Should I buy one tomorrow? Any GOOD experiences??!

My friend and I both bought 235s about two weeks ago.

We've both loved them, just absolutely love them. She replaced an older Garmin with it, I replaced an Apple Watch (and Fitbit Charge HR before that). I'd been using Runmeter on my phone to track my runs going back 4 years.

Is it perfect? No.

Pros:
Kick ass running watch. I literally could not ask for anything more in this regard. Love how easy it is to put in complicated interval runs into Garmin Connect, and wirelessly upload them to the watch.
It is 80% of a Fitbit. Just needs a few things (see cons).
Garmin's ecosystem is wide open and much more flexible than Fitbit's or Apple's. Everything works with Garmin. Strava, MyFitnessPal, Nike, really anything you can think of. My Fitbit scale uploads my weight automatically from MFP, and then Garmin reads it from MFP and incorporates it into the phone/web software. Tons of examples like this.
Battery life is best in class for a device with an optical heart rate monitor. I charge mine about twice a week. I could go longer, but I'm so used to either daily (Apple Watch) or every 2-3 day charging (Fitbit Charge HR) I start getting itchy when the battery life bar goes down past halfway.
Customization. The Connect IQ app store has just tons of stuff in it. Different watch faces, apps, just anything you could want.
It's comfortable and light.
Despite the criticism, I find the optical heart rate monitor to be on par with the ones used in the Apple Watch and Fitbit Charge HR. I have the same resting heart rate with this as I do the Fitbit (Apple's tracked slightly higher), and my heart rate on similar runs matches up across all three devices. That said, if you need dead nuts accuracy, get a 630 with a heart rate strap. I know for a fact the OHM isn't 100% accurate, but for my needs, it is more than sufficient.

Cons:

The Fitbit-like functionality feels a bit tacked on and half baked. There's no notification/goal alarm when you hit your number of steps, for example, which is ridiculous. The sleep tracking is, ah, kind of weak compared to Fitbit's which was far more accurate. I know Garmin's "Fitbit Feature Parity" device is supposed to exist in the Vivo line, but this is a $330 watch. You can afford to give me some non-running bells and whistles, Garmin.
The watch itself is kind of plasticky. I do miss the premium feel of the Apple Watch, even though as an overall fitness device the Apple Watch is straight garbage. If the Garmin was made out of styrofoam I'd still take the Garmin.
Unlike some posts I've seen, I really don't have a serious issue with the display being too dim. It reminds me of a Kindle or older gaming device/MP3 player; the more ambient light you have, the easier it is to see. The backlight is sufficient, and you can set it to light up when you tilt your wrist up. I find it works about as well as the Apple Watch and Fitbit did, though there is just the slightest of delays. That said, I'm listing it as a con because you just can't expect Apple Watch quality brightness with the kind of superior battery life this thing has.

At the end of the day, if you are a casual runner, or running is your primary hobby (i.e. you're not a super competitive runner), you will absolutely love this watch. Garmin really hit this one out of the park, IMO. I find their long term support suspect due to how quickly they replaced this watch's predecessor (the 225), but I am hoping they will tweak this watch throughout most of 2016 and leave me with something I can use another couple years without issue.

If you have any questions, shoot!

depends on your expectations. as a running watch its good, as a HRM its below par. i cant really speak about the activity tracker side because i dont pay attention to it.

if you've been reading the forum then you should have a decent understanding of the limitations and foibles of the oHRM...if you're ok with this then buy the watch.

My 235 is my favorite gadget and my least favorite gadget at the same time. As a GPS watch it is top notch. Much more accurate than my previous watch I've had or the GPS on several phones I have used. Battery usage from GPS/GLONASS is great.

As a heart rate monitor is it worthless.

As a step tracker it is great but as an activity tracker (as in calculating calories) it is more than useless. I actually think random numbers would be just as accurate.

Build quality is great and Garmin seems to have finally tackled the charging issues that have plagued their product. Some have reported issues with their watch not charging to 100%, but I have not.

If I could take it back I would probably have either went with the 230 or paid a little extra and got the 630. I think nearly every problem with the 235 stems from the HRM.

At the moment, it's just a glorified smartphone notification.

Serious in running?? Please put cadence lock and unreliable HRM to your CON list

Or you need just a functional activity tracker? You'll be disappointed that it will add 12xxx steps while you're on 300km road trip to another city. It also track that you slept from 16:44 to 0:47 with 62 minutes awake time while you are in business meeting from 15:30 to 18:30.


Lastly...if you don't mind paying USD 330 for a prototype product with beta software and zero support, welcome to the forum. We expect to see you here quite often :)

I like mine

I like it. Perfect, no, but I would buy it again. For all the guys that talk like a chest HR strap is great, frankly it was probably at best slightly better for me. Cold weather and no matter what I did it would generally take a while to not be doing cadence. Then I went to Scotche (sp?) optical and it was definitely better than the strap. Had a Fenix 3 when they first came out and it was such an inaccurate POS I returned before the end of a 90 day satisfaction guarantee period. Got the 225 and it did basically fine. Sold it and got the 235 and I'm happy pretty much. Heart rate works mostly always fine for me. Can't be too loose, or too tight, but mostly just works. Every now and again it'll get onto cadence. But so did the strap.

All things considered, I'm quite happy with my FR235, actually

My question is... Is it THAT bad?

I don't think the FR235 is bad at all. I was also after an all-in-one, and having bought a TomTom Spark Cardio+Music, used it for three weeks, then returned it because it was both not as described (i.e. missing promised features) and not fit for purpose (i.e. operationally unreliable, kept crashing during workouts and losing activity data), and then bought the FR235 –*for almost the same effective price – with the refund, I must say I really enjoyed using the latter over the past six weeks.

