The 310-XT is a GPS enabled HR monitor watch by one of the most famous brand names in GPS devices.
This sports watch is available with or without the heart rate monitor feature, which consists of a chest strap with a heart rate detector that sends heart rate data wirelessly to the watch.
The 310XT watch itself has a huge display with large clear digits, and is clearly aimed at the sporting enthusiast rather than the fashion-conscious. Some of the more fashionable and slim watches from Garmin have small fiddly buttons that look nice, but are actually quite impractical, since it is difficult to hit small buttons while exercising. Not the 310XT though. The two most commonly used buttons, Start and Lap, are large and placed directly on the watch face, making the 310-XT a breeze to use in practice.
The chest strap is made of soft fabric, and is comfortable to wear in use. The heart rate monitor module itself can be unattached from the chest strap and rinsed in water after use, and contains a user-replaceable CR2032 battery. The strap itself should also be rinsed in water and dried after use; it is not machine washable. If you are a triathlete, you’ll love this watch: Garmin Forerunner 310-XT.
The Garmin 310-XT watch is waterproof to a depth of 50 meters, and is therefore usable for running, biking and swimming. Note however that all GPS devices lose the GPS signal when immersed even briefly in water, therefore the watch can only get an accurate read on your position before you enter the water and after you exit the water, so distance calculations will only be correct if you swim in a straight line. It CANNOT reacquire the GPS signal accurately during the few seconds you lift your hand out of the water during a swim stroke, and so cannot be used during lap swimming (unless you’re willing to pause during each lap) or swimming in an irregular path. However, the HR monitoring feature still works fine in water. The display can be configured to divide into quadrants to display any four of the following parameters : heart rate, % maximum heart rate, calories burnt, calories left, current speed, current elevation, distance covered, distance ahead, time ahead, current time, elapsed time, and more.
The display backlight automatically comes on at night, and is actually rather bright, making it seem like you are jogging with a torchlight. The 310-XT watch comes with a rechargeable battery, and can be detached from the wrist strap and hooked up onto the recharging plate for recharging overnight. Each charge is good for 20 hours of exercise.
For biking, the Forerunner 310XT watch can also be accessorized with a variety of other Garmin devices that make the 310-xt sports watch even more useful. For example, there is the bike mount (available separately), which allows you to detach the Forerunner 310xt from the wrist strap and place it front and center in front of you on the bike, because a watch on your wrist is in a very awkward position for comfortable use during biking. There are also a variety of sensors you can attach to your bike that can communicate with the Garmin 310-XT, and tell it stuff like the pedal RPM and your cycling power.
For jogging, you can buy a foot pod from Garmin that will tell you your pace rate and distance.
All this data is stored on your Forerunner 310XT, and can be downloaded onto your computer for analysis. Downloading the date is a snap. The Garmin 310xt watch comes with a USB stick called the ANT stick that works as an antenna when plugged into the USB port, allowing the 310XT to download data wirelessly to both Macs and PCs. This sports watch comes with the Garmin Training Center software, which is a seriously powerful piece of software. It can display your exercise route on Google Earth, chart any of the variables the watch has recorded, automatically log your exercise sessions on a calendar so that you have a record of how frequently and how hard you were exercising, and can plot daily, weekly or monthly calorie expenditures. There is even a third-party plugin functionality, with slightly less than a hundred free plugins available, allowing you to slice and dice the data any way you wish.
In conclusion, the Garmin Forerunner 310XT is a serious piece of hardware for the athlete in you, and should receive serious consideration from any sports enthusiast.