Home > Consumer Reviews > Garmin Forerunner 50 Sports Watch with Wireless Sync & Personal Heart Rate Monitor

I bought the Garmin Forerunner 50 with HR monitor having previously owned and used Polar HR products. I consider myself a serious competitive cyclist who races regularly and so I want to use the HR monitor as a tool for my training.

I purchase it at £29.99 and so at that price I think it was a bargain, but reading through other people's comments I would agree with all the different viewpoints on here!

The product is very simple and it's not too difficult to use - once you've read the manual it becomes fairly intuitive although I can see why people might be confused at first.

The HR monitor is accurate and reliable, although sometimes I find it is not so responsive at the start of a training session and I need to either wet the chest strap or get sweating in order for it to pick up a constant signal (moisture increases the effectiveness of the HR monitor#.

Like a few other comments on here, today I got home to find that the HR monitor had stopped recording for about 30 minutes out of a 3 hour ride. This is because - as others have mentioned - the start/stop button is positioned on the right-hand side of the watch and so when you are cycling and your wrists are bent, jacket/jersey creases and clothing can easily press the button. This is annoying to say the least and I'm not sure how to get around it - I've tried wearing the monitor on the outside of my clothing but I think the only solution is to wear it on my right-hand wrist.

The Garmin Training Centre software is a fun and useful way of analysing the HR data but I found it was a little awkward to set up and the USB Ant stick fails to automatically download my data - I have to manually click 'download data' on the software as the auto-sync fails each time #even though I have set it up correctly#.

If you want to share your data with others in the Garmin Connect online community, you can't do this from the Training Centre software which is a bit odd - instead you have to manually sync your watch with a different plugin within your internet browser, duplicating the workload.

Overall, it does exactly what it says on tin. If I had paid £60 for this I would have been fairly disappointed with the niggles I've mentioned but for the price you just have to work around them. Equivalent Polar HR monitors cost a lot more than this but hopefully Garmin will take these concerns into account in future designs.

Overall: good value for money - and everything that other people say is true. You get what you pay for, I guess.

When I read the initial reviews I expected to experience some RTFM issues (read the #@%$£^ manual), as they appeared to be quite negative as to the functionality and design of the watch.

In reality it took about 2 minutes to set-up, it came paired with the chest strap and required no more than 3 key presses to get to any function.

Downloading the training software was straightforward and on installation it paired with the watch immediately.

I did a 30m workout on the stairmaster and within 2 minutes I had a heart rate graph on screen.

A steal at £30. Enjoy!

I bought the FR 50 about 2 weeks ago and absolutely love it.I have returned to running after an absence of 8 years and was looking for a HRM to aid my training.At the time i didn't know there were such things as 'Footpods' available - if only they had been around 15 years ago !! Having seen an advert for the FR 405 i decided that i would look into it further. Once i read the reviews on this site i quickly changed my mind and plumped for the much more 'cost effective' FR 50. I bought the FR 50 & Footpod from Amazon (brilliant service) and HRM elsewhere. Having made sure i properly read the instructions i set out for a 6 miler in my local Country Park. I returned 40 mins later to realise my 6 miler was only just over 4 miles !! At this point i was thinking about sending the footpod sailing down the nearest river, surely there was some mistake. The following night i went to my local Track and ran 400 mtrs to calibrate it and it was spot on - the bloody thing !! I would recommend the FR 50 to any runners who are still guessing at their weekly mileage. Absolutely brilliant. Buy it. Its got everything a runner needs - and more.

The guy who gave this a 1 star rating is mad! Considering the vast amount of complex features the forerunner 50 offers, it's operation is fairly simple and intuative. As for the display / time being hard to read - he really must be blind! Regarding pressing the start/stop button with your wrist, I must admit that I wear cycling gloves that bunch up at the wrist and the velcro tab pressed the button a few times on my first outing so I moved the watch up my wrist slightly and the issue was easily solved. I think this is great value for money considering all of the functions it provides when used with the HRM, footpod and bikepod. Also, much more expensive GPS based devices don't work when on a treadmill or using a turbotrainer whereas the Forerunner 50 does. I wonder if the 1 star guy works for Polar?

Used to have a basic polar HRM watch for running until strap broke. Been looking forward to Forerunner 405 but not impressed by reviews so jumped at this "deal of the week" offer! Managed to buy watch and heart rate monitor + footpod strap for ~£65.

1. Looks good as a normal watch
2. Straightforward to link up all three items (read manual)
3. Software download no probs, and uploading workout info automatic
4. Footpod secure on shoe - if you want to measure distance/speed or pace, then the footpod works a treat. Dont need expensive GPS model.
5. watch has all necessary functions - laps, interval timer, even tells the time!
6. so far so good - all items have replaceable battery