Reliability of Garmin 620

I currently have a Garmin 610 and considering upgrading to a 620.  One of my min gripes about the 610 is its poor build quality.  I have had problems with the heart monitor and for the last few months have had to attach a clothes peg to hold the charger in place.  It seems that even this now longer works. So I am going to have to get a new watch. The watch is just under three years old.  I got the Garmin after a bad experience with the Nike watch so I know that it is not just Garmin that have reliability issues.

Question is have Garmin improved their quality control with the 620 or is it going to give me loads of problems just like the 610?  Has anyone been using a 620 for more than a year and if so is it issue free?

Comments

  • booktrunkbooktrunk ✭✭✭

    Cannot recharge the 620 on the go, so if you are using for over 7/8 hour runs not good so useless for ultras. 

    they have fixed a lot of bugs on it. some say that the gps is inaccurate but it seems fine to me.

    Build quality to me seems solid even though it is very light compared to 610.

    i had issues with wifi early on with mine, but after the last couple of firmware updates it's been perfect which my wifi. 

     

  • Also-ranAlso-ran ✭✭✭

    I Preferred my 610 to the 620 while on the run. The 620 lacks some basic features (data fields like average lap time)  that I'd expect to find on a simple stopwatch, while it produces endless geeky stats if that is your thing.

    WiFi / Bluetooth connection on the 620 is great when it works. My 610 was sent back once (strap issues). So far the 620 was replaced once (gps chip screwed up).  Heart rate spikes no better on either with the garmin HR straps. If HR data is important,  I personally would go over to Polar as they just seem to work day in, day out

  • booktrunkbooktrunk ✭✭✭
    620 is fully waterproof I believe the 610 was showerproof?



    Was in a bog Upto my thighs on Saturday dug myself out still wearing my 620 then washed it in a stream and just carried on recording image
  • Thanks for the replies.
  • Got one.  Brought it home.  Opened it up and won't charge.  Getting a refund at the weekend.  Garmins are useless.

     

    Does anyone know a competent GPS watch manufacturer? 

  • booktrunkbooktrunk ✭✭✭

    haha well that went well!!

    The TomTom watch doesn't need a heart monitor strap but don't know how reliable it's hrm is.

    Suunto do some decent watches. Ambit 2, but not sure if they are due a replacement out soonish?

     

  • Pete HoltPete Holt ✭✭✭

    just bought one off amazon for 300 bucks. excited all ready. image

  • booktrunk - interested in your comments as I am considering a 620 and the only thing that puts me off is the bad press around GPS accuracy.  Have you actually compared your data with real routes on maps?  Does it really hold true?

  • It's been fine for me, here's my garmin connect

     

  • Thanks Frogbmth - but looking at your data I can see definite offsets from the roads on most of your runs.  Not much I must admit - but definitely and notably worse than my Edge 200 and 610.

     

    See http://connect.garmin.com/profile/sdhoughton

     

  • booktrunkbooktrunk ✭✭✭

    I sold my 620 two weeks ago .... Why you ask?

    Because I want something that lasts longer.  It really annoyed the hell out of me that you could not charge it on the run like you could the 610.  You were almost forced into the 310xt or 910 or fenix2 as well as the Garmin 620.

    So I managed to sell my 620 and only pay £60 more to get a Fenix2

    Early on I was a bit annoyed about the 620 accuracy but as the updates came through it did seem to get better, and the last few months once i'd got the knack of wifi on it, I was loving it, but, the fact I couldn't charge it on the go really pissed me off.

    By that I mean, if you charge it, it reset the GPS so you cannot continue with a run and charge it and keep the stats.  So as soon as you plug it in, it saves your current run, and resets to 0, so i tried charging it on a small run near home and go lots of few second runs, but nothing meaningful.

    The watch itself I was happy with apart from that.  Are the new units as accurate as the old ones, i'm really not sure, they are consistent which is all that really matters I find.  Also when I did a marathon with it.  It said 42.45 and i messed about and forgot to stop it for at least 80-100m once i'd crossed the line at the end so that seemed good enough to me.

     

  • ShazmoShazmo ✭✭✭

    I'm on my third FR620 - the first two had to be returned within weeks as they were saying 'fully charged' but died within minutes of wearing them image

  • I'm fairly new to running and recently bought a Garmin forerunner - cheap and cheerful and at the price certainly works for me as a beginner.  I have noticed that my 5k Parkruns don't measure up to 5k though on the Garmin, I've also recently done a couple of 10k's with my local club and they seem to come up short too.  Like I say, I'm happy with what the watch does for me, but a little frustrated when I upload to garmin connect and can't use my last blistering Parkrun 5k as my PB 5k on the website....

  • You can manually choose a run that registers just under to be your pb for that distance. Not sure if you need to edit the distance field first or not, but I've definitely done it.
  • Thanks CJ, yes that works just done that now image - still curious as to why my garmin isn't claibrating the distance correctly though ...

  • Because GPS measures position, not distance, it only calculates distance based on the measured positions.  Given that there's an error in every position measurement there'll be errors in distance too.  GPS watches try and remove those errors by using 'data smoothing' which essentially assumes that you're moving in a straight line but also has the effect of cutting corners every time you change direction. So they read short quite a lot of the time, especially where you're running multiple laps, like a lot of parkruns.

  • They probably would read short if we all followed the shortest possible route for the entire course - as the official distance measurer would have done.  But we don't so in my experience the GPS watch tends to measure a greater distance than the actual race.

    I placed the order today (Amazon) for my Garmin 620.  I look forward to trying it out and if the GPS accuracy is poor (ie offsets from the real positions etc) then it will go back!

Sign In or Register to comment.