How are you finding the HR tracking accuracy on the Mio Link for the sort of training you do?

I do like the idea of RHR monitoring but not if it never works

I wouldn't say it never works, but I wouldn't blindly trust what the watch reports as my RHR either. My RHR is in the range of 47–50·bpm (and because I was surprised to see 47·bpm early one morning, I manually took my pulse over a 60-second interval, and it proved to be about right), and the watch and Garmin Connect both tell me my average RHR is 49·bpm.

However, it also reported that my RHR this Sunday just past was 43·bpm, on the basis of two consecutive readings – 25 minutes apart – at the start of an automatically detected four-hour sleep period; the next lowest HR reading in that period was 52·bpm, and the lowest HR reading during my waking hours was 49·bpm. On review of the line chart, I have to conclude that the readings of 43·bpm were erroneous, and ignore them in assessing what my RHR was on the day.

depends on your expectations. as a running watch its good, as a HRM its below par.

I'm genuinely curious: against which wrist-worn heart rate monitors are you comparing the FR235, to determine the performance benchmark of similar devices and what is “par”? Or are you including ECG-based HRMs, as well as non-wrist-worn optical HRMs (such as the Scosche Rhythm+), etc. in the scope of “as a HRM”?

As a heart rate monitor is it worthless.

I disagree. I'm not prepared to jump to the conclusion that the HRM is mistaking cadence for HR every time I see something like this.

If anything, I'd say as a sleep tracker the FR235 is worthless, as it gets it wrong for me more often than not. I don't care about calories, so I do not check what the FR235 reports and cannot tell you how accurate it is in that regard, since in any case I have no basis for measuring how much energy I actually consumed (because I don't have access to calorimetry equipment), and aids like MET tables only use averages based on some combination of assumptions I cannot validate.

I'm genuinely curious: against which wrist-worn heart rate monitors are you comparing the FR235, to determine the performance benchmark of similar devices and what is “par”? Or are you including ECG-based HRMs, as well as non-wrist-worn optical HRMs (such as the Scosche Rhythm+), etc. in the scope of “as a HRM”?

regardless of what you make the comparison with the fact remains that the HRM on the 235 is poor. it doesnt work properly, even if you compared it to a pizza oven its still borderline useless.
...but seeing as you asked, im comparing it to a chest strap HRM. the kind that Polar and Garmin have been making for 10+ years and are markedly more reliable and accurate than the oHRM on the 235

Hard to tell, for some ppl it seems to work ok and for others it doesn't at all...

I actually have no real issues with the 24/7 activity tracking and RHR, I don't use it that intensively and mainly just check it out every now and then and for trends. The main issue with it is that the sampling rate is too low, every 30 mins, by default which means an inaccurate measurement at that time screws things up a lot relatively. In rest the measurements seem fine most of the time for me though, even though it does have the weird spike every now and then.

Also I'm still not sure how the 72 bpm default is handled (the HR starts measuring and by default goes to 72bpm, which apparently is the general avg for people, after which it goes to your real HR). In my case my baseline HR is between high 40's and low 50's, which means the 72 is off by quite a bit and it takes some time to settle. (Causing the backlight to time out and/or the HR widget to exit). Also, if these values are taken along in measurements it also messes things up...

The OHR seems ok-ish for steady runs, then again you say most of yours are pushing hard. This means a higher HR which can easily conflict with your cadence (cadence lock is another known issue, it mistakes your cadence as your HR giving you HR values of 170-up while they should be lower for example). Also, in colder weather it can perform erratically giving you way too low HR's (I had a 10k run at max pace and it gave me an avg of 90 bpm or so for example).

The battery keeps up for a proper time, I have almost no issues with GPS tracking and all my gripes are with the OHR but by now I have learned to live with it. As a watch there is no other offering the same functionalities I think and I also like the design (makes me feeling ok with actually wearing it as a watch ;) ) but be advised that Garmin's implementation of this OHR is mediocre at best and we just have to wait and see if they can and are willing to do anything about it.

If you really want to use and keep track of HR, don't. It's simply not suitable and trust-worthy imo. Same goes for calory-counting if you check the forums...

If you want to keep general track of your HR and mainly hate the chest-band (which I surely do) then I'd say give it a try.

Riptide

Hi guys,

I've read a lot of the topics here and most are obviously negative. I currently have a vivoactive and a Mio link for HR but would like an all in one. The 235 would seem to suit me well, I run 3 times a week (5/10k's) and do half marathons. Most of my runs are pushing hard, don't really do interval training.

My question is... Is it THAT bad? Do I have to find the extra cash for a 630/fenix 3 and HRM? I do like the idea of RHR monitoring but not if it never works :(

TIA!

I guess that when you enter a forum of a product, the people posting there is the people that has experienced some problems. Usually happy people don't post a lot in Forums.
Regarding the product itself:

• I find the OHR quite accurate when doing steady training. Running with not many quick peaks is very accurate. Same goes for cycling. However, if you do HIIT training it may show some inaccuracies. In those occasions grab a chest strap and connect it to the FR 235.
  
• GPS is great. It connect in a matter of seconds and has the help of Glonass if more accuracy is required.
  
• Regarding the step counter, I think is one of the best in the market. The fitbit tended to put many more than I actually had taken.
  
• Sleep monitor is not the best I must say. I used Fitbit Charge HR and Microsoft Band 2 and both are much better in this area.
  

The watch is VERY light and comfortable, gives accurate information in almost everything (apart from sleeping), and the OHRM is acceptable, especially if the HR is smooth.