Garmin 910XT Review (watch with GPS) Sunday, 24 February 2013
Editor's Note: by Ben Tisdall
The Garmin 910XT is a sleek looking unit, far sleeker than its predecessors the Garmin 310XT (and the 305 before that) which look like something out of Flash Gordon. It's matt black with a chunky strap and not much bigger than a normal sports watch. It's also incredibly easy to use. The giveaway is the tiny 12 page quick start manual it comes with. The basics are quickly mastered and only a few advanced features, like how to use the event to record a multisport race, will have you reaching for the manual or searching online.
In use It’s worth running through quickly what you have to do to use the device. First put the heart rate strap on. So far this seems extremely reliable and there is no need to wet the strap to get a good signal. The one downside is that this type of (ANT+) strap does not work in water. However it is waterproof so you can safely leave it on for the swim leg of a triathlon.
You turn on the 910XT by holding down down power button. The device will start looking for satellites and throw up a message ‘looking for satellites please wait’. Hold the mode button down to choose between types of work out: Run, bike, Swim or Other and selections are confirmed, throughout the interface, by using the arrow keys to choose the option and pressing ‘Enter’ to confirm. If only my central heating boiler/Polar watch/TV remote were this easy to get the hang of. Use the mode button too (pressed rather than held) to go into settings and history or use the map view. The map view is necessarily very limited because of the size of the screen. But it does at least serve to confirm you’re heading in the right direction! You can easily configure what data appears on the screen. For running I use total time, lap pace (usually the pace of the last mile), total distance and heart rate. For cycling I go for current speed instead of lap pace. At each lap, by default miles for running or 5 mile increment for cycling, the watch makes a sound and vibrates.
There’s a cheap mount available for attaching the 910XT to your handlebars but it sort of fits on the old Polar bracket on one of my other bikes too.
910XT Swimming Mode I’ve been kind of busy recently with launching triathlon.co.uk and a few other projects and consequently am still not swimming (even as the Windsor Triathlon in June starts to bear down on me!).
The basic shtick of the swimming function is that it counts lengths and strokes and even detects which stroke you’re swimming with. It will then give a swim efficiency figure based on how many strokes you use for each length (less is better and if you can swim 25 metres of front crawl with 15 strokes you’re doing well, 25 or more and there’s plenty of room for improvement) By and large when I’m swimming I’m too busy concentrating on my many and various swim faults to count either my strokes or my lengths with any degree of consistency, so this is a great feature.
For an in-depth look at the devices swimming performance I recommend the almost ludicrously thorough evaluation of the 910XT to be found here
Drawback It’s time to point out a disadvantage compared with my trusty old Polar. It’s not really possible to use the 910XT as a watch. It’s a dedicated GPS unit and designed to be turned on for a work out and turned off at the end of it. Battery life at 20 hours plus is enough for all but the most extreme endurance events however. And while we’re at it I’ll get the other big con off my chest, which is the comparatively fiddly nature of trying to upload workouts to Garmin Connect or to Strava. It involves attaching a Garmin USB device to your laptop and beaming up the date. It’s vastly easier than the system used by old Polars but far more fiddly than the completely seamless way Strava will sync with a smartphone for instance.
910XT Altimeter Barometric altimeters have been common on the bike Garmins but runners have had to put up with GPS based altimeters. GPS based altimeters generally work fine but aren’t good at mountains or working things out like gradient. But the 910XT has its own Barometric Altimeter – clearly no bad thing.
Verdict Almost from the moment I opened the box the Garmin 910XT has been a revelation. It’s not perfect and I’m sure in 20 years’ time will seem like a dinosaur, but compared with everything similar I’ve ever owned it’s absolutely amazing. For any triathlete or duathlete there’s really nothing to touch it at the moment.
Why I bought my Garmin 910XT I first bought a Polar heart rate monitor about 10 years ago. It was fiendishly difficult to use. For a while I carefully followed the instruction manual and uploaded HR files to create graphs on my PC. But it was so hard to use that I soon gave up and eventually used it in the dumbest of dumb modes – ie on my wrist with a read out of current heart rate. It was useful for long endurance events to avoid starting too fast but that was about it.
My next attempt at monitoring my performance was with an early and not at all smart Nokia mobile phone. It didn’t have GPS built in so I even bought an external GPS to pair with it along with some crude and long defunct software. I gave up on that too.
Then 18 months ago I finally got a Smartphone that merited the name. A Samsung Galaxy S2 since you ask. After trying Endomondo and Runkeeper I finally came across Strava. I was an instant convert and soon notched up a few local KOM (King of the Mountains) on my Sunday rides. I was intrigued by the ‘Suffer score’ feature but for that I needed heart rate. I came very close to buying a Blue tooth heart rate monitor to go with my phone. But the technology sounded flawed. I was already finding that running Strava with GPS on my phone drained the batteries and figured that with the extra load from a blue tooth heart rate strap I’d barely get through a 4 hour bike ride. And with shipping from the States included a Blue Tooth Heart Rate monitor was going to cost over £100.
I’d been casting envious glances at the Garmin devices of various shapes and sizes my cycling buddies had fitted to their bikes. But I had pretensions as a multi-sport athlete so it was watches I was interested in. In the end I plumbed for a Garmin 910 XT and I haven’t looked back.
