Hi
I am shocked that the Forerunner 35 does not have a stopwatch or countdown timer! There already is a count-up timer when starting an activity so how difficult is it to have it stand-alone as a stopwatch? A countdown timer is also an easy addition to have so why not consider it Garmin?
Regards
Patrick
Stopwatch: all activities on all Forerunner watches are timed, with a start/stop/lap control. How is this not a stopwatch? What other stopwatch features are you looking for, for what usage?
Countdown timer: I don’t think any Forerunner has a count-down timer (or the Timex classical countdown-to-timer feature). Again - what would you use this feature for?
The Forerunner series, since its inception decades ago, target running primarily, so its feature-set is biased in that direction.
Do you mean a stopwatch or timer outside of an activity? Or within a timer for intervals?
I can’t say what a FR35 is capable of but I have a FR945 and it is able to do all of that.
For the later you would have to create a workout with intervals and then set a data field to ‘time left’ (not sure what it is actually called). For the stopwatch you can have data fields for either total workout time or lap time. So if you hit the lap button it would reset that field to zero and count up until you hit the lap button again.
For outside of an activity I can press and hold the backlight button to bring up the ‘controls’ menu and within that there are both stopwatch and timer options.
Edit: I just looked at the manual for the FR 35 and I didn’t see any mention of either a timer or stopwatch so maybe there isn’t one…
Weird the didn’t include that even on an entry level watch. However, I just looked at my GF’s 245 and it has both stopwatch and timer so I guess that’s where they added those features in the lineup.
There’s no dedicated stopwatch (outside activities) or timer on the FR 230/235 either. Never seen the need for it. I do use the countdown timer on my Apple Watch when I’m cooking though.
There’s definitely a need for it. For instance if I’m at the track helping a teammate out with intervals where they wouldn’t be using a watch!! It’s a high tech watch. It SHOULD have a stopwatch especially in coaching situations.
Start an activity. Bingo - you have a stopwatch, with stop/start and lap/reset buttons.
Using it on an indoor profile would function identically to a stopwatch
On the FR35, the lap key needs to be configured for each activity. That’s the only limitation. Use an indoor activity, configure the lap button, and you’re done. You have a stopwatch with start, stop and lap.
It’s an entry-level running watch. Using it for coaching is not what it was designed for.