HRM upgrade - ditch the Garmin and get an all-in-one?

daddyratty

Fairly soon, I will have accumulated enough points through mypoints.com (from reading emails and filling out surveys) to get a $50 Amazon gift certificate. (We usually earn $50-$75 a year in freebies this way).

I was thinking this time I would use my earnings to go toward the purchase of an HRM.

The Garmin I have is a 205 ... it does all the GPS stuff but does not have a cheststrap/HRM included and cannot be retrofitted to include one.

If I keep the Garmin, what's the best HRM out there?

If I ditch the Garmin, I'd need to get an HRM that had all the GPS stuff, too (and spend considerably more, I presume).

I'll tip my hand here ... I'd much rather get an HRM that allows me to keep my Garmin. Both because I'm used to the Garmin I have and I'm not interested in spending more than I need to at this point.

What do you use and what do you recommend?

daddyratty

bump

jeremymaritz

Hey man,

If you had to stay in the all-in-one category, I'd stay with Garmin and upgrade to the 405. Let's put it this way...all the companies out there in our 'market' (Polar, Garmin, Timex Ironman, etc.) can do HRMs and stopwatches with lap splits...but NO ONE does GPS like Garmin does it. So I'd stay with Garmin.

arc918

Garmin is about to release the new 610. When that happens, guys like me will be looking to get rid of our 405s so that we can purchase that which is new & shiny.

The 405 & 305 will get that much cheaper.

daddyratty

Thanks, you guys ... good points. Maybe I'll save up more of the points and get more Amazon bucks before moving forward. I'd love to know how non-running exercises affect calories, but for now I'll just do them. Since they won't count for any calorie credit, I'm sure I'll see some added benefit on the scale!