Garmin Forerunner 305

It's difficult to imagine an improvement to the Garmin Forerunner 301. Released a year ago, it quickly made a name for itself and was recognized as the 2005 Gear of the Year by Outside Magazine. The Garmin Forerunner 301 revolutionized training technology, adding a heart rate monitor to its award-winning GPS unit. Users of the popular product could accurately record their speed, distance and heart rate with only two components.

We fell in love with its handy and creative features – our favorite of which being the “auto pause” and “auto lap” features. These two features make the Garmin watch hands-free; your speed and location indicate when you're beginning or ending a training interval or lap, and the watch starts or stops timing accordingly!

Now, a year after the Forerunner's 301's release, the leader in GPS technology has released the Garmin Forerunner 305. It includes all of the features of the Forerunner 301 and more. Its look has also changed to make it extremely sleek and lightweight. While the watch's good looks first drew us in, its accuracy has kept us hooked.

We normally recommend that our customers avoid GPS technology if they live in an area with a lot of overhead obstruction. Tall buildings and trees make the GPS signal on most watches to cut out from time to time, which can be annoying in the middle of a run. With its Forerunner 305, Garmin has improved upon this. By wrapping the GPS antenna around the watch, Garmin has found a way to better reception and has made this watch quite useable in forested areas and cities.

In addition to this improvement, the Garmin 305 comes with a new “Courses” feature, which serves as an excellent complement to its virtual partner. The virtual partner feature (common across the Forerunner series) keeps you motivated by providing you with a “training buddy” – a virtual person that you program to train and progress at your goal pace. Similarly, the Courses feature helps you compete against your former and future self; it enables to you download workout courses and compete against your results in previous workouts.

Further new features of the Forerunner 305 include a softer, cross-talk free chest strap and customizable data screens.

Please take a look at our Garmin Forerunner 305 product page for more details on this watch.