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Amid all the new product announcements this spring and all the reviewing we have to do, we sometimes get brought back to earth by a phone call from someone who wants to know how well these products do actual training.
Typically, the most complicated problem for training electronics gear is interval training. It requires some way to alert the user that it is time for the next segment and a way to alert the user that they are going too fast or too slow. It should know the duration or distance of each segment, with extra points if it supports more complex arrangements. This translates to a feature list with multiple timers, odometers, zones, alarms or limits, depending on the company and their approach.
But no matter how many bullet items the company puts on their product, it is still impossible to tell how well the product will do intervals just from reading their sales material. So we decided to take it to the streets (and track, and trails) and test these popular units head-to-head. We compare the Polar S625X, the Suunto t6, and the new Garmin products: Forerunner 205 and 305 and Edge 205 and 305 which all contain the same features with respect to intervals.
This review will try to rate these products in the following categories:
Flexibility – can the product be programmed to do complex workouts.
Setup – how easy or difficult is it to set up the unit for the workout.
Usability – how easy or difficult is it to use the unit during the workout.
Guidance – how well does the product guide you through the workout.
Reporting – what can you learn about the workout after you’re finished.
Each model will be rated on a 5-star scale in each category with a brief text explanation of the rating.
First, a short introduction of each model and links to some more general reviews and product descriptions:
This Polar model is derived from a dozen years of evolution. It was released in the summer of 2004 and quickly became the standard for serious athletes. It reports heart rate, running speed/distance (via included footpod), bike speed/distance/cadence/power (with optional attachments), altitude (derived barometrically) and temperature. It can upload a workout description from your computer and will download the workout details afterwards (via an optional USB attachment) with sampling rates of 5, 15 or 60 seconds. It has enough memory for several weeks of workouts (for most people) depending on the attachments and sampling rate.
Price:$349.95 (Infrared Interface, Bike Speed Sensor and Bike Cadence Sensor are $39.95 each. Bike Power Kit is $349.95.)
Links: Polar S625X product page - Polar S625X One Minute Review - Polar S625X Review
Suunto is famous for high-quality dive watches and mountaineering watches. The t6, released in the summer of 2005, was their first pure training tool. It reports heart rate, running speed/distance (with optional Foot Pod accessory), bike speed/distance (with optional Bike Pod accessory), altitude (derived barometrically), and barometric pressure if you indicate altitude is to remain constant. It can upload some workout parameters from your computer (not a workout description, but a heart rate zone) and will download the workout details afterwards (via a USB cable) with one-second sampling rate. It has enough memory for several weeks of workouts (for most people) depending on the attachments. In terms of a pure hardware solution, it matches the S625X all along the list, except for a number of important points where it surpasses. Notably, it is comfortable enough to wear as your everyday watch and looks very good. Software is more limiting however.
Price: $449 (Foot Pod accessory is $99, Bike Pod accessory is $76)
Links: Suunto t6 product page - t6 vs. Polar S625X vs. Timex Trailrunner Comparison Article
This is Garmin’s second generation GPS training tool. New for spring of 2006, it is based on the Forerunner 301 but with a newly designed form factor, better GPS, and a better feature set. This is a GPS on the wrist, but it is not a GPS watch. It is much too large to wear except when training. It has an on/off switch and lasts about 10 hours on a charge, so it will spend most of it’s life in the computer connection base/charger (included). It reports heart rate, running/cycling speed/distance, cycling cadence (with optional attachment) and altitude (derived from GPS which is less accurate than barometric method – with average error as high as +/- 30 feet). It can upload very complex workout definitions and will download the details of your workout, including positional (lat/long) data, for several weeks worth of workouts.
Price: $349.99 ($60 for cadence accessory)
Links: Garmin Forerunner 305 product page - Garmin Forerunner 305 One Minute Review
Also new for spring of 2006, this is nearly the same technology as the Forerunner with some important differences that make it a superb tool for cycling training. It was designed to be mounted on the handlebars or stem and cannot be worn on the wrist. It has all of the features of the Forerunner and has a larger screen that can be divided into sections to allow more data fields to be seen at the same time. It reports heart rate, cycling speed/distance, cadence (with optional attachment), altitude and elevation gain/loss, and grade. It contains a barometric altimeter, which is calibrated at the start of the workout by a GPS reading. This is the best of both worlds for altitude: best accuracy without having to calibrate it to a known altitude at the start of the workout. It can upload very complex workout definitions and will download the details of your workout, including positional (lat/long) data, for several weeks worth of workouts
Price: $399.99 for the Bundle which includes both heart rate and cadence accessories. $349.99 for just one accessory
Links: Garmin Edge 305 product page - Garmin Edge One Minute Review
Polar S625X |
Suunto t6 |
Garmin Forerunner/Edge 305 |
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The Garmin products take top honors in this category. Workouts can be defined with any number of different segments and each segment defined differently: some time based, others distance; some with heart rate limits and others with speed or pace limits. This must be done with the software, but a large number of them can be stored in the unit.
