My wife is starting to get into running again with a friend of hers, with a view to entering a couple of races next year.
Her current watch isn't very suitable (only does time and date) and she's borrowing mine, which is a bit big for her wrist, so I'm planning on getting her a new one for Christmas.
So, requirements.
- Stopwatch
- Waterproof (she'll use it swimming)
- Easy to use
- £50-£100, ideally
GPS would be a nice touch to show how far she's run, but not essential. At that price, I'm not sure the GPS will be very reliable anyway - although happy to be convinced otherwise.
I've got a TomTom Runner and I've been impressed with it for the price. For £60-70 you get a fairly slimline GPS watch which picks up satellites quickly and has a reasonable battery life. I liked it because it's substantially smaller than the Garmin ones I'd looked at (as well as being much cheaper). Mine does everything I need it to - I can track pace, average pace, distance and duration when I'm out running, and I could attach a HRM if I wanted. The TomTom website is a bit shit but I can just sync it to Strava or whatever. And I believe they are waterproof up to 50m (but I've never tried it on mine) plus it has a stopwatch.
In reply to LastBoyScout: these really are great watches, very easy interface and use, light. I wore my wife's quite a lot and ran my PR in Chicago marathon using it. Really really nice basic GPS watch.