Anyone have, or care to comment on, the new Garmin training GPS/heart rate monitors? I have been looking at them for awhile but would like to hear some feedback.

Bike or Run? I have the Edge 705 for cycling and love it. That being said, I get lost on my own block so its very helpful. You can download courses from the internet or upload courses you have ridden as well as upload time, distance, min/max/avg heart rate, elevation gain, etc. I think the training data capture functions consistantly and is very helpful but I like the mapping function even more. Its nice to be able to go out and just ride anywhere and know you can find your way home. Keep in mind you have to buy an extra map card if you want street detail and that adds about a $100 to the price.

I bought the Forerunner 405 for my wife and her experience has not been as good. She finds it a bit bulky but her biggest problem is with the interface. It is not particularly complex to operate but the interface is touchy and on every 4th or 5th run something isn't on that she thought was started and as such there is no training data captured.

Hope that helps a little.

Rich

I have the 405 as well. Its worked really well for me, but the battery life is only about 5 hours. Fine if your racing and training are within that time _frame_, not so good if you plan on going long.

Ideally, I would like to use it for all around triathlon training (bike and run). It would be nice for open water swims as well, but that really isn't as important.

I've noticed that the bike-mount garmins have nice little maps that you can upload/download. Not sure if you can do that with the watch ones.