My first Garmin GPS sports watch was a Forerunner 305. Worked OK but I was not too fond of carrying a canary cage around on my wrist. And I found most of the menu choices and options irrelevant to what I really needed, which was just to know my pace, distance and elapsed time. I eventually sold it on EBay and “upgraded” to a Forerunner 405. That I found to be a very frustrating piece of equipment: non-intuitive, complicated menus plus a very cranky touch-bezel input method. In a year or so of using that watch, I never got anywhere near comfortable with it. The touch-bezel seemed to have an evil life of its own; I really never could make it work right. And the battery had to be re-charged constantly. Finally, in a fit of frustration, one day I jerked it off my wrist, stomped it to death and threw it in a trashcan. No more Garmin for me for the last year or so.

But, finally, I could no longer deal with not knowing my current pace and started checking out sports watches again. Liked the reviews for the 210 and decided to try one, albeit with great misgivings. Now, after two racewalks using the watch, I can say that I highly recommend it. (Caveat: of course, at this point, I have no idea about long-term dependability.)

I had read that Garmin moved their headquarters and, in the process, got rid of a bunch of their programmers. If that is the case, then perhaps this Garmin 210 is the happy result. Best thing, the irritating touch-bezel is gone! Hooray! Here we have 4 physical buttons. The complicated, hard-to-use menu system is gone, replaced by something easy enough to learn in just a try or two. (Alternatively, you could break down and read the instructions.) The screen does not divide up into slices and offer you choices of what to put into each slice. It just shows you distance at the top (set for miles for kilometers), elapsed time in the middle and pace (set for current or average) at the bottom. Period. Which is all I ever want to see on the watch face, anyway. Fancy stuff like a “virtual runner” is not there. But it saves your history and you can upload runs to Garmin Connect if you want. And it does a few other things that probably some, but not most, users ever actually use. Bottom line is that it’s user-friendly, simple and straight-forward — everything the Forerunner 405, in my opinion, is not. And the battery, unlike the 405, seems to go for a while — they say at least a week or more, depending on use, of course — without having to re-charge.

I give it 4 stars instead of 5 only because of the cable USB connector which ends in a 4-prong clip that has to be aligned with 4 connectors on the back of the watch. Takes some attention to clip it in right and looks to me like an area that might develop trouble. I notice that Garmin makes a big deal out of telling you to clean those connections, which probably means they tend to get unclean very quickly and not work right. Would be great if there was just a simple mini-USB plug to go into the watch, like a camera uses, instead of that bulky clip. But, for now, the clip works fine for me and may never give any trouble, for all I know. Also, I have no idea how the watch will hold up over time.

For anyone who mostly needs just the basic information about their run or other activity and especially for anyone who has become frustrated with one of the touch-bezel models or with other Garmin watch operating systems, this watch could be just what you are looking for. BTW, there is also a Forerunner 110 that is very similar and less but my understanding is that it only shows average pace, not current. That would not work for me.

Bought this watch as a gift for my wife. I’ve had the Garmin Forerunner 205 for 2.5 years and my wife had been interested in getting her own for some time. The thing that was holding her back was the size of the 205. It just didn’t fit comfortably on her wrist. The 210 solves that problem with it’s compact size and actually offers more features than the 205 (heart rate monitor and interval support). The 210 is so small I would actually consider is reasonable to wear around as a regular men’s sport watch (unlike the 205 it is easy to display time as the primary screen rather than buried in a sub menu).

The only reason I didn’t give 5 stars is the USB connector / recharging cable. The watch has 5 points on the back used for downloading data and charging and to connect it to the computer or power plug you have to use an odd proprietary clip that clamps down on the front and back of the watch. You have to be very careful to line up all 5 of the contact points otherwise charing won’t work. I’m guessing they didn’t use a standard mini-USB for reasons of water resistance, but the clip is not easy to connect to the device and it can slip off of the watch easily. My 205 has a cradle that the watch sits in, I’m not sure why Garmin went away from this approach, but the cradle is clearly preferable to the clip.

If you can get over the clip for charging I highly recommend this watch.

As a side note we also considered the Garmin 110, but did not purchase that because it doesn’t offer real-time pace information. That was a deal breaker for me. If you are considering the 110 spend the few extra dollars for the 210. You won’t be sorry.

After my IMTX training buddies finally convinced me to invest in a Garmin Forerunner, I decided to go with the 210. I did a lot of research and I liked the functionality and look of the 210, and went with that. I bought mine online at REI (had some gift cards) and it came with free standard shipping, and got here just in time for my race last weekend.

So it arrived on Sat and my race was on Sunday morning. It charged fully within a couple hours, and it took me only a few minutes to figure out and complete the initial set up. Another minute later and I had all the basic functionality figured out. On race day (sprint du), it found the satellites very quickly, less than a minute. The run portion was in a park, not on Google-able roads, and the 210 worked as well as I had hoped. It was easy to check my pace, my heartrate and distance without distracting me from the race. I love how it beeps every mile (you can change the default lap distance), but the beep is not too loud to be considered annoying.

I went for another 8mi run at the local park trails and did 3 loops (also a non-Google-able route), and it worked GREAT! Satellites were found in about 10sec. After the first loop, I stopped the 210 while I took a moment to de-layer (it was chilly but I warmed up quicker than I thought). Then re-started it again – no issues there. My pace was easy to track and the mileage seemed to be very accurate.

I connected the 210 to my computer when I got home – VERY easy to figure that out and install the necessary software. Within about 5min, I had connected and was able to see my run data, from the race and my training run.

Very good GPS watch, very fun and easy to use – highly recommend for anyone who wants to make running more fun, or who is as fascinated by data as I am.