Garmin Forerunner 620 Review: Is it worth $450

The Garmin 620 has some pretty impressive features, but it cost $450, that’s $200 more than it’s little brother, the Garmin 220. Is it really worth the extra $200? Check out the above video for some of the useful features.

Here are a few of the notable features that differentiate the Garmin 620 from the Garmin 220

VO2 Max estimator

This is a really cool feature that estimates your VO2 max. It can even estimate this when running at sub VO2 max speeds. You don’t actually have to run all out. If you know your max HR, the watch uses math to estimate based on your speed and %HR

Race predictor

It can predict your current race fitness without making you run a time trial!

It takes your HR and speed of any given run and uses fancy mathematics to give you a prediction of your current race fitness, amazing!
My race predictions were fairly accurate

Recovery Adviser

Based on things like heart rate variability, it gives you an estimate of how long it will take you to recover from any given workout. I ran a 10k time trial yesterday and it told me it would take 72 hrs to recover. I then went for a run today and it gave me an update on how well I was doing on my recovery; it told me I still need about 40 hrs to recovery from the effort

Run Dynamics

Uses and accelerometer in the HR monitor to tell you info about vertical oscillation, ground contact time, and gives you a real time score during your run to help you adjust your stride

WiFi: the watch has built in WiFi, so it can upload as soon as you step inside
Internal watch accelerometer: keeps track of your distance while on the treadmill. The watch will become more accurate after it calibrates automatically from the GPS data of an outdoor run (220 has this as well)

There are a lot of similarities between 220 and 620

620 uses magnets to hold watch in cradle

620 is only slightly thicker and a little heavier

I found the new Garmin HR monitor to not have erratic HR data as the old ones did, it now has 3 sensors on the the strap plus a built in accelerometer to measure run dynamics such as vertical oscillation, and ground contact time