Editor's Note: by Ben Tisdall
The Garmin 910XT is a sleek looking unit, far sleeker than its predecessors the Garmin 310XT (and the 305 before that) which look like something out of Flash Gordon. It's matt black with a chunky strap and not much bigger than a normal sports watch. It's also incredibly easy to use. The giveaway is the tiny 12 page quick start manual it comes with. The basics are quickly mastered and only a few advanced features, like how to use the event to record a multisport race, will have you reaching for the manual or searching online.
In use It’s worth running through quickly what you have to do to use the device. First put the heart rate strap on. So far this seems extremely reliable and there is no need to wet the strap to get a good signal. The one downside is that this type of (ANT+) strap does not work in water. However it is waterproof so you can safely leave it on for the swim leg of a triathlon.
You turn on the 910XT by holding down down power button. The device will start looking for satellites and throw up a message ‘looking for satellites please wait’. Hold the mode button down to choose between types of work out: Run, bike, Swim or Other and selections are confirmed, throughout the interface, by using the arrow keys to choose the option and pressing ‘Enter’ to confirm. If only my central heating boiler/Polar watch/TV remote were this easy to get the hang of. Use the mode button too (pressed rather than held) to go into settings and history or use the map view. The map view is necessarily very limited because of the size of the screen. But it does at least serve to confirm you’re heading in the right direction! You can easily configure what data appears on the screen. For running I use total time, lap pace (usually the pace of the last mile), total distance and heart rate. For cycling I go for current speed instead of lap pace. At each lap, by default miles for running or 5 mile increment for cycling, the watch makes a sound and vibrates.
There’s a cheap mount available for attaching the 910XT to your handlebars but it sort of fits on the old Polar bracket on one of my other bikes too.
910XT Swimming Mode I’ve been kind of busy recently with launching triathlon.co.uk and a few other projects and consequently am still not swimming (even as the Windsor Triathlon in June starts to bear down on me!).
The basic shtick of the swimming function is that it counts lengths and strokes and even detects which stroke you’re swimming with. It will then give a swim efficiency figure based on how many strokes you use for each length (less is better and if you can swim 25 metres of front crawl with 15 strokes you’re doing well, 25 or more and there’s plenty of room for improvement) By and large when I’m swimming I’m too busy concentrating on my many and various swim faults to count either my strokes or my lengths with any degree of consistency, so this is a great feature.
For an in-depth look at the devices swimming performance I recommend the almost ludicrously thorough evaluation of the 910XT to be found here
Drawback It’s time to point out a disadvantage compared with my trusty old Polar. It’s not really possible to use the 910XT as a watch. It’s a dedicated GPS unit and designed to be turned on for a work out and turned off at the end of it. Battery life at 20 hours plus is enough for all but the most extreme endurance events however. And while we’re at it I’ll get the other big con off my chest, which is the comparatively fiddly nature of trying to upload workouts to Garmin Connect or to Strava. It involves attaching a Garmin USB device to your laptop and beaming up the date. It’s vastly easier than the system used by old Polars but far more fiddly than the completely seamless way Strava will sync with a smartphone for instance.
910XT Altimeter Barometric altimeters have been common on the bike Garmins but runners have had to put up with GPS based altimeters. GPS based altimeters generally work fine but aren’t good at mountains or working things out like gradient. But the 910XT has its own Barometric Altimeter – clearly no bad thing.
Verdict Almost from the moment I opened the box the Garmin 910XT has been a revelation. It’s not perfect and I’m sure in 20 years’ time will seem like a dinosaur, but compared with everything similar I’ve ever owned it’s absolutely amazing. For any triathlete or duathlete there’s really nothing to touch it at the moment.
Why I bought my Garmin 910XT I first bought a Polar heart rate monitor about 10 years ago. It was fiendishly difficult to use. For a while I carefully followed the instruction manual and uploaded HR files to create graphs on my PC. But it was so hard to use that I soon gave up and eventually used it in the dumbest of dumb modes – ie on my wrist with a read out of current heart rate. It was useful for long endurance events to avoid starting too fast but that was about it.
My next attempt at monitoring my performance was with an early and not at all smart Nokia mobile phone. It didn’t have GPS built in so I even bought an external GPS to pair with it along with some crude and long defunct software. I gave up on that too.
Then 18 months ago I finally got a Smartphone that merited the name. A Samsung Galaxy S2 since you ask. After trying Endomondo and Runkeeper I finally came across Strava. I was an instant convert and soon notched up a few local KOM (King of the Mountains) on my Sunday rides. I was intrigued by the ‘Suffer score’ feature but for that I needed heart rate. I came very close to buying a Blue tooth heart rate monitor to go with my phone. But the technology sounded flawed. I was already finding that running Strava with GPS on my phone drained the batteries and figured that with the extra load from a blue tooth heart rate strap I’d barely get through a 4 hour bike ride. And with shipping from the States included a Blue Tooth Heart Rate monitor was going to cost over £100.
I’d been casting envious glances at the Garmin devices of various shapes and sizes my cycling buddies had fitted to their bikes. But I had pretensions as a multi-sport athlete so it was watches I was interested in. In the end I plumbed for a Garmin 910 XT and I haven’t looked back.