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From Fellrnr.com, Running tips
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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Garmin 225 Review}}
I've [[Best Running Watch| tested several optical heart rate monitors ]] and found them rather ineffective, so I came to the {{Garmin 225}} with low expectations. To my surprise, the 225 worked much better than the competition, though there are still compromises in the 225's optical HRM. I'm a little disappointed in the way Garmin has crippled the 225 software compared with the 620, and I'm looking forward to trying out was hoping the replacement [[Garmin 235. '''I ]] would recommend not buying the 225 until the 235 is released and tested. I think the 235 will be a big improvement over . Sadly, while the 225, with 235 adds things like [[Connect IQ]], but even if you decide it's optical HRM is nowhere near as good as the 225 is for . '''If youwant optical heart rate monitoring, the release of 225 is the 235 should drop the price of the 225best I've found.''' A simple rating of the Garmin 225 can be based on how well they can answer some basic questions:
* '''How far did I run?''' This is the most basic question, and the 225 has rather poor GPS accuracy, so its estimate of how far you've run needs to be treated with a quite a bit of caution.
* '''How fast am I running?''' Knowing how fast you're running can be a nice to know, or it can be vital for your training or race performance. Because of the nature of GPS, watches that rely on GPS signal alone tend to have serious problems with current pace. Without the ability to display current [[Pace From A Footpod]] while getting all other data from GPS, the 225 can't answer this question. The poor GPS accuracy exacerbates this issue, and I've seen the pace estimate wildly wrong on the 225. The 225 would be my top pick for marathon runners, but I firmly believe that this is a killer feature, as accurate pacing is essential for a good marathon performance. (I've some slight hope that Garmin will add this feature in with a firmware update, as they have to a number of their newer watches.)
* '''Where am I? '''The 225 has no navigation features. If you're lost, the 225 won't be much help.
* '''What's my cadence? '''[[Cadence]]''' '''is one of the most critical and often overlooked aspects of running. If you get your Cadence right, many other things naturally fall into place. There is support for Cadence from the internal accelerometer, though I find that's not as accurate as the [[Footpod]] which it supports.
The 225 is not a good choice for ultrarunners, as its battery life is too short. See [[ShoesBest Running Watch#Watches for Ultrarunning| Watches for Ultrarunning]] for more details. (Turning off the optical heart rate monitor only increases the battery life a couple of hours.)
[[File:Garmin 225-top.JPG|thumb|none|200px|The {{Garmin 225}}, showing the display of Heart Rate from its Optical Heart Rate Sensor.]]
=Optical Heart Rate Monitoring=
