Tech tutorials, howtos and walkthroughs

Garmin is one of the more athletic of the fitness trackers out there. Sure, the other fitness trackers are great at tracking your general activity and are a curio of readouts that’ll keep those not serious about exercise fascinated.

But being No. 3 in IDC stats over the past two (2) years as listed in Analyst IDC logs Wearables Profitable in Q1 2015 Fitness Tracker Business didn’t come easy. They most likely achieved this lofty perch by focusing on making Fitness trackers more geared towards the serious Pro-Atheletes such as bodybuilders, Marathon Runner and sprinters.

This philosophy of design can be seen in the Garmin Forerunner 15 as described in Garmin Forerunner 15 is the Caribbean Fitness Procrastinator’s Motivation.

Geezam - Why Garmin Forerunner 225 is the Pro-Athelete’s Fitness Tracker - 03-08-2015 LHDEER (1)

If you’ve experience the Garmin Forerunner 15 telling you to move your lazy butt to exercise and you liked it, then the US$300 Garmin Forerunner 225 is the upscale version for the more serious Pro-Athelete.

Garmin Forerunner 225 does everything the Garmin Forerunner 15 does but more intense. In a nutshell, i’s a 24/7 activity tracker with built-in GPS and a Heart Rate monitor.

Let’s crack the nut that’s the Garmin Forerunner 225!

Garmin Forerunner 225 – Built Water-Resistant for a testosterone fuelled Pro-Athelete

The Garmin Forerunner 225 is a big bulky Fitness tracker with a circular face. Strangely enough, it only comes in one colour, black with red accents and is man sized at 48mm across its face.

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With built in LED Heart Rate sensor, GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope and magnetometer or compass, it’s mainly a man’s activity tracker, and is as obnoxious looking as a Casio G-Shock as detailed in Kelroy’s article Meet the new Bluetooth enabled G-SHOCK watch.

It easily bests the much cuter lookin’ Apple Watch that’s 42mm at it largest. Still, while it doesn’t make it in terms of style, Mission Catwalk Style, it is at least waterproof for up to 5 ATM or 50 meters below the wave.

This makes the Garmin Forerunner 225 an ideal watch to be wearing while going for a swim or wearing during a shower, or even have a sweat sex workout with your secretary, as yes, that counts as exercise!

Sorry, no swimming activity tracking capability like the Garmin Vivofit 2 as pointed out in Garmin Vivofit 2 is the year-long fitness tracker for Swim Fanatics.

It’s readable under any lighting conditions, be it in bright sunlight or in darkness, as it has a built in backlight. This is clearly not only a man’s watch but a pro-Atheletes Fitness Tracker

So what can the Garmin Forerunner 225 that’s with my US$300. Plenty!

Garmin Forerunner 225 – An activity Tracker made for Atheletes and Marathon Runners

The Garmin Forerunner 225 tracks distance using the GPS, but its accelerometer is just as accurate.

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Jamaican and Caribbean peeps in places like Bahamas who exercise and live in the countryside will love the fact that the GPS works very well, so long as you jog in open areas.  The Garmin Forerunner 225 tracks fourteen (14) separate Data points geared towards developing a healthier you:

  • Average heart-rate
  • Average pace
  • Cadence
  • Calories
  • Distance
  • Elevation
  • Heart-rate
  • HR zones
  • Lap distance
  • Lap pace
  • Lap time
  • Pace
  • Speed
  • Timer
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It also has inactivity alerts that vibrate, telling you to get up and start moving if you’ve been sitting down for too long. That is, if you choose to wear this activity tracker all day and all night, as it’s already a great looking, manly wristwatch.

After you input your personal Data i.e. age, height, weight, etc. into the Garmin Connect mobile App or website, you’ll be able to get real-time readouts on Heart Rate, lap time for runs and calories burnt.

The Heart Rate Data is played in a rather confusing multi-screen manner, especially on such a small circular screen.  But it’s based on a color code that determines what Heart Rate Training Zone your workout falls into and thus the intensity of your workout for you are:

  • Gray for Warm-Up Zone
  • Blue for Easy Zone
  • Green for aerobic Zone
  • Orange for Threshold zone
  • Red for Maximum zone

If you lied, you need to change your age to get more accurate age-relevant readings. The LED Heart Rate sensor is almost as accurate as a Polar H7 Bluetooth chest strap or Garmin chest-strap heart-rate monitor, being only off by a single beat.

