The Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS enabled woman’s sports watch with heart rate monitor entered the market in 2010. Garmin calls it their “no bells and whistles” ladies watch. It is designed for tracking distance, pace, and time where the run is started with just 2 presses of the button. It is a watch with very little setup to ensure runners or those who walk can just press start to begin. The display screen provides an easy to read font and size so runners can check their time, pace, and other details.
Description and Features
The Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS enabled woman’s sports watch has a one inch display screen and four buttons to get you started on your run. It comes with a light, menu, lap, and stop button. It requires virtually no setup to start recording your runs.
The main features of the watch include a GPS enabled system to help record your distance, pace, and time with accuracy. It is designed to maintain a GPS location despite any trees or tall buildings that might interfere with the use of the watch’s features.
It also has a rechargeable battery with up to 8 hours of workout. It has a power save mode, which enables the watch to at least tell time for 3 weeks before it needs to be recharged.
In addition to other features, you are able to store information to track your progress for the last week, last month, or several months. To do this you do have to upload your data or the watch will reset and lose the longer history and activity. Users can upload data directly to an account with Garmin Connect to review workout information, create goals, and other tracking options.
As the watch description tells you, it has a heart rate monitor included in the watch. It is designed to offer a heart rate calorie computation to help runners determine if their heart rate is high enough to burn calories. The monitor records beats per minute.
Advantages and Disadvantages
The FR 110 is less bulky than previous Garmin products, which makes it feel more comfortable during a run. For those who might have a previous Garmin running watch, one of the first things you notice with this one is the larger numbers. Distance, time, pace, and heart rate are larger to make it easier to read while running. The operative word here is ‘read’. A major disadvantage for some may be the lack of automatic updates via a virtual voice. Some runners’ watches provide you with updates via voice so you do not have to look at your wrist as you run to see the data. This can be a bit awkward.
Another great advantage of the watch is the setup. There is less in the menu to navigate to set up your run for the day. You can simply press start when you are ready; especially, if you have already done the setup and have no changes to be made for this run. When you do want to change your run information, it takes a short time and you are ready to go.
Garmin has also provided a top GPS system that keeps its lock on satellites despite any trees or buildings that might interfere. Of course, testing it out for satellite connectivity does depend on where you live. But at least what has been tested shows no issues.
For runners on a long path, sometimes you still want to know the lap distance. You can set up auto lap on the watch for several distances or every mile. This helps you keep tabs on how far you have run.
The display will show you everything that occurred during the run. Once you are done running you can watch the display for elapsed distance, time, current heart rate, and average pace per lap. You can also see the lap pace for the last lap as it automatically displays for the run including the average heart rate and pace for the run. The entire run can also be found under history in the menu. It makes it fairly easy to keep up with your run at the end to double check your target parameters, such as keeping a steady pace for each lap or increasing the pace the further into your run you may get.
Is this the Right Watch?
The main thing to remember about this watch is its simplicity. It is not designed to have all the functions of the best watch on the market. Instead, it is designed to give you pace, distance, time, and heart rate details with absolute accuracy. Someone who wants to see every detail as they run or hear the pace called out during the run will not find this watch of value to them.
A person not looking to track their run to the millimeter of information will find it has a lot of value. They can setup their runs, have the watch record data and see if their workout is helping them reach their goals. For some it might not be a watch you would use for a marathon, and yet for most, it would be because it takes down your information. You can focus on your run while it records data to display once your run is complete.
This is not to say it won’t display information during the run; just that it won’t show every single detail. With a good GPS system, sturdy construction, this Garmin watch is worth owning as a newer version of Forerunner watches available by a top company.
There is value in the information supplied particularly if you are running to get into shape or lose weight. You get to monitor your heart rate, versus calories burned, to see where you might improve and thus burn more calories for weight loss. The fact that you can sync your watch with Garmin for tracking runs adds to this workout monitor for running towards a fitter look.