Timex Marathon GPS

I love this watch it was just what I wanted! not fancy, and just the features I needed and did not spend 300.00. I run in the city but in wooded areas and it works great!

I've been running recreationally for four years, three to four times a week, usually with one long run on Sundays. I bought this watch two weeks ago because I wanted a cheap, simple, waterproof GPS watch that shows current running speed.

For those of you new to GPS watches, you should know that GPS watches don't give you an instant pace, but an "average" current pace over the last minute or so. During my first run, I did a little experiment to see how fast it picks up the change in speed. At warm-up, watch was showing 6.1min/km. I sped up to the pace I know from experience was about 5 min/km. Initially nothing happened. After 20-30 seconds, pace changed to 5.8, then after another 10-15 seconds to 5.6, and it kept going down. It took around a minute to go down to 5.1min/km. If you want instantaneous pace, you need a watch with foot pod, but they have different gotchyas to GPS watches, and my preference was GPS watch.

It is fairly simple to use: you press the GPS button, wait 30 seconds to pick up the signal, click "Mode" few times till you find "Run", and press "Start". Watch display is quite large, easy to see, and you can adjust the contrast of letters vs the background. Display shows time/distance/current pace. You can change that to time/distance/km/ per hour (for biking) or time/distance/calories or few other combinations.

You can do automatic laps, or splits, and you can use it indoors, like a normal chronograph watch.

The watch is fairly bulky, like other GPS watches on the market.

Pros:
-Great battery life of 8 hours of running (apparently it lasts few months as a normal watch)
-Easy to re-charge off the USB port
-Waterproof, you can swim with it
-The cheapest GPS running watch on the market
-Intuitive

Cons:
-No option of downloading data , although you can save the runs and review them on the watch. One of the web reviews said that Soleus cable can be used to download data, but Timex company has obviously chosen not to offer that option.
-No heart rate monitor (there is a small heart symbol, and my suspicion is Timex has not provided that option, either, probably because nobody would be buying their more expensive watches if this one offered the same features for a third of the price) running watches with gps
-Buttons are sensitive, I switched indiglo light on few times by accident.

For the price of $99, this is a very good value. It's so much cheaper than other GPS watches on the market. If you need a very basic, no-fuss watch to monitor your time, distance and pace on medium to long runs, this will do the job.

I would prefer to give it 4.5 stars due to sensitive buttons, but apart from that, the watch does what it promises, and price is amazing.

More information at Timex T5K3639F5 Marathon GPS Watch