Not wanting you to miss a beat, it has a feature like the Garmin Forerunner 15 called Auto Pause that chips in whenever you’re stuck in a traffic light.  You’re still on the exercise clock; it merely pauses the time until the accelerometer detects that you’re jogging again.

The Auto Lap feature tracks your lap after you’ve run or walked a specific distance, preferably a lot more than 10,000 steps. You don’t have to achieve the standard 10,000 steps if you’re walking or run a half-marathon if running; the exercise routines have Internal Training that’s customizable.

You can specify via the Connect mobile App or website or the Garmin Forerunner 225:

  • Distance
  • Exercise Repetitions
  • Rest period,
  • Time
  • Warm-up and cool down Sessions

At the end of an exercise routine, the Garmin Forerunner 225 gives you a summary of your workout detailing some of the fourteen (14) Data points to give you an idea of how well you’re doing:

  1. Average Heart Rate
  2. Cadence
  3. Calories burned
  4. Distance
  5. Elevation
  6. Maximum Heart Rate
  7. Pace

If you manage to live up to the Garmin Forerunner 225’s high impact exercise expectations, it informs you of your pace during each running eservice, a feature pro-Atheletes will love.

The results of any intense workout are indeed, their own reward!

Garmin Forerunner 225 – Great Battery Life but lacklustre features

Despite all these wonderful capabilities, the Garmin Forerunner 225 does have some limitations. It doesn’t, for instance, send notifications to your smartphone, a feature present on the Fitbit Surge or Apple Watch.

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Geezam - Why Garmin Forerunner 225 is the Pro-Athelete’s Fitness Tracker - 03-08-2015 LHDEER (1)

I’d expected this of the Garmin Forerunner 225, as any pro-level Athelete exercises with his Smartphone aka ball and chain strapped to his arm or around his waist. He’d also most likely be wearing Bluetooth or thick waterproof headphones that allow him to take calls on the go.

Also there’s no built in coach inside, like the Jawbone up or even the newest kid on the block, the Moov Now fitness tracker that’s coming in September 2015.

Although it tracks your sleep cycle, it doesn’t so at the same resolution level as the other fitness trackers, such as the Jawbone Up. The Garmin Forerunner 225 merely displays a graph of your nocturnal movements and that it.

As a comparison, the Jawbone Up provides Sleep Data in terms of the deep sleep, light sleep, how long it took your to get to sleep, the amount of times you tossed and turned and your  nocturnal emission at night i.e. urination and sex with you wife or mistress.

It gets up to ten (10) hours with active GPS and the Heart Rate sensor running, but claims to stretch to as much as 4 weeks once it’s only being used in wristwatch mode.

That’s not as long as the year-long Garmin Vivofit 2 which credits its longevity to a pair of replaceable CR1632 coin cell batteries as noted in Garmin Vivofit 2 is the year-long fitness tracker for Swim Fanatics.

Neither is designed to track your swimming activity.

Still, it’s able to track your walking, running, calorie burn and sleep over several days, weeks and month. It’s also capable of tracking your Heart Rate without the need to pair it via Bluetooth with a Polar H7 Bluetooth chest strap or Garmin chest-strap heart-rate monitor as it uses a LED Sensors to count your pulse and calculate Heart Rate with a fair amount of accuracy.

Too bad the Heart Rate sensor doesn’t run all day like the Fitbit Charge HR as explained in Why Fitbit Charge HR creates Exercise Competition among Gym Rats.

All that Data is stored in the Garmin Forerunner 225, which it dumps to your Google Android or Apple iPhone via Bluetooth to the Garmin Connect mobile App or website. Its synching option doesn’t work so great unless you press and hold down the red button until it synch with your smartphone and at very close range.

Overall, male Pro-Athelete that eat, sleep and live their sport in all its sweaty testosterone-fuelled agony in the gym to take glory on the field will like the Garmin Forerunner 225.

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