Garmin Forerunner 101

The Forerunner 201 for those on a budget

The Garmin Forerunner 101 is exactly the same as the popular Forerunner 201 with a couple of small changes. Being the case I won't review the actual product since everything that needs to be said about it's GPS features can be found in the reviews for the Forerunner 201.

The most notable difference with the 101 is that it uses 2 AAA batteries istead of being rechargeable like the 201. At first I thought this was a big detraction to buying it but it's really not that bad. Battery life is decent although not as high as with the 201 which gets up to 13 hours of use on a full charge. But if you're not a marathon runner and just run a few miles on your runs this shouldn't matter much. The only hassle is having the batteries go dead during the middle of a run which really sucks if you're into knowing exactly how far you've gone. You have to keep an eye on the battery life before going out. The batteries don't really effect the weigh or size of the product though.

The second major difference is that this unit does not interface with your PC. This also isn't too big of a problem because currently the Garmin software is really lacking. Hopefully they will improve on it with time but the PC software is nowhere near as nice as it could be at this stage. You can view a graph of your altitude for your run and graphs of your pace and speed and that's about it. Otherwise the software is really crummy. You can't even zoom in on your map like you can with the actual unit.

If you're serious about running I would highly suggest the Forerunner 201 over this product mainly because the price difference is so negligible. You can find the 201 for only about $20 more than this model and the extra money is well worth the rechargeability of the 201 and freedom from the batteries. But if you really can't afford the cost you're not going to be hurting too much with the 101.More detail ...