This has been a solid GPS receiver for general situational awareness and logging trackpoints. After several years of pretty heavy use while hiking, walking, mountain biking, commute biking, and the occasional trip up in a model airplane, the receiver still works fine and has decent battery life. The only problem I've had with it is that sometimes the display will get corrupted on a button push and the system will require a reboot - I honestly can't tell if it's a software or hardware problem, but I've never had any trouble working around it.

Even with the extension strap it was too bulky to wear on my wrist, I typically leave it attached to the top of my backpack or put it on my handlebars.

Modern GPS receivers have slightly better acquisition and sensitivity, but for the kinds of things that I use this one for I have not been bothered.

I handle the lack of a user-replaceable battery by adapting the charger connection to accept a standard 5V USB plug for charging; I carry a 5V-regulated USB-interface power source and can re-charge and power on the go if necessary.

A GPS alone is never a sufficient plan to keep yourself found, but I've been impressed by how much you can do with just a tracklog and waypoints. I would consider carrying just a datalogger with better battery life and such but the basic interface here is just helpful enough to make it worthwhile.

I use the GPS for biking across country and it is an outstanding addition with the bike computer. It has everything you want to know in relation to your bike trip. I would suggest that you purchase the bracket for the bike, it makes very good sense to have the GPS mounted on the handle bar to your front for convenience and safety. I was so impressed that I purchased one more to be given as a gift.

I've had my Foretrex 201 for almost 2 years now and it's still going strong. It's able to withstand a decent amount of punishment as mine still looks new after countless races. Having a wrist mounted GPS is very convenient and allows both hands to be free while still having access to crucial navigational and tactical information. Battery life is also very good, but since the batteries can not be changed I would not trust it for a long distance race unless you purchased the DC charger. I only have two minor gripes with it. One, the yacht timer would be more useful if it could display both the time and the countdown, therefore I don't bother using this feature and instead use the yacht timer on my watch. Second, when using routes if you have a race course that starts and ends at the same mark it's very difficult to get it to route to the first mark since if you're close to the start/finish mark it thinks you're already at your final destination. Also on routes, it doesn't set to the next mark easily. If you set it to change marks automatically it does it either too early or too late. I tend to avoid using routes and just pick the mark I need manually.

I purchased this unit of beach cat sailing as I had hoped to use it as a starting watch and perfomance monitor. Unfortunetly I found the unit to be sub par at best. I used the unit for two days of sailing before it's failures became too great for me to deal with.

The first issue I experienced was the paint on the front all came off on the first day I used it after a touching it with sunscreen on my hands. This isn't exactly something I would expect from an outdoors product.

The second issue I had with the unit was that it locked up frequently, requireing a reset of the unit. I am willing to tolerate a mild amount of this in an electronic product, but once every few hours was far too much.

The third issue and the one that really made it unusable for sailing was the pins that held the unit to the wriststrap would easily pop off when the unit was mildly bumped. I had the top pin pop out twice and the bottom pin pop out once while in the middle of a race. After each time I was forced to just take it off and stuff it in my pocket until after the race for fear the other pin might pop and I would loose the unit overboard.

I was excited when I saw the feature set of this unit, but I would say it has a long way to go to live up to what it is billed as.

I have been using the Foretrex 201 for over a year in Iraq. This mini GPS is an excellent peice of equipment that gives you that essential ten figure grid on the move whenever you need it, without having to physically pull it out of a pocket. It also has a basic but functional track system which memorises your routes between your own inputted points. Its simplicity, generous functions and potentially life saving feature of just like being another watch, make this an essential peice of equipment for those of you who need to know exactly where they are at the flick of a wrist. awesome, would'nt go out without it

My kids and I recently purchased the Forerunner 201 as a Father's Day gift for my running husband. He was thrilled after reading the product information! He immediately followed the simple set up directions, and away he ran a few hours later! Unfortunately, the unit just could not maintain a gps signal, and the little bit of information gained was useless and inaccurate. We called Garmin after a few more unsuccessful runs, and the technician on the phone suggested it might be a faulty unit. Amazon quickly sent a replacement. (Yippee for Amazon!)

Again, my husband can not keep a gps signal for the duration of a run. The unit registers "weak signal" 20-25 times on a 5 mile run! The final mileage the forerunner has listed for the same five mile distance has ranged from 2.3 to 79.8 miles!!

Garmin tells us that tree canopy can interfere and cause the weak signals. We live right on the shore of Lake Ontario (wide, open space), although we do run on scenic, shady roads.

The bottom line is that the Forerunner is useless to my husband. Garmin admits that it really doesn't function well on "shady" roads with trees around. If you like to run anywhere outside of a barren city street, think twice. A very disappointing Father's Day gift, returned for the final time.

I love my Garmin GPS devices. I own enough of them. However, this device makes no sense. If you are going hiking with this device and have no way of changing batteries, you may end up like those dumbasses in the "Blair Witch Project", wandering in the forest with no way of getting out. Get something like the Foretrex 101 that allows you to change batteries.

