I’ve been playing with my Garmin Forerunner 305 for quite a while, and I love it. I especially love the hear trate monitor, allowing me to more accurately estimate the calories I burn when hiking, running, biking, and snowboarding. I also love its bike mount. But, in the interest of device consolidation, I decided to match it up against my phone.

I’ve done this in the past by pitting my iPhone + Polar up against the Garmin, but the crappy GPS in the iPhone really sucked when doing trail running. And, why carry two devices when you can carry one? (Ignore the fact that I was using the iPhone for tunes)

So, this time, I thought I’d update it. I’m still using my old faithful garmin, but, I’m now using a better GPS on my Droid X, and a killer ap (iMapMyFitness) that, if I was listening to tunes, would occasionally report my position, calories burned, etc. If only I had a HR monitor to link to it . . . .

And, on to the show!

Garmin Forerunner 305 + Garmin Connect

The best part about the Garmin products is Garmin Connect. It lets me replay the whole activity, monitoring altitude, heart rate, and speed. Now, on this test I did NOT wear my HR monitor, so, we’re basically comparing GPS to GPS here.

Here is the embedded view of my hike to the top of Ferguson trail.

Looks like we got a little off course on the way up. Too funny.

And, the stats:

Time: 02:42:35
Moving Time: 1:30:00
Distance: 2.47 mi
Elevation Gain: 3,873 ft
Calories Burned: 731

iMapMyFitness

I really like the spoken feedback of iMapMyFitness. In fact, the only things I don’t like about it are the low resolution GPS (which is a fault of the phone, not of the software), and the lack of a HR monitor.

However, there is no embed, so, to see this trail, click here: http://www.mapmyfitness.com/routes/view/40912604

The stats:

Time: 2:42:42
Distance: 2.92mi
Elevation Gain: 1207 ft

Conclusion

So, the wrap up.

I love the social / sharing aspects of iMapMyFitness. And, I love the separation of routes from workouts.

The reason for the discrepancy in the Elevation Gain is with style of measurement. iMapMyFitness likes to separate climbs and rate them. This trail was rated as an extreme climb. So, it took bottom to top and did the math. The Garmin was more detailed, and separated every elevation gain from every elevation loss. So, doing small climbs, with small drops during the climb gives you double the climb. I’m not sure which I like better — though, I do like the rated climbs in iMapMyFitness.

And, I just found out that iMapMyFitness will import from my Garmin. So, I may have a new favorite toy!