Timex Unisex T54281 Ironman Triathlon Sleek 5/1 Resin Strap Watch

I've been very familiar with the Timex band as 80% of the watches I've bought in the last decade have been Ironman Timex watches. So the familiar feel of the buttons was a great plus to buying this watch.

The only downgrade from previous versions of the Ironman is the 50 lap "memory". I've had other Ironmans that allow you to save previous runs, swims, bikerides, or whatever else you've been timing. Now you can only save one... with up to 50 laps. When a new time starts, you must delete your old one first.

But my biggest complaint is the band. When I first put the watch on my wrist I fell in love with how it feels. The unique look of the band also fit my wrist like a glove and I thought I had the perfect watch. Unfortunately, it has just suddenly came off twice in the last half year I've owned it. And not from anything too rough. The last time I was just driving. And putting it back on was worst than solving a Rubik's cube. And if you want to...Read more

I was willing to spend up to $80 on a watch that/had did a few basic things:
1) large display with large easy-to-hit lap button
2) had at least two time-lines independently running, so that I could see a cumulative time and a last-lap time

This watch does it. I looked at other watches for more money and the money was not even a consideration, because this watch covers those perfectly.

I use it for speed work and road races. Its 50 lap is going to cover a person in any race (if you're doing an ultra marathon, they're not going to have mile markers that often anyway!). There are a couple of display formats, but I use the default, which has a cumulative time in the large numbers and, when one hits the lap button at a lap/mile, it freezes everything on the display, showing the cumulative at that last click as well as the last mile's time. It holds this for 10 seconds and then resumes, with the cumulative time on the bottom and the current lap on the...Read more

This watch has a lot of nice features, and works well. Unfortunately, its band doesn't fare so well. I had this watch for less than a year before giving up on it. In the last 3 months or so of its existence, I had to epoxy parts of the band back together no less than 10 times (in at least 6 different places). With most watches, if the band isn't very good, you can simply replace it. Timex chose a customized band that isn't user-serviceable. If you need any repair work done to the band, you need to send it back to Timex, pay for shipping, pay a $7 handling fee, and wait up to a month to get it back. That's if you kept the receipt and can prove it's under warranty. If not, you'll have to pay $10 for the replacement band.

In addition to the problems with the band, within about six months, two of the buttons lost a good deal of sensitivity (naturally the two most commonly pressed buttons). They still worked, but they had to be pressed very hard, and sometimes needed...Read more