Garmin Forerunner 301 Portable Navigator

Bought this for my wife and had been looking at them for a while, but had held off due to the price of one that was not the size of a walkman. The wrist watches were still very big and seemed hard to see route info. This is just the right size and accomplishes what is needed. My wife really likes the software tracking to log her runs. It did lose the signal under tree cover, but caught back up with the whole time and distance once clear.

I bought this item for my husbands birthday. He loves it! It's a cool gadget and is great for tracking your running workouts! It's a little big for the wrist, but he doesn't like things that YELL out "Hey! I'm a gadget geek!" Otherwise I would suggest it as a purchase to be satisfied with.

I wanted to try low heart rate training so I looked into heart rate monitors first but came across the Forerunner 301 during my search. With the sale price, it really wasn't that much more expensive than a good heart rate monitor and you get so much more. I love knowing the distance and pace etc. along with the alerts if my heart rate is too fast or slow. The Training Center software is great for tracking progress. I live in a small city with no extremely large buildings so I haven't had trouble with losing GPS signal in general, only a little bit when I ran through a wooded area. The GPS isn't 100% accurate, but it is close enough for my purposes. The unit is a bit big, but I knew that going in and I don't mind it at all. The only issue I've had so far is that the software locked up on me after a run. I couldn't even turn it off so I let the battery run out and then I could use it again. I since googled that issue and found out that it has happened to others as well. There is a way to reset it, but it isn't intuitive. If it wasn't for that, I would have given it 5 stars overall as well.

I bought the the Garmin 301 because it has everything I had been looking for. It is easy to read the data from the unit. I own 2 other heart monitors/gps/watches. This by far exceeds the other two and the price was right. I like the information that it gives you and it is easy to find your workout information. I also like how easy it is to download the information to my computer. You can plan your workout ahead of time and then download it to your unit. I have been extremely happy with this and would recommend it to anyone.

This is truly a great product. I am really amazed at all the features that this product has. One of my favorite is the ability to use the software that comes with it to setup customized workouts. Then you just upload. When you're ready to perform the workout, load and off you go! The only issue I have is the satelitte link-up is slow at times. In extremely heavy tree coverage on trails, it can lose the signal briefly. I think that's to be expected with just about any GPS product. Other than that, I give it 2 thumbs way up!