In fact, the 27-year-old company fabricates everything from transducers and portable cameras to sonar modules and radars.
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The Forerunner 35 does all of the basics: It has Global Positioning System to track pace, distance and speed when running or biking, and doubles as a fitness tracker and basic smartwatch. Garmin even sells activity trackers and smart devices, a category into which it dove earnestly with the Forerunner brand in 2003.
The watch has an updated, sleeker design that the last generation, and comes with a high resolution mono display.
The Forerunner 35 uses Garmin Elevate, the company’s optical heart rate monitoring technology that’s also in its lower-priced Garmin Vivosmart HR, as well as higher-end Global Positioning System watches.
But there’s more to the Forerunner 35 than meets the eye.
As with most other wrist wearables these days the Forerunner 35 also performs some of the basic functions of a fitness-tracker-slash-smartwatch: counting steps and calories burned, showing notification alerts from the smartphone, and offering music controls from the wrist. “With a host of built-in features including wrist-based heart rate and smart connectivity, the Forerunner 35 is the flawless tool for runners who want to stay fit, stay connected, and share their progress”. And it syncs all that information with Garmin’s Connect companion app for posterity.
Garmin has unveiled the Forerunner 35, a GPS-enabled running watch with built-in Garmin Elevate wrist-based heart rate technology. It does not track swimming, though it is waterproof up to 50 meters. That may not be quite as cheap as Sony’s comparably outfitted SmartWatch 3, which is shipping for around $150, but given Garmin’s expertise in the fitness-tracking space, it may be the better buy for, say, aspiring marathoners.
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The Forerunner 35 is expected to be available in Q3 2016 for a suggested retail price of $199.99, and will be available in four colors: black, limelight, frost blue and white.
