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Garmin confirms a cyber attack took its systems offline
Garmin is finally giving its users more information about the system outage the company has been dealing with since the morning of July 23rd. The company has just confirmed earlier reports that it was the victim of an external cyber attack that encrypted some of the company’s systems. Crucially, Garmin says it has “no evidence” that any customer data, including payment information stored in Garmin Pay, was accessed by the perpetrators.
Garmin's services are slowly coming back to life after a major outage
Late last week, Garmin suffered a major services outage — and now, more than four days later, things still aren’t back to normal. Yesterday, activity-tracking app Strava confirmed that it was again able to send workout data to Garmin’s Connect service. Ian in Mountain View wrote in to let us know that recent activities were syncing to Strava from his Garmin Fenix watch and that notifications had started to work again, as well.
Garmin's fitness watches are getting period-tracking via an update
Garmin has added a feature for tracking menstrual cycles to its line of connected wearables and smartwatches. Women can now track their menstrual cycle and log symptoms through the Garmin Connect app. They can opt-in to receive reminders for periods and fertility windows on their Garmin smartwatches or wearables. With its new period tracker, Garmin joins other major fitness tracking apps such as Fitbit and Apple Health in giving their female users an option to track their reproductive health.
Garmin Swim watch tracks your water workouts, we hit the pool (hands-on)
Garmin is adding a new product to its line-up of fitness watches, and this one is dedicated to workouts of the aquatic variety. The $150 Garmin Swim tracks your distance swum, average pace, workout time and more, and it uploads those stats to the web to help monitor your progress. Though it's meant to be a part of your exercise routine, the Garmin Swim watch looks like your average plastic digi-timepiece. The watch has six buttons with functions for viewing the time of day, scrolling through the menu options, controlling the timer, viewing the menu and entering workout mode. The setup takes some getting used to, but the illustrative icons on the watch helped us get into the rhythm quickly. Getting started with the Swim simply entails entering the size of your pool, with options to measure in yards or meters. Once that info is uploaded, you press the swim button and are ready to get splashing. We spent a solid half-hour doing laps, and the Swim duly recognized and recorded that we varied our strokes. Stopping the timer each time we took a break created a new interval for our workout, with a rundown of the elapsed time, distance in meters, number of strokes, type of stroke, total laps, average speed and calories burned. That's a lot of data to pore over, and Garmin lets you wirelessly upload it all to the Garmin Connect site. To do this, you have to pair the watch with your computer using a USB ANT stick: once it works, it's an efficient, easy way to review your workout, but it took us a few tries before our laptop recognized the watch. Garmin says the watch's battery will last a full year, which is plenty of time to log some serious laps. For more about the Swim, check out the press info past the break. %Gallery-159003%
Garmin Edge 200 is a GPS cycling computer for riders on a budget
The Garmin Edge 500 and 800 are pretty sweet GPS-enabled cycling computers, but they're also pretty expensive. The new Edge 200 shaves a cool Benjamin off the price of the aging 500 by cutting back on non-essential features. There's no navigation function or even the ability to pull in data from power meters, heart rate monitors or cadence sensors. It will, however, map your rides, let you download them over USB and share them via Garmin Connect. The 200 offers up basic info like speed, distance, calories burned and time without the need for additional harfware or a complicated set up. You can keep on pedaling for quite a while too, thanks to the roughly 130-hour memory and 14-hour battery life. The Edge 200 should start popping up sometime in Q3 for $150 and, before you go, check out the PR after the break.
Garmin updates GPS watch line with Forerunner 210 and 410, data-craving runners rejoice
Runners love to tell you about their post-workout highs, but they rarely mention the mid-workout delirium that comes when muscles deprive your brain of blood, leading to doubts about how long you've been running, what your target heart rate should be, and indeed how to get home again. Garmin's updated Forerunner 410 (above) can help you out with all those things, and the larger touch bezel means oxygen-deprived cardio hounds can easily scroll through data describing things like pace and heart rate, even when it's raining -- or you're sweating excessively. Once back home and showered this $325 watch automatically syncs to a USB dongle via ANT+, uploading data to Garmin Connect, just like its predecessor the 405. Then there's the $300 210, pictured below, a follow-up to this spring's 110 and providing a more simple display of real-time distance and heart rate without a bunch of other confusing data. Both models will be on display at the upcoming Chicago and New York City marathons before pacing themselves into stores this fall. Update: The 410 can indeed help you find your way back home thanks to a simple navigation mode that will direct you from one waypoint to the next. Great for finding new routes -- or new tactical insertions.
Garmin's Forerunner 110 GPS watch handles just the basics, please
Garmin has managed to do GPS watches right with its long-standing Forerunner line, but the vast majority of 'em have been useful only to nerds who aren't deterred by lengthy setup procedures. The new Forerunner 110, however, changes all that. Designed to provide just the basics to runners and other fitness freaks, this SiRFstarIV-infused timepiece provides near-instant access to distance, pace and time "within seconds of stepping outside." Marketed as an entry-level solution for those who don't need added complexity in their life, it can also be used in conjunction with heart rate monitors to display current thumps per second and heart rate-based calorie computation, both of which can be logged once you sync it to your PC via USB. The inbuilt battery will last up to eight hours in GPS / training mode or three weeks in power-save mode, and while there's no mention of a price, we are told that it'll be available in black / gray, charcoal / red and gray / pink color combinations. Good luck choosing the most badical one. Update: Looks like it's on sale now directly through Garmin for $250. Thanks, Dara!
