Comments on: Garmin Forerunner 405 Review

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:15:45 +0000

Hi Matt, a friend of mine had the same problem and what she put the 405 inside a container whit rice (raw of course! and completely covered) all night long. The rice grains extracted all the humidity from the 405. Try it!

By: Matt S

Matt S — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:07:59 +0000

I’ve had my 405 since July 2008 and I have just recently started having problems with condensation. I’ll call or email Garmin customer support and see what they say about it. It pretty much happens every time I run now right from the start, so I think it got some condensation trapped in there at some point. I have run a few times in heavy rain with my 405 so maybe that was the cause.

- Matt

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:10:57 +0000

Dear Steve, what you can try is to push al the same time the buttoms start/stop and lap/reset and wait a moment. This cause the unit to restart.

Best regards

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:01:14 +0000

Dear Steve, what you can try is to push al the same time the buttoms start/stop and lap/reset. This cause the unit to restart.

Best regards

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 24 May 2009 13:57:24 +0000

i seem to experience the same bug as described above: the screen of my forerunner 405 is blank. once attached to the charger the display states that chargin is completed at 100% capacity. if i deteach the charger the screen turns blank again.
i have the latest fw installed: 2.30
.
how is this problem solved? any hints?

Steve

By: Sean Sweeney

Sean Sweeney — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:51:09 +0000

Just got my Garmin 405 a week ago, I am a competitive runner and freaking love this thing. I had a Polar RS200SD before and can say that my experience with the Garmin has been much better, only because its compatible with Mac, and because I dont have to calibrate the foot pod anymore and worry about my stride being a bit off therefore crippling the distance and pace results that it gives me. The GPS is a great piece of technology and syncing my workouts on Garmin connect wirelessly could not be any cooler. Just need to get the heart rate monitor now. As a long time customer with Polar I can say that there customer service is amazing, and they have always fixed my watch without any ifs or buts. They even paid for shipping and repairs when my watches warranty was expired by a whole year. If you are a runner and have to narrow it down to two watches it should be between the Garmin 405 and the Polar RS300X(which comes with GPS pod with an armband, it is light I have heard. So over all loving the Garmin 405 and recommend Polar to all as well.

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:48:46 +0000

The wristband of my FR405 also broked yesterday. I have been tying to contact Garmin Support without sucess. I think that the problem is due to the elongation of the watch case where the wristband begins. If your wrist is very small (like mine!) then you will have to force a little bit the band in order to have fixed the watch and in the point of inflection the band deteriorates easily.

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:42:50 +0000

Hi!

I experienced that problem. Yesterday thw wristband of my FR405 broked!!! I have been trying to contact Garmin Support without sucess. It seems to me that the problem is due to the extensions of the case of this watch (where inside there is the antenna). If your wrist is small, as mine, then the wristband will have to be very folded in order to have the watch well fixed and in this case there is a point of inflection where the wristband deteriorates.

By: Michael Krotscheck

Michael Krotscheck — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:06:38 +0000

For the record, ever since the firmware update ( which took me a few tries- I thought I accidentally bricked my 405 at one point ) I have had no problems with lockup whatsoever.

By: Arvid

Arvid — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:59:59 +0000

Garmin seems to have major quality issues with this unit.
I got my Forerunner 405 yesterday. My initial experience of the product included a broken wrist band and a semi lock up (could be reset using the vulcan 2-button-7 seconds manuver) and finally a full lock up where the unit just turned of and wouldn’t start again.
Once I plugged it in to the charger the unit showed that it had 68% of battery capacity left and started charging.

This unit is nothing like the high quality products that I bought from Garmin in the past.

//Arvid

By: jim

jim — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:24:36 +0000

just picked up the forerunner 405 2 weeks ago ,been working great, but the screen just went blank while sitting at work. I checked this morning and it was at 40%.

I’ll try the recharge clip trick to see if it will revive, it.

Compared to my 201, not really impressed with the battery life – especially if I need to recharge every week as compared to 2 weeks. Or if it goes below 50%.

By: S Guest

S Guest — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:24:17 +0000

Anyone had problems with Condensation getting inside their FR405? Only ever used it for running and not in the rain.

Contacted Garmin and they advised putting in the Airing Cupboard! This solved the problem for a little while, but on long runs the screen steams up again. Also the bezel stops responding which is really annoying!

- Steve

By: M Strauss

M Strauss — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:52:01 +0000

The wrist band broke with out any obvious reson. Has anyone else experienced the same problem?

By: Max

Max — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 23:51:03 +0000

Hi,

I am dissapointed with the battery life of the 405. I don’t know if the problem is the calibration of the battery guage or when the battery gets to around 40% it just crashed the watch. The later might indicate that the battery hasn’t got the power to sustain the watch at low percentages.

- Max.

By: Hans Arvid

Hans Arvid — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:01:45 +0000

Hello!

Thanks for some good tips about the crash problem.

But… the update doesn’t fix the crash. I updated my watch yesterday, went for a 10 km. run, everything was ok. Today the battery was at a 43% charge, I went for a 7 km run and it crashed just before 3,5 km. Just as before… I think there is a memory error. Let me explain: When the received data is saved, at some point it hits a damaged area of memory, it crashes, just as a computer would do.
My watch crash after 3-4 km, it has done that several times. I even tried to remove the battery in the heart monitor belt – to try to reanimate the watch – no chance. The watch doesn’t react to the USB stick either. The only thing is to connect the battery charger – removing that will also get the watch to crash… Sigh.. I get so demotivated…

- HAJ

By: Terje

Terje — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:17:49 +0000

Good news,

Garmin released a new firmware (v 2.20), where one of the changes mentioned in the release notes is “Fixed issue where watch could freeze with bezel, accessories, and GPS not working.”. I installed the new firmware today, and tested the watch for two runs (90 minutes in total). No crash! Almost all of my previous runs crashed after 10 to 30 minutes…

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:21:11 +0000

Update on previous post.

I figured out that the Training Center software has the same User Profile settings and whenever you upload an activity, the software graciously overwrites your device settings.

So, the solution is to tell training center what to program your device with.

No crashes then. Phew.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:36:44 +0000

I have my FR405 for about a month now. Never seen a crash, but had to re-enter my User Profile (DOB, weight, etc) thrice. Basically what happens is that I enter my info, and several days later I discover it defaulted back to factory settings. No clear reason why.

I’m wondering if it does crash (when I’m not looking) and forget everything. Can you guys confirm your User Profile gets reset after crashes?

(support ticket openend with Garmin as well)

By: jimmy

jimmy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:59:38 +0000

I received an answer from the belgian support : they explained me the battery level indicator may be not correctly gauged.

Solution : I have to let it unload completely until 0% and reload it to 100% and the problem should be solved.

Indeed the problem did not occur again until now (crossed fingers!!).

Did you guys have the problem only once? or some of you did encounter it twice?

By: Stefan

Stefan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:27:50 +0000

Finally I got into contact with the Garmin support in Germany (how I managed this is a different story, the support itself did not answer to any of my requests).
They asked me to send my forerunner in and they replaced it. The new one seems to be ok. Until now I used it for about 15 trainings and no crash. Hopefully this will stay.
Probably the crashes occur only on single devices and there is no general design flaw. So, in any way I would try to get into contact with Garmin support and insist on replacing the device.