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Forerunner 235 and Garmin in general: Buyer Beware

Former Member over 9 years ago

I have been a long time Garmin user but have just gone through a very bad month of Garmin user experience and am now unfortunately returning my Garmin Forerunner 235 and moving on to a different company.

The amount of errors that have happened with this watch, customer support (still can't associate my email correctly) and the online experience are numerous, but most importantly, the watch hasn't recorded a run correctly. By example, the last time I used the watch, no heart rate data was recorded and the time before, the satellite coverage was off by .4 miles on a 6 mile run. I'd be more patient, but its a relatively expensive watch and Garmin support doesn't seem like its a big issue. ("Well its consumer GPS." - one Garmin support response) The general response has been that the software must be out of date... and then the next time, that the software must be out of date again. I think the software was up to date, but even being out of date by one update shouldn't cause one of the watch's primary functions to stop working.

There are a number of other issues encountered with Garmin support and Garmin express as well, that I don't think are necessary to report, but again, it has been a poor experience overall. The most important thing at this point... I just don't have confidence that I'm going to return from a run with accurate data.

*it seems fitting that the first few times I tried to post this message, I received an error message.

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Seconding this

I'm having the same issue with the 235 HRM, though mine appears to be even more random. Some runs it works, other runs it refuses to register a heart rate monitor at all. It's also occasionally completely misreading the HR when it is working (e.g. it has shown a HR in the 80s when I know I am on a 3% incline where historically I am in the the 150s or 160s). Had the same responses from product support, which is a little frustrating given that Garmin obviously knows about the issue. On top of all that, I have already had to contact support when the watch would sporadically not take a charge, particularly when the battery is low. This is kind of souring me from Garmin as a whole--none of these were issues with my TomTom Cardio.

0 unixcrab over 9 years ago

I will say the HR is not reliable. You have to be fully warmed up and have the watch tightened more than normal to get an accurate reading but I don't care about the occasional inacuracy, it does everything else so well it doesn't matter!!

The built in HR (as opposed to its cheaper HR-free-sibling) is kind of the point of the FR235...

0 FlipStone over 9 years ago

I'm having the same issue with the 235 HRM, though mine appears to be even more random. Some runs it works, other runs it refuses to register a heart rate monitor at all. It's also occasionally completely misreading the HR when it is working (e.g. it has shown a HR in the 80s when I know I am on a 3% incline where historically I am in the the 150s or 160s). Had the same responses from product support, which is a little frustrating given that Garmin obviously knows about the issue. On top of all that, I have already had to contact support when the watch would sporadically not take a charge, particularly when the battery is low. This is kind of souring me from Garmin as a whole--none of these were issues with my TomTom Cardio.

I usually wait till I see the HR popping up in the run-screen (my default is the 4-window layout, one of them is HR). Once I see it there I start the actual run, since then it hasn't failed me (not that I have a massive run count, think somewhere around 5 runs since I do it like that... but those 5 work fine. Had the issue a few times when paying less attention to the actual start)

0 R_Tellis over 9 years ago

I also wait until I get a reasonable HR and pace showing --:-- before I start my runs.

0 rtperna over 9 years ago

I also wait until I get a reasonable HR and pace showing --:-- before I start my runs.

Yeah, it's funny, I've had the thing for two months now, and I just figured out last week that the little heart icon stays solid (right next to the GPS indicator after hitting the "run" button on an activity) when it has a lock on your heart rate. When it's blinking, I think it's still trying to find your heart rate.

0 Former Member over 9 years ago

Another here, with the clock useless since version 4.2. No HR. 1 month waiting for a solution