Garmin Forerunner 10 Review

What's the best part about getting back into running? Getting new gear! Just before I ran the Bentonville Half in 2011, I got a Garmin Forefunner 405. It has more bells and whistles than I know what to do with, and a touch bezel -- an invention dumber than this.

At the time, it was near the top of the line for GPS watches, but the touch bezel was so weird that I could barely use it. My sweaty fingers would accidentally select almost everything except what I wanted to select, and the battery life was pathetic. It's also huge and ugly. And huge.

So imagine my delight when Trea surprised me with a new Garmin Forerunner 10 for Christmas! In PINK! 

Pink was this year's theme for my gifts. Can't go wrong there!

The Forerunner 10 has just four buttons -- no touch bezel or touch screen -- and it's a very basic GPS watch. It only displays pace, distance, time and calories, but it shows me elevation and everything else I was used to seeing from the 405 after I upload my runs to Garmin Connect. It doesn't display average pace, and that's the only thing I miss about the 405. It also doesn't sync wirelessly with my computer; I have to plug it in. But it's so worth it to have a watch that actually fits my arm and does what I tell it to do with a simple push of a button. 

And it's adorable. (Focus on how adorable it is, not on how sad the numbers are.)

Here they are side by side. I let the 405 battery die a slow and painful death. It probably took all of two hours.

The Forerunner 10's skinny strap breathes so much better than the giant, wide 405 strap. And it's adorable. Did I mention it's pink? 

I'm going to hang onto the 405 because Pinky isn't multisport, and I plan to still use the 405 for bike rides. But for running, the Forerunner 10 is my new favorite thing. And it's not important to me at all that it just happens to match my pink iPod shuffle and pink shoes. The most important thing is that it fits my wrist, tracks my runs accurately and is super easy to use. (And it's pink!)