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1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
2
Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
3
Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
4
My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
5
The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Aaah, why must you tease us with more Forerunner 620 shots? So cruel.
This actually looks really cool, it’s shame about the closed data platform.
It isn’t really “closed”.. as mentioned before there are at least two utils to “intercept” the info and get a tcx (I believe) that you can upload anywhere you like.
http://www.runningfreeonline.com
and
link to acadis.org
and, as it’s android.. it’ll get rooted fairly quickly like my MotoACTV and you can get at any data you want.
No, the real problem is the price and no swim or cycling!
It’s closed. They’re clear on using that wording as well.
Using ‘hacks’ (at best) to try and pull the data isn’t really open. It’s not different than the walled garden mess that Nike was until very recently.
Finally, CSV actually isn’t all that useful for upload to 3rd party sites. TCX/FIT are useful, with GPX a far second/third. The reason is that CSV requires that the parsing app/site understand what the data looks like. And because every device company wants to do it differently it means that the CSV is useless to upload to sites that don’t know how to parse all the fields. Whereas TCX/FIT are well understood industry standards.
It’s too bad really, as I really did enjoy it on my 16mi run tonight (though, battery life is rather concerning…).
I would like to know if the screen is always on?
Yes, it’s always on. You can dim the display (well, it dims when not in running mode).
csv file for acadis. Not tcx.. just as good
I’d be interested to see how well the HRM works in heavy rain. No mention of this in the Mio review ?
I’ll test this in heavy rain (though, I’m not asking for it!). But I had no problems with heavy rain and the Mio Alpha (I may have neglected to note it in the review). Last winter I had more than my fair share of rainy runs with it. Ultimately rain is just like sweat, and no problems there either (certainly not tonight with my run). Heck, it can even measure just fine underwater.
Very beautiful ! Will be hard to make a choice with new garmin 220 !
Regarding closed data platform… this is what i found on Micoach forum regarding import/export datas… and it sounds good
QUOTE
Hey Guys,
Wanted to reach out to all of you regarding this topic and to give you the most up-to-date information available.
This is a feature we would like to implement, and we certainly want to work it out soon. We’re first looking at importing and exporting in other formats such as GPX and then later on to other platforms.
No ETA or confirmed dates, just wanted to emphasize that this is something being looked into.
Regards,
Soccer02
Your miCoach Team
UNQUOTE
I know it has the built-in HR sensor, but it looks kind of big and bulky next to the FR620. It reminds me a bit of the Garmin FR305.
It’s definitely a bit bulkier, but nowhere near as big as the FR305. It’s sorta like a heavy Motoactv, or a smaller (size-wise) FR310XT/910XT.
The flaring out of the bottom area (likely to improve darkness for the optics) is what contributes that perception of largeness.
If I could ask for one thing before the full review it would be for your thoughts/comments on the waterproofing of the watch as the initial info suggested it would be risky to have it in almost any water situation. If you could that would be great… That’s my biggest concern with this is having to baby it in rain or around the house in relation to water
It’ll be something I test. It rains often in Paris (it’s raining right now in fact). Lucky for me, I don’t have to run today. Lucky for you, The Girl does – so she’ll give it the first whirl in the rain.
As I get closer to publishing, I’ll test it against the max listed/approved waterproofing specs for the unit. But, I prefer that to be the very last thing I do in case I kill it (I’ve learned this lesson previously…).
Thanks for your follow up on the size comparison, Ray!
Any idea about availability at Clever Training?
As German living in Japan, it seems tricky to get it shipped here…
Clever Training is working on the distribution piece now (to see if Adidas is allowing retailers to sell it).
Hows the screen in sunlight? Is it like the motoactv (that weird monochrome thing that worked well?) Too bad about the data thing, the only thing that keeps my motoactv in the loop at all is the export app you can install on a rooted one thanks to that one guy
If possible, could you put up some pics of the Girl wearing it, maybe next to the Garmin 620 as well? I’m very curious about what she thinks of the watch & how well the optical sensor works for her, since my wrists are nearly the same size. Also, do you have any idea if Garmin is considering/working on optical heart rate monitor implementation for future devices?
Yup, will do. I won’t be able to until later in the week though, as I won’t see her till Thursday (travelling). :(
That said, she has been running with it and has mixed, but mostly positive results (some initial optical HR sensor issues, but good once she gets going).
Thank you so much for all the info & pics/pics to come!! :) Hope the travels go well!
I’m intrigued to see how you find the battery life. Pocket-lint recently published a review and said it was terrible – unusable actually. I was thinking of buy it but now I’m stuck!
Yup, it’s bad (battery). Really bad. Not even in the same country as what they’ve listed.
Garmin 620 it is then! The Optical Heart Monitor and Bluetooth was a real important unique selling point for me but if it runs out of juice really fast then it wouldn’t work for skiing and boarding sessions which last >4 hours.
You say that the battery is bad, but you don’t quantify that. How bad is it actually in terms of howKong it can be used in a specific activity .
So battery life… I’ve been talking with Adidas about it quite a bit
In general I’m finding the average to be that after a 2hr run I get about 30% left (from 100%), in cases where I have just GPS and HR. In cases where I have had music playing, I see a tiny bit more drop – but honestly not much. By the same token, I’ve also seen a 2hr 20m run go from 100% to 3% (turn-off).
They had me adjust my backlight from ‘auto’ to ’10’, but I didn’t find much different.
On standby (sitting idle on a desk untouched), about the most I’ll get is 20-24hrs, at best. On the bright side, battery charging is pretty quick – 0 to 100% in about 90 minutes.
Again, I’m trying to work with them to get some concrete answers on if/when these will be addressed (amongst other items).
I reckon mine lasted about 24 hours as a watch before exhausting the battery, or about two and a half hours with GPS, HRM and music all going. I’ve returned it, which is a shame.
Any idea what makes the battery life so terrible?
410 mAh battery vs 258 mAh in Moto Actv. Both running Android. Screen, Processor?
Ray,
Would you have any insights or guesses on the next GPS watches with integrate HR sensors coming up?
Probably worth waiting….
Yes, battery life is a big issue at this point. I received an email from support today, stating that there will be an update soon, which will improve battery life drastically.
To quantify battery life: me running for 15 min resulted in a 30% battery drop :) so at this point, I’d say the watch is not usable, especially if you run longer than 45min…
I’m sure they can improve battery life with software updates (like the motoactv), but I still think that you have to recharge the watch after each run
I had this for a week or so an returned it. it seemed overprice although i like the coaching aspect of it and the fact that you can actually download training plans into it. and you can set your HR zones and train by that.
If Adidas is saying they are getting more inventory on December 12, and a miCoach SMART RUN Software Update is coming, does that mean that there is a potential for the battery life to be improved dramatically enough to consider buying this watch?
In the end, I returned the watch after 30 days not because of the battery, but because of poor gps and poor heart rate measurement. Battery life most probably will be improved with software updates, but I suspect that poor gps reception and heart rate measurement is due to bad hardware parts. Too bad, because the watch felt very good, loved the display and the audio feedback. Very good website and awesome training plans. But how do you train, if your heart rate drops by a 