As one of the first users of Garmin’s new 910xt, I’ll be posting some “real world” information on using Garmin’s newest flagship product. A more in-depth review and more photos can by found at DC Rainmaker’s blog and he is quite thorough. So I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, here, but rather report on my experiences with this latest product. 

Today I had my first chance to use the Garmin 910xt on my first run since I over-stressed my back. This is only the first test run (a run test?) so your results may vary.

• The new Barometric altimeter has some issues but they aren’t insurmountable. As a pilot,  I knew variations from a standard atmosphere (ie, anything other than an sea-level pressure of 29.92 inches of mercury) would cause an error in the altitude, but it would be consistent at least through the run. Oddly, that doesn’t seem to be the case, as, at least as it recorded on trainingpeaks.com, if the GPS is off, the altimeter was fairly accurate. Once I turned the GPS on, it was accurate – except for reading -400 feet below sea level. So I’m not sure where the error was, but something wasn’t right with the altitude data. We’ll see tomorrow.
• Moisture on the INSIDE of the bezel formed during my run in California. It was a nice day and not very humid. Fortunately, exhaling on the bezel caused the moisture to disappear. It returned a couple of times while running, but after exhauling on it three times, it went away and stayed that way. Of course, the moisture formed right in the middle, in an oval, in just a way to block all the information I wanted to read.
• The GPS accuracy was pretty accurate for me, although others have reported GPS accuracy issues. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. I had the GPS off for the first mile of the run, and the 910xt happily used the footpod and the calibration to figure my distance.
• The footpod calibrated slightly differently, but I suspect the algorithm remains the same. Probably a difference in my cadence because of my back.

I’m going for another run tomorrow, and we’ll see how it does there. Also, I’m hoping to go on a short bike ride to see how it works with the garmin wireless cadence/speed sensor. That, and then a swim to see if the new firmware update (2.4?) will solve the “distance” issues during the pool swim. Depending on the weather, I might even be able to get it out into the ocean for a “open water” swim and see how that looks.

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