Garmin forerunner 620 review

I would like to say that the views and opinions of this review are my own. Garmin did not give me anything for the review. However Garmin, if you would like to give me things for me to review, I would gladly accept them!

Last week I entered a contest to win a Garmin Forerunner 620. A local running store, The Columbus Running Company posted on their Instagram that they were giving the running watch away, you simply had to go find the giant sticker on the random window that was their new store front and take a selfie with it and put it online by 8pm that evening. Easy enough... I had an inkling of where it was, so I jumped in my car, ignoring my messy living room that was on my to-do list for that afternoon, and went on the hunt. 

I reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllly wanted this watch

The next day they put this picture on their facebook page. This means that I.... WON!!!!

That's me in the middle

So it's now a few weeks later and I have gotten a few runs in the watch (and written a rather lengthy post about the garmin already that was deleted some how) and it's time to write my feelings about it.

The Garmin forerunner 620

Fresh out of the box. 

It comes in 2 colors, white with orange accents, or black with blue accents. This particular watch comes with a HR monitor and a "docking cord" that magnetizes to the back of the watch and plugs into the usb drive on your computer and any time it's plugged in you can read your data and it charges the watch. Pretty nifty. The watch itself is very lightweight and seamless. There are 4 buttons around the watch, a back button and settings button on the sides of the face that are touch, plus the face itself is touch screen and toggles through your current runs stats. 

This watch is intense. It tells you everything from you pace and distance and HR, to your vo2 max, cadence and vertical oscillation. I had to look that one up. If you are a numbers junkie, then this watch will entertain you for many hours. 

Going for a run- 

Any good Garmin owner knows how to take a watch pic. I need to work on this one. I didn't even get my shoes in the picture.

This is the home screen. The face of the watch is huge, but so light weight you cant hardly tell your wearing it. 

So I went out for a 16 mile run with a friend. We started out early, so we looped back to our cars after 9 miles to shed headlamps and outer layers before heading back into the woods for the last 7. I paused my run, using the start stop button. Once you hit stop it either pauses it until you hit that button again to continue, or the words "save/discard" pop up on the screen if you are done. While my running buddy was in the bathroom I kept saying to myself, don't hit save, don't hit save, don't hit save... My buddy came back and I felt I was in the clear. We hoped back onto the trail, I picked up my wrist... and touched the big fat save button. DANG IT! It was too enticing I guess. So that day I did 2 runs. I'm that hard core.

Also during the run the watch tells you your splits. I don't care to look at my stats while I run. Frankly, it would drive me nuts if I could see what I was doing constantly, so I run with the watch locked on the time screen. Why yes, it even tells time! But at each mile marker it vibrates and flashes your current split time, not average split time. It's a great way to gauge yourself on an easy run. 

After the run

This watch has some really cool features after you finish your run,  IF you are wearing the HR monitor. Once you pause or stop your run, it starts tracking your pulse, and after a few minutes the watch tells you your recovery heart rate. This is how it determines your Vo2max, and tells you how in shape you are based on how fast your heart rate recovers. Because I had saved my first half of the run, it assumed I was done running, so when I started again after a few minutes it told me I was recovering poorly. After you are done running, the watch tells you how long your should recover for. I need to look into this one a little more, because it always tells me I should recover for 72 hours after a good run. It would be highly ineffective to only run every three days. 

Garmin Connect

Garmin connect is garmin's online data base where you can look at all of your stats. There is a button on the bottom right of the watch your supposed to push that says "connect". Every time I have pushed this button it says 'Go to Gamin Express to set up Wi-fi.' I have downloaded and uploaded everything it tells me to, and this button still doesn't work. I'm sure I am doing something wrong, but I don't know what it is and I can't figure out how to fix it. So every time I want to look at my stats I have to plug the watch in and download my run to the system. It's not that big of a deal, but I think it's supposed to upload wirelessly. I have also done about 5 updates to the watch since I got it 2 weeks ago, and have had quite a few problems with the online system. 

Overall 

I love this watch. Everything about it. The slight problems that I have had are mostly due to the learning curve of getting a new fancy gadget. I would highly recommend reading the manual the watch comes with. Of course, I'm too cool to do so, and it took me forever to figure out that the back button and settings buttons on the face where there. There are so many little interesting things about this watch it's hard to learn it all on your own. 

Is it worth the money?

It's hard to say anything poor about any other watch or the other Garmin's that are on the market because I have never worn another running watch, but I would have to say this watch is definitely worth the money as long as you are into stats. On the outside, this watch is very slim and basic, which is exactly how it should be when you are wearing it on your wrist for hours at a time. But internally, this watch is a beast. It gives you stats, workouts, and information people pay a lot of money for. If you are serious about your training and learning who you are as a runner, this watch is the watch to get. 

picture dump from the first nice day we had this season. Went out for a nice and easy 6 miler to test run the watch for the first time. Gorgeous sunset.

#nofilter