Second place in flexibility goes to the Polar S625X. The S625X stores five different exercise definitions, and you must choose one at the start of your workout. When you create that exercise definition you can define it as having Interval Mode active. If so, you can jump into Interval Mode when you are ready (after warm-up), and then it will cycle between work and recovery with different distances or times.
In third place for flexibility is the Suunto t6. You can only define two intervals arrangements - one time-based and the other distance based. You can decide during a workout to activate either the time or distance-based intervals logic, and you can even switch on the fly. Most people, however, have a plan when they go out for an interval workout, so it is more important to be able to store several different configurations and select the right one at the start of the workout.
Garmin really runs away with a win here. The software contains a wizard for workout creation that allows you to set up any number of different sequences, each with unique settings. This is a very good thing because, as mentioned above, there are a lot of possibilities. This is very impressive stuff that none of the others comes close to.
The Polar S625X takes second place again in the setup category. In PC Coach you can define any number of different interval-based workouts, and you can easily upload any five of them to the watch, which gets you setup for the week. You can even name them in the watch for the day you plan to do them.
In Polar’s world, a workout stored in the unit is either defined as having Interval Mode active or not. Five different workout definitions can be in the watch at any time and can be uploaded via software or defined by pushing watch buttons.
This is useful stuff, and it is easy to live with on a daily basis because of the good interaction with the computer. But technically, it is more hardware-constrained than the Garmin products, especially for complex workouts. For normal formats that involve a warmup, some number of work and recovery pairs, where the work is either time or distance-based with either time or distance recovery, and then a cooldown, the S625X handles them just fine. If you want to get exotic and do ladders and pyramids, you need to set it up for manual changes between segments (meaning you end each work or recovery interval with a one-second push of the lap button) and keep it straight in your head rather than setting up the hardware to understand your plan.
The Suunto t6 takes third place in the setup category. As stated, it only stores one configuration for time-based and one for distance-based intervals. While in the workout, you can decide to activate either one of them. The settings for each can be configured ahead of time, but only by pressing watch buttons – not through the software, which I see as a distinct disadvantage. Also, confusingly, if you setup one type (say time-based) you have turned off the other without knowing it.
This is a category that is not very clearly defined. It deals with a variety of things that just seem to come up. There are strengths and weaknesses with all of the products here, and it is difficult to choose a winner. So here is a shotgun approach to identifying some issues.
All three of the models store a lap marker at the end of each segment. The Garmin however seems determined that you should finish the workout as planned. Polar and Suunto are more forgiving, allowing you to end an individual interval, or to stop the intervals and move on to cooldown. Polar especially allows you to override any distance or time based interval by a one-second press of the lap button to indicate the end. This seems to be useful more often than you would expect.
Garmin on the other hand has such a terrific display, and it is configurable in any way you like. The forerunner can have three different screens that you can cycle through, each with two, three or four data fields of your choosing. This can all be setup in advance. This is a major usability factor. The Polar S625X has the ability to cycle through several options for the middle display line, and once that is chosen you can then cycle through the top line display options, but it is less readable and more cumbersome to manipulate during the workout. Suunto allows you to cycle through different modes (time-of-day, altimeter, heart rate, and speed/distance) and each of those allows selection of the 3 rd line data, similar to Polar’s approach. It might be the best that can be done within the constraints of a wristwatch form factor.
Garmin has done a superb job here, and they have more options than the other two. Once you decide to go for 10 hours on a charge rather than a year on a coin cell, you can really ring some bells and flash some lights, and Garmin takes full advantage of this. In addition, with the extra screen real estate and their pop-up messages, they can show you very clearly what’s going on. As you near the end of a work or recovery interval, you get about five seconds of loud beeping along with a message on the screen showing a countdown to the end. Once you hit the change point, the lap timer and lap odometer reset to zero.
