On six total runs, the heart rate monitor only worked twice. Heart rate monitoring was working up to the point I would start sweating…usually mile 2-3, at which point it would stop working. Sometimes it would come back when I repositioned/wiped the sweat away, but it usually didn’t. I really wanted this watch to work. The idea of not having to wear a chest HR strap is great, but this watch isn’t the answer. Perhaps a firmware/software update will be released to fix the HR problems, but until then, avoid this watch.

I contacted TomTom’s support page and got no response after two days. A watch that doesn’t work as advertised and a lack of support equals me returning this watch and going with another proven brand. Let me know when you work out the bugs because I really want this to work.

(And TomTom, don’t tell me it’s my fault. I’ve tried the inside of my wrist, the outside of my wrist (on both arms), over-tightening, under-tightening, multiple-repositioning of the watch and it still doesn’t work for an entire run).

In short…

The Pros:
Quick GPS acquisition time. I set it up, and while its thinking throw my earbuds on and start my podcast of choice. Its usually done by then, but if not, its done by the time my running belt is secured.
Heart rate data is consistent and relatively accurate. I have tested it to my own fingers to my neck. So high tech.
All the set ups you can do for intervals, laps, metrics, heartrate zones, etc etc etc are great and work well.
Seriously, its a great gps watch.

The Meh:
The watch is damn huge. My tiny wrists are dwarfed by its immensity. Its not uncomfortable though.

The Cons:
The tomtom "mysports" web application is crap. Between not being able to log in and it not always uploading correctly to strava…its an irritating situation. I often get the "your info doesn’t match our info" error, which prompts me to do a password reset, which also errors out. I then have to reset my watch, which miraculously fixes the entire problem. Of course, I lose all my training set ups and my connection to strava. Also, the mysports site is set up to link with mapmyrun, which is great, but I hate mapmyrun, so when I want to access my heart rate data, I need the mysports site, which isn’t always functioning correctly.

If they would fix the website, I’d 5 star this thing. *shakes fist*

So far no problems of any kind.

Update July 24, 2014

After a full 2 months of daily use, the watch is really useful. I’m sure some people may lack some interactions with their favorite software, but for my daily 1-2 hour run and 1-2 hour bikeride, is perfect.