Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4416 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Garmin
• Model: 010-00658-11
• Released on: 2008-03-15
• Dimensions: 4.06" h x 2.05" w x .75" l, .24 pounds
• Display size: 1.5

Manufacturer's Description

The Forerunner 405 is a sleek sportswatch that tracks your time, distance, and pace then wirelessly sends the data to your PC for later analysis. With a high-sensitivity GPS receiver and HotFix™ satellite prediction, the Forerunner 405 locates your position simply, quickly and precisely and maintains its GPS location even in heavy cover and near tall buildings and trees.

Loaded with serious training features, the Forerunner 405 continuously records your time, distance, pace, and calories burned. Each workout is stored in large internal memory (1000 laps) so you can review and analyse the data to see how you've improved. And advanced training features will challenge you to step up your pace - race against Forerunner's Virtual Partner® to improve your times, or set up interval workouts without having to circle the track. You can even download recorded courses to compete against previous workouts. To use the watch, simply tap the touch bezel to change screens without fumbling for a button.

With Forerunner 405, you can share your locations, advanced workouts and courses wirelessly with other Forerunner 405 users. Send your favourite workout to your friends to try, or compete against someone else's recorded course. Sharing data is easy: just select "transfer" to send your information to a nearby device.

Once you've logged the miles, innovative ANT+™ wireless technology automatically transfers data to your computer when Forerunner is in range. No cables, no hookups. The data's just there, ready for you to analyze, categorize and share through our online community, Garmin Connect at http://connect.garmin.com. You can even plan workouts on your computer and then send them to your Forerunner.

Take your training inside with the versatile Forerunner 405 and optional wireless accessories. Pair it with an optional foot pod to track your pace, distance and running cadence indoors when GPS signals are unavailable. The wireless foot pod clips onto your laces for easy removal and automatically turns on when you start moving. Or pair your Forerunner with an optional speed/cadence bike sensor to track the speed and distance of your cycling workouts.

Customer Reviews

405 Forerunner - some very good things and some bad
this sportwatch / GPS isn't perfect and depending on what you value, you'll either love it or hate it (as confirmed by the many reviews on the 405 and 305 and the comparisons between the two). I'll list some criteria of mine and rate this watch accordingly. (Note: I've had it for a week now, and used it several times, plus I have owned other Garmin handheld GPS devices in the past).

* Reliable GPS: my biggest complaint with prior GPS devices was that they lost the satelites under the trees which made their distance measurements fairly useless (as I run in a forest). This watch is amazing. it grabs onto the signal and holds it fast. Really cool!

* wearable sport watch: unlike the 305 which is a bit big and heavy for my tastes, this is really a wearable watch. Obviously this is vastly superior to the handheld gps devices (but of course no map either).

* Utility for running: when I run, I primarily care about the time (or lap time) and how far I have gone. Both of these pieces of information are visible on the training screen (but it is important to push both the buttons to lock the bezel so that odd things don't occur during the run). So for my main priorities, this watch is really excellent.

* Features: this is a full featured watch with all kinds of extras such as a virtual training partner to pace yourself against, etc. More than I will use, but it's pretty loaded.

* pc software: conceptually there are really cool pc software programs (like sporttracks freeware from zonefive software and the less good software that garmin distributes) which should make it fun to analyze all the data (including seeing your tracks in google earth). why I say conceptually should become clear in my next bullet.

now for the less good stuff:

* Ease of installation: Although getting the watch up and running was fairly easy, I still haven't gotten the thing to talk to the ANT PC USB stick nor have I gotten it to talk to the heart monitor! Even though the watch says it has pairing enabled, and teh PC says the ANT is searching for a watch. From googling around, apparently this problem can be solved, but at least based on what I read, no one has any good theories as to waht the problem is, or how to reliably address. Suffice it to say that many people, including me, found that the bluetooth wireless communication simply doesn't work well out of the box. Quite frustrating. I'm a computer scientist by training and have some experience with electronic devices...yet so far, to no avail.

* usability: although the bezel is a cool idea (ipod like), the instantiation of this idea isn't great. the bezel is way sensitive and the menu structure isn't intuitive. One frequently ends up in places one doesn't want to be. With some time, experimentation, and learning, it is usable...however these are not the hallmarks of an intuitive user interface design. I'm really glad they have the lock bezel feature.

OK, I'm probably over amazon's recommended word count, so I'll stop. bottomline, I like the watch, glad I bought it, and it serves my primary objectives well, but in many ways I consider it a "version 1" and so you have to be a patient tech friendly person to rate it the way I did.

A very good watch
I have just got my Forerunner today and have given it a good go. This is my first GPS watch and I think its amazing. I don't like the heart rate monitors which I have had with other watches so I bought my 405 without it. I have found the watch very easy to use and it connects quickly to my computer. It also charges very quickly to. When I uploaded the data and looked at the google earth map it did show a slight error. It showed that I was running in a hedge and in the middle of the road at points but I was actually running on the path a couple of feet away. I have checked the route and it is pretty much the same distance, so this really doesn't make much difference. I found it accurate and worth buying. However I have read reviews on the watch being poor compared to the cheaper 305 but I haven't tried the 305.
Also I have not had problems with the touch bezel but make sure you wipe your hand of sweat if you want to mess with it on the fly.
Hope this review helps you.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
I upgraded from a 205 which had an excellent user interface, good battery life, rich set of features and was very easy to use. My main reason for upgrading is that I wanted a heart rate monitor built in and liked the idea of a smaller unit with better GPS receiver. On balance I made an expensive mistake and wish I'd just bought a cheap HRM to go with my 205. While the addition of the HRM is nice and the device is smaller, everything else about it is worse than before. The battery runs flat about twice as fast as before (you can't switch the unit off - so it continually drains). The user interface (bevel) is appalling - it's difficult to use when standing still, very difficult to use when running and almost impossible to use once you get sweaty hands. The features are poor (less of them and less options) compared to the 205, far less intuitive driven menus and clumbsy in operation. It doesn't connect to MapSource (unlike the 205) because the USB link is purely for charging - and don't get me started on that useless ANT USB device - very little navigation software recognises it. I work in the software industry as a developer and I would be too embarrassed to put out something as bad as this to my customers. If you've already got a 205/305 please please please keep it and don't upgrade just yet. This product has a lot of maturing to do to get anywhere near acceptable. If you are looking to buy your first GPS, and you don't know any better, this product might impress you a little more than it did me, but I would suggest for now that you buy an older 205/305 which you can get for a steal.