Garmin Forerunner 610 Problem

This is a copy of a review I just posted on Amazon for the Garmin Forerunner 610 GPS Watch.

————-

I purchased this GPS watch about a week ago.  When I first received it, I put it in the charging cradle and charged it to 100%.  Everything was fine.  I ran with it a few days, then upgraded the firmware to the new 2.4 release.  The next time I attempted to charge the unit, instead of charging, it began to discharge with the percent charge number going down until the unit was fully discharged.

I checked the Garmin forums to see if there was a fix for this and found that there are a whole bunch of people dealing with this issue.  A Garmin rep posted in late June that they were aware of the problem and were looking into it, but there have been no additional postings about it since then.

I attempted a few other things on my own to try to fix this.  I did a hard reset.  No go.  I also attempted to charge the unit through the computers USB port.  Again no go.

I’ve contacted Garmin support this morning (Sunday) and hope that I will get a response tomorrow.

If you’re considering purchasing one of these, I suggest you check the Garmin forums first to see if this issue has been resolved, otherwise you’re taking you’re chances.

I’ll write an update to this when I have more information.  The GPS watch itself is pretty nice with lots of features and if it wasn’t for this problem probably would have gotten a really good review.  I previously owned a Forerunner 305 for many years and was always happy with it and I hope I’ll soon be able to say the same thing about the 610.

Posted by Al on 07/10/11 at 05:54 AM in Other