Garmin GPS Reviews

We’ve heard a lot of great things about the Forerunner 310XT - dubbed “The King of Wrist-Mounted Trainers” by Wired magazine and praised by triathletes as the watch they’ve been waiting for - but a recent email got our attention. With the subject line simply “WOW” - Runner’s World columnist John “The Penguin” Bingham summed up his experience with the Forerunner 310XT.

I finally had a chance to get out for a decent run using the XT. WOW. The XT is better than anything on the market by a factor of 10. In my view, it’s better than any other Garmin product by a factor of 5. For the first time in YEARS I was able to run with only one piece of equipment on my wrist.

As a run/walker – and someone who has promoted run/walking in my books and training schedules – the interval training workout was FANTASTIC. And, as someone who uses the strategy in races the fact that the unit vibrates at the intervals is BRILLIANT! You have created as close to the perfect training companion as I can imagine. There’s nothing about the unit that I would change. Thanks.

Thank you, John. And thanks to everyone at Runner’s World, which showcased Garmin’s fitness watches in the July issue. You’ll see the FR60 on the cover, and the inside feature on training technology features the FR60, Forerunner 405, Forerunner 50 as well as the 310XT. Get your copy and start training with Forerunner today!

Thanks to the 1,300+ new golf course maps now available on the Approach G5 website, I can finally get around my local track while actually knowing exactly where to hit the ball…or more accurately, where to aim the ball.

Swope Memorial Golf Course, an historic A.W. Tillinghast classic overlooking downtown Kansas City, is laid out in some of the hilliest terrain in the area. The course flows up and down, turning and twisting through large, old-growth trees creating a bevvy of blind shots. Even if you’ve played dozens of rounds at Swope, you’re still left with numerous blind shots that you haven’t faced before.

So to have the Approach G5 in my bag - specifically, having the ability to see the entire hole laid out in brilliant color, having the ability to touch the exact spot on the map where I want to hit the ball, and then zoom in for a better view of layup areas and greens, was invaluable.

Instead of employing the traditional method of “…aim left of the third oak - the one with the big leaves, two trees left of the squirrel,” the Approach G5 offered my partner and I crystal clear views of exactly where we needed to hit it.

The Approach G5 was particularly handy playing the diabolical 560-yard par-5 17th, a huge blind, uphill then downhill dogleg left.

As you can see in the attached images, the tee shot is uphill, turns left and if you’re a bigger hitter, blind as a bat. Same thing goes for the second shot - a downhill, blind shot left to a tiny landing area. The typical technique is to either walk 150 yards forward to see the landing area, or to try and remember which building in the distance lines up with where you need to hit it.  For the first time in recent memory, both my partner and I hit the tiny landing area and finished the hole with two net birdies.

We were playing in an 8-man scramble, so we weren’t keeping our own score. Instead, we used the Digital Scorecard feature to keep track of our round. A handly little tip for when you’re playing a club event or tourney, but still want to keep your own score.