Home > Consumer Reviews > Garmin Heart Rate Monitor For the Forerunner 50/405

This is an essential part of the Garmin fitness range of watches (specifically the Forerunner 50/405).

It sends wireless signals to the watch, and the data is stored until you upload it to your PC, and into the Garmin charting/graphing application. You can then see your heart rate, and the heart rate zones, displayed on the screen.

One thing though, the price of this alone is quite high, especially as Amazon sell it bundled with a Forerunner 50 watch for less!

You've probably heard what it does and I can confirm you that it does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. It tells you the distance, speed, calorie burnt and heart rate. With a bit patient, it can be a very effective training device.

Now for the downside, it's not very user-friendly. I can imagine my mum would be twiddling with it for ages and eventually shout out my name and ask for help. Secondly, the Garmin Ant USB as previously said by other users doesn't work properly. The PCs I tried have crashed or it didn't detect my device at all. Lastly, I got the kit brand new from Amazon UK but the battery was already gone. With further research, the watch actually has this reoccurring problem. Some said that it lasts less than the warranty which is 12 months. But I managed to change the battery myself without a hitch with a big big help from Marc who posted how to replace the battery for the Garmin Forerunner 50 at Fixya.

Overall, I'm fairly happy with it. It's not the best product in the market but it's affordable. If you could fork out a few more quid, buy or try out before you buy some other models. But if you fancy a no-nonsense watch for your training, then I would highly recommend this.
Lastly, thanks sis.

I bought this item to use with my Garmin Colorado 300. It synced up easily and does its job very well. Since I'm not the slimmest of people, I had to let the elasticated strap right the way out. The strap itself clips and unclips on either side and doesn't come loose once it's done up.

I have had one problem with this unit - the wireless range is extremely limited. If I clip the Colorado to my belt it keeps losing contact with the heart rate monitor. I've taken to putting a cord round my neck and clipping the GPS to that. That seems to have eliminated the problem.

It worked for one day and then packed up. I tried a new battery and other tips after talking direct to Garmin. They were very proactive and sent me a new one out within a few days asking for the old one back. Otherwise I would give 5 stars. I was very impressed with Garmin UK support who answered the phone directly and answered emails.

I have had a few heart rate monitors and have really liked the polar ones i have had before. The last gave out and so i was looking round with a view to getting the Suunto T4. I then saw this and having commenced a fair bit of running i went for this. I didn't like this at first. To be fair the HRM and the syncing for the GPS started really easily but i could not get it to sync with the computer ever. At that stage i also had a MAC and the product did not support MAC. I continued to use and every now and again tried to sync with my laptop - first XP then vista. No luck. A few days ago saw my mate who has an older model and reminded me that Garmin have now released a MAC interface. Low and behold it works like a reasonable dream. I do now really like this watch. It is still fiddly and does silly things, but mainly it works well and you can see your data, see a map overlay with a real map and look at splits etc etc.

Overall a good HRM and i have had it over a year and touch wood still going strong in the battery department. And i have done well over a 100 runs in that time.