The Foretrex 201 is a general purpose version of the Forerunner personal training device. It lacks the personal training features (and PC software) of the Forerunner and replaces them with a general purpose GPS feature set derived from Garmins successful "Geko" models. <p>Note that Garmin describes the Foretrex as being similar to a Geko 201, but the Foretrex is missing a few features (no games) and the user interface is substantially different in a few areas.<p>There are two Foretrex models currently. This model, the 201, has an internal rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery which means the unit is .3 inches thinner than the model 101 which takes two AAA batteries. Currently the 201 can only be recharged using the (included) AC adapter and "cradle" bracket, so the advantage of the 201 is its smaller size, and the disadvantage is that you need to be near AC power and have the charger and cable along if you run low on power. This could be an issue for backcountry use. The other difference between the 101 and 201 is that the 201 is dark green (it's more green than is obvious in the pictures) and the 101 appears (I haven't seen one) to be silver. Each will appear equally dorky on your wrist if you wear it as a watch.<p>The 201 is very light, actually weighing .1 ounces *less* than the watch I usually wear. The strap is comfortable but wide. It adjusts to a surpisingly large range of wrist sizes (even fairly skinny ones). There's an extension strap provided if you want to wear it around your forearm.<p>The screen is very high contrast (more so than other Garmin GPSs I've seen) and easy to see.<p>The 201 has four gold contacts on the back at one end and it comes with a charging and data "cradle" (basically a clip that attaches to the back from end to end (works with the strap attached) and provides two small connectors for power and serial data. <p>It comes with a serial cable but no software. It will work with Garmin's Mapsource products (though without downloadable maps) and there's lots of shareware/freeware out there for managing waypoints, track logs, geocaching, etc. Note that the serial cable is only about three feet long, which can be somewhat inconvenient.<p>Battery life appears good. Garmin claim 15 hours, but I haven't run it down far enough to know what's realistic. After five hours of constant use in "normal" mode, the battery gague was still at 3 out of 4 dots. Charging takes a couple hours and displays "Battery Charging in Progress" bouncing around the display while it's going on.<p>Software updates can be downloaded from Garmin's web site (there's a minor update already available) and installed using the included cable.<p>Performance is about what I expected from a wrist-mounted GPS. The receiver performance appears to be identical to the other current Garmin models even at this small size. When walking around outdoors with my arm at my side, it does a good job of tracking the satellites that aren't obscured by my body and track logs downloaded from the unit are usually very good. There certainly are times when it can't see enough sats or just barely gets three of them or gets some ugly multipath reflection from somewhere and as a result you can get some track points that are really out in left-field. Overall it does better than I expected it to and you can just hold it up like you're looking at your watch to give it a better sky view if you want to take a more accurate fix.<p>The navigation data display page consists of a number of user-selectable fields in various (fixed) sizes from one to four per screen. These are arranged in a sort of virtual strip that you scroll up and down through. It appears to me that none of the time displays will show better than minute resolution. The "digital" style font used is pretty ugly.<p>There's a "timer" page which only supports count-down timing.<p>It has the Hunt/Fish and Sun/Moon data pages from the Geko and most of its other features except for the games as mentioned. Most of what you can do with a Geko you can do with this model, so check out the Geko 201 reviews as well.<p>It would be nice if it had a "watch" mode which would allow it to display the time and date with the GPS off and get a few days of battery life in this mode, but no such luck.<p>It's very well made and feels very solid as do most Garmin products. It should be very reliable as long as you don't prang the screen on something while wearing it as a watch. It's easy to operate the buttons with your other hand.<p>So, I could certainly recommend this model for someone who needs a basic (non-mapping) GPS and for whom the wrist/arm mounting option is desirable. It's probably the most functional way of carrying an active GPS on your person without resorting to a separate antenna or some similar complexity.<p>G.

The Foretrex 201 should receive many of the same kudos that the Forerunner 201 received even though it is a slightly different model. The track log of the Foretrex 201 will allow you to record horizontal and vertical track profile information to be downloaded and viewed on MapSource software. I recommend the Foretrex for cycling since it can interact with MapSource Trip and Waypoint Manager. The map page works great...never to be lost again and the track log drops breadcrumbs as you travel. This track can be based on `DISTANCE', `TIME', or `AUTO'; which allows you to drop a track point based on feet, seconds, or automatically (up to 10,000 trackpoints)-Absolutely Awesome! I purchased the Foretrex 201 in April 2004 and have been extremely happy with its operational capability. I have noticed that the unit is difficult to recharge; however, Garmin agreed to replace my AC Charger. Additionally, the cradle has a slot cutout for the wrist strap to stay on the unit while charging; however, a better connection seems to be attained when you slip the cradle beneath the strap (there is enough room). I hope that one of the two solutions above will solve any future recharging problems. Occasionally, the unit will turn on while plugging the AC cable into the cradle. Again, other than the minor hassle mentioned earlier-the unit operates as advertised. Unfortunately, no software is included with the Foretrex even though they provide a serial connector with each unit. This caught me by surprise since I now have to purchase software such as Garmin's MapSource Trip & Waypoint Manager, which Garmin sells on-line (but can be found cheaper through other vendors). In my opinion, this software should come standard with each unit. I was also hoping that Garmin would include something similar to the Forerunner 201 Logbook software, but it is not compatible. It would be nice if the "unit" could display the total vertical climb and descent without downloading it via the software. For those that want the luxury of changing batteries-get the Foretrex 101, otherwise the rechargeable lithium battery comes standard in the Foretrex 201. Positional and altitude readings have been well within acceptable tolerances! Still learning, but seems to be everything I wanted plus more!