Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I made this purchase as soon as I heard about the product. I was lucky that the Nike+GPS was out of stock at the time or I would have ended up with one of those... funny how that works. I made the switch from the 405 (first generation) to the 610. I did enjoy the 405 and logged a couple thousand miles with it. My biggest beef was the useless bezel (you probably already know this). The 610 has blown the competition out of the water with the 610. Granted I have only done a few runs and about 25 miles with it, but my initial reaction is WOW. The touch screen works PERFECTLY on runs. Very easy to read and tap through screens. I love the vibrating alert feature (great for us audiophiles), which also can be set to back light. I run often in the darkness of the early morning so the that alert (set at 1 mile auto lap) reminds me to look down and check my split. I did have a few issues upload data to garmin connect, HOWEVER that was probably user error on my part. I decided to download the desktop software and try that out instead of the website. I attempted to send a workout to the watch, which cause the ant agent to "hold" the data and I never did get the watch to take it. I had to uninstall the gconnect and the ant agent. I am back to the garmin connect, which is just fine with me. The training screens are very customizable, I use two screens of two data fields... pace and distance on field one and ave pace and timer on page two. You can use four fields on a page and you can have a total of three pages... that is A LOT of data. I do not use a heart rate monitor so I cannot comment on that. The watch has WAY more data than I am concerned with, but maybe in the future I could use it. I do have a foot pod, but don't have in connected yet. Honestly, just too lazy to take it off my other shoes and also I don't feel it is necessary. The history setting on the watch is also FANTASTIC. It allows you to review your workouts on the watch, including splits. This great for times I am traveling and work out several times before getting back to my home computer. I saw a few reviews and a post or two on the garmin site pointing out some gps errors. I am not concerned with those. I don't really KNOW what the most accurate GPS data even is. I have measured routes with google maps, google pedometer, my car, bing maps, garmin, nike+, etc and they are NOT identical so I expect some error. Some days with my 405 I ended up with slightly different distances running the exact same route. I compared data from my 405 to the 610 on the same route and the 610 measure a .02 difference. That could be a starting at a difference place in my driveway, crossing for a car, etc. I am not concerned at all with the GPS accuracy. Bottom line, I love the watch and would recommend it to others. Update 12/18/2012 I still love the watch. I am now having major issues charging the watch. It has gone from a minor annoyance to frustration. I used to be able to slap a guitar capo on it while it was charging and it would be fine. Now I have to get the contacts just right, apply the right pressure, in the right direction, and then squeeze it to clamp on a heavy spring loaded carpenter clamp. If I am lucky I can get it to start charging. The watch holds a charge great. It works perfectly on runs, flawless data upload... the CHARGING PROCESS! AGGHHHH. I understand over time all of our beloved electronics bite the dust... but this only has 18 months on it and around 2000 miles. Does anyone know if buying a new charger make the issues go away for awhile? Update 5/8/2013 I was finally at a point where I could longer get the watch to charge. I emailed Garmin Support and they immediately replaced my charger and bam instant success! The watch is working flawlessly. There has been a time or two when I was having trouble get my data to upload to garmin-connect. I needed to simply have the ant agent forget the device and then repair. This watch is tough to beat. This time around I will take more care to dry my watch before charging. I think corrosion played a major roll in the charger failing.