Polar and Suunto are tied for second place in the guidance category, and it is a pretty distant second. I always had trouble following an interval session with these products because I would miss a beep and run beyond the end of that interval. Until I tried the Garmin, I just thought it was me. A lot of it has to do with the limitations imposed by fitting the information into a watch face rather than having a smallish PDA strapped on your wrist, and that is a separate discussion. But strictly speaking in terms of guiding you through a complex workout, these two models are not in the same league as the Garmin.
All three of these products download a graph that shows heart rate, speed or pace, distance and altitude at a fast sample rate, plus lap data. Polar software is more flexible than the other two, and you can use PC Coach with the S625X (for the ultimate experience). Suunto software is Ok, but more graphing options would be nice. This is a fairly new product and they have only had a year to make improvements in the software, and they may still do so. An interval workout from the Suunto t6 showing heart rate above and speed below. Pace (min/mi) is not an option. Red dots along the bottom are lap markers. Suunto software stacks the separate data rather than a more typical overlay style.
In reporting, Garmin shows a serious chink in their armor. The software has no options, so you can’t control the y-axis, and it chooses some really unhelpful scales. It becomes difficult to get real information from it, because the pace scale (y-axis) may be from negative 15:00 min/mi to 1:00:00 min/mi (one hour per mile) which makes the difference between a 6 minute mile pace and an 8 minute pace almost impossible to see. If you slow to a walk before stopping the workout on the unit, this will surely happen, and there is no way to just edit out the slow sampled data to get a reasonable y-axis. Additionally, Garmin has not incorporated the lap data into the graphical display (it is shown separately in tab form). For interval workouts, the lap markers are key to interpreting the workout, so this is a serious drawback. In fairness, this is a version 1 software product, but then, it was version 1 when the Forerunner 301 came out 18 months ago.
Interval session from the Garmin Forerunner 305 showing heart rate (red) and pace (blue) Note the unfortunate choice of y-axis range for pace which hides the important details. Note also the lack of any lap indications on the graph.
The software limitations of the Garmin are not a reflection on the hardware and can be fixed with a new software release. All of the important data is downloaded and stored. There is one hardware limitation in the Garmin that really only shows up in the graph. This is the degree of error in GPS-based altimeters. The Forerunner records altitude derived from the GPS satellites, and it has an apparent error of plus or minus 30 feet (unscientifically measured during our tests). This is not a constant error that can be fixed with calibration; it is a noise level that is sporadic throughout the workout. That is enough noise to blot out the real story unless your route includes some pretty hefty topography. Note however that the Edge 305 (not the 205, just the 305) has a barometric altimeter and so is just as accurate as the Polar and Suunto products for altitude. The other three Garmin products use GPS altitude.
It should be pointed out that all three of these products give you the freedom to do interval training away from the track or measured route, which is a very fine freedom to have in my opinion. They all incorporate time, heart rate and speed/pace limits and alerts and distance both running and on the bike. Compared to anything else on the market, there is no doubt that, if interval training is an important part of your regimen, these are the products you should be considering.
The Polar and Suunto products will do fine for the standard formats, and once you get used to them, if you pay attention, you'll get through the interval session in good shape. If the size or form factor of the Garmin puts you off, if recharging is an issue (long trips without access to power), or if you simply value the ability to wear the watch the rest of the day, you won’t go wrong with Polar or Suunto – they are good solid performers in the interval training world, with Polar having an edge in many of these categories. Suunto, however, has a more consistent signal from footpod to watch and from chest strap to watch, and the t6 is much more comfortable to wear.
Except for dropping the ball in the software department and the inaccuracy of the altitude graph, the Garmin products are taking interval training to a new level. They have more display real estate and a lot more power available for beeping, and they use them to good advantage. The team at Garmin has spent considerable time and effort making interval training a strong selling point, and one has to say they have succeeded. For flexibility in designing complex workouts and for guidance in following the plan, Garmin is the clear winner. The Forerunner is bulky for a lot of other runs during the week. But if off-track intervals are the key to your training, then it might be time to add a Garmin product to your arsenal of training tools. And if you are strictly a cyclist or if you can afford to have a separate training tool just for the cycling workouts, then the Edge 305 with both heart rate and cadence, is something you simply must have.
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