Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201 in Sports & Outdoors
• Brand: Garmin
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 3.00 pounds

Customer Reviews

Exactly as other reviewers have said
I bought the Garmin Forerunner 50 with HR monitor having previously owned and used Polar HR products. I consider myself a serious competitive cyclist who races regularly and so I want to use the HR monitor as a tool for my training.

I purchase it at £29.99 and so at that price I think it was a bargain, but reading through other people's comments I would agree with all the different viewpoints on here!

The product is very simple and it's not too difficult to use - once you've read the manual it becomes fairly intuitive although I can see why people might be confused at first.

The HR monitor is accurate and reliable, although sometimes I find it is not so responsive at the start of a training session and I need to either wet the chest strap or get sweating in order for it to pick up a constant signal (moisture increases the effectiveness of the HR monitor#.

Like a few other comments on here, today I got home to find that the HR monitor had stopped recording for about 30 minutes out of a 3 hour ride. This is because - as others have mentioned - the start/stop button is positioned on the right-hand side of the watch and so when you are cycling and your wrists are bent, jacket/jersey creases and clothing can easily press the button. This is annoying to say the least and I'm not sure how to get around it - I've tried wearing the monitor on the outside of my clothing but I think the only solution is to wear it on my right-hand wrist.

The Garmin Training Centre software is a fun and useful way of analysing the HR data but I found it was a little awkward to set up and the USB Ant stick fails to automatically download my data - I have to manually click 'download data' on the software as the auto-sync fails each time #even though I have set it up correctly#.

If you want to share your data with others in the Garmin Connect online community, you can't do this from the Training Centre software which is a bit odd - instead you have to manually sync your watch with a different plugin within your internet browser, duplicating the workload.

Overall, it does exactly what it says on tin. If I had paid £60 for this I would have been fairly disappointed with the niggles I've mentioned but for the price you just have to work around them. Equivalent Polar HR monitors cost a lot more than this but hopefully Garmin will take these concerns into account in future designs.

Overall: good value for money - and everything that other people say is true. You get what you pay for, I guess.

Garmin Forerunner 50
When I read the initial reviews I expected to experience some RTFM issues (read the #@%$£^ manual), as they appeared to be quite negative as to the functionality and design of the watch.

In reality it took about 2 minutes to set-up, it came paired with the chest strap and required no more than 3 key presses to get to any function.

Downloading the training software was straightforward and on installation it paired with the watch immediately.

I did a 30m workout on the stairmaster and within 2 minutes I had a heart rate graph on screen.

A steal at £30. Enjoy!

Forerunner 50
I bought the FR 50 about 2 weeks ago and absolutely love it.I have returned to running after an absence of 8 years and was looking for a HRM to aid my training.At the time i didn't know there were such things as 'Footpods' available - if only they had been around 15 years ago !! Having seen an advert for the FR 405 i decided that i would look into it further. Once i read the reviews on this site i quickly changed my mind and plumped for the much more 'cost effective' FR 50. I bought the FR 50 & Footpod from Amazon (brilliant service) and HRM elsewhere. Having made sure i properly read the instructions i set out for a 6 miler in my local Country Park. I returned 40 mins later to realise my 6 miler was only just over 4 miles !! At this point i was thinking about sending the footpod sailing down the nearest river, surely there was some mistake. The following night i went to my local Track and ran 400 mtrs to calibrate it and it was spot on - the bloody thing !! I would recommend the FR 50 to any runners who are still guessing at their weekly mileage. Absolutely brilliant. Buy it. Its got everything a runner needs - and more.