IGX

I got the 205 to time race walking. 150 bucks.

big thing you wear on your wrist. GPS is really accurate, even under trees.

Pros:
doesn't lose signal like other such devices.

You can run/walk where ever you want and know how long, fast and far you went.

comes with cool software that analyzes your progress, but even cooler, will map out your route: streets, terrain, elevation, even heart beat (if you get the 305).

You just plug it into your computer, and it downloads everything in seconds.

Cons:
elevation is not good at all.

current pace varies too much. (work around: set the lap timer for a tenth of mile and read lap time. Very accurate.)

All in all, a cool pacing device. Even remembers a course you ran and has a little figure running at whatever pace you like, and you can see if it is ahead of you or behind. Or set it at your last pace and race yourself.

I like it.


The Amazon review is pretty good. Scroll down:

http://www.amazon.com/Garmin-Forerunner ... 931&sr=8-1

Doesn't work perfectly in mid-town Manhattan. But it worked. and it was perfect in Central Park.

Have you tried it cycling? Does it have features tailored to biking?

P.S., don't forget to oil your bike chain.

Yes, it has features for biking. You can set for cycling, or it set it so it will figure it out by speed.

It works just like running: speed, time, distance (and a bread crumb trail back if you need it.)

What is just so cool is that you download your activity into the computer (in seconds), then transfer it to google earth. See where you went. Do by streets or terrain or satellite or hybrid. Zoom in, zoom out. The built in workout wear keeps totals. Also tells you weather conditions: snow, rain, wind direction and speed, temperature.

If you are only going to use it to bike, look at the Garmin Edge, a bigger device that attaches to your bike. I think the Edge has a cadence counter for bikers. Also comes with a heart rate monitor, so you can correlate heart rate, pace, cadence speed. (But be warned: the elevation doesn't work for shit..a few days ago I was in NYC and walked through central park. The device said I'd climbed over 6000 feet!) There is a site called Motion Based that will do everything the included Garmin software will do and a little more. It is supposed to smooth out the elevation deal, but that doesn't work well either.)

Garmin Edge:

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=331

Neat.

I noticed on the Garmin site that it has a barometric altimeter, so it will be sensitive to weather and needs to be set for the current conditions. It's likely that there is software on the computer that will give you altitude based on lat/long.

Also, the bike one has a probe that mounts to your back wheel to give instantaneous speed, which is cool.

Oh. Barometric altitude is going to be much better. I have one on my watch. You can just set it to your altitude, if you know it, and it re-adjusts B. pressure. Also, I often just set it on log, and it gives me my ascent and descent numbers with no problems.

But if I'm hiking, I try to keep it on proper pressure/altitude. Otherwise it can be off a couple of hundred feet.

Knowing that the is calibrated correctly helps if you're looking at a map and you cross a stream at, say, 5000 feet: you pretty much know exactly where you are.

(Meanwhile, for mine, they say they are working on correlating maps to altitude, that it is coming soon, and that I should hold my breath).