FR610 vs FR220

My experience in FR610 and FR220.

I have been using FR610 for 7 months and decided to trade in for FR220 for RM300.  My experience for FR610 is not very pleasant.

The most annoying thing about my FR610 was the battery charging.  I have to try many times before the watch can be charged.  I have tried all the suggestions that I can find in the internet but I still could solve my problem.  Either I was unlucky or it was the "returned" watch that I purchased.

Even if the contact is good, I will get reverse charging every now and then.  Previously, when this occurred, I just turned off the watch and turned it on again to have it charge normally.  However, this wasn't the case for the last 2 rounds.  I just had to let it "charged" to 0% before it can be charged normally.

Lastly, I was a bit disappointed with the battery life.  I can only use it for ~ 4 hours in running before I have to charge again.

I blamed all of those to the cheap price for the watch, ie. USD179.99, which I sometime think is the returned watch.

When a friend of mine is willing to trade-in my FR610 for FR220, I have decided to take the offer although I just use it for just half a year.

After using FR220 for just 2 weeks, I am very happy with the performance.  The battery can last for more than 5 hours after charge.  Also, a single charging from flat battery is just around 3 hours.

The speed of GPS signal acquisition is very fast, a lot faster than the FR610.

However, the 2 features of FR610 that I would miss are the Virtual Racer and Virtual Partner.  Although I have not been able to use these features, but I think this is an interesting features to help pacing strategy in a race

Other than that, I have all the features that I want in FR220.

I hope to be able to use the watch for 2 years!