 offer that the Ambit does not, but they aren't deal breaks, and nothing that comes close to accounting for the price difference. The only thing I miss is the ability to load workouts on the watch and get notifications, that was a cool Garmin thing. Not $300 cool, though.

I also find the GPS acquisition and quality to be incomparably better. Many times my old Garmin had me tracking as running through open water in straight lines at 30mph when I was actually jogging on the shoreline, and that's IF it actually acquired the satellite within the first 5 minutes of my run. Never happens on the Ambit. Garmin products made me angry, but I haven't had that experience with Suunto. Except for the time I forgot to unpause a run and didn't track 6 miles of it, but that's on me.

Agree, really like the Suunto! Especially for the run.

Fisherman..
Workouts.. Well, just wait for a bit :) (lets what is announched on next tuesday :) ).

Janne

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Fish---do I need to do any type of firmware update or something on my Suunto when I receive it or will it be ready to go when I receive it? . I get it Saturday so I'm looking forward to playing with it all weekend.

Works out of the box. Mine even came half charged.

Thanks Fish--btw my sister-in-law is the Nebraska rep for triple threat triathlon. She really enjoys it. Thanks again for your help.

does anyone have a link to fitness/athletic watch market share data?

I've been fairly happy with my Fenix 2. I think it looks better than any of the alternatives, for whatever that's worth.

Although I can see torque effectiveness and pedaling smoothness from a Rotor Power meter in real time, those metrics never show up in the FIT files. Garmin support says it's not unique to Fenix 2, and they don't have a time estimate for when they're going to fix the issue... Couple that with the issues people have had with Fenix 3 not even being able to connect to power meters and you get a feeling they have a habit of shipping "pre-alpha" quality software / firmware.

I think as a community we tolerate too much, buying their next model when the previous one never actually fulfilled its promises.

What are the advantages of Strava over Garmin connect for data analysis?

I have the Suunto Ambit 2s, pretty good so far.
Fairly user friendly, accurate on the bike, run and indoor pool swims.
I'm really looking forward to Spring, will get a chance to do some open water swimming, and that is the reason I got the thing i n the 1st place
I'd recommend it

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res, non verba

My Ambit2s seems to be working pretty well for me although Ive only done 2 "moves" with it so more testing to come. Ive also managed to put 2 small cracks in the screen in the first week of ownership by banging the watch on a doorknob in my house (I have gorilla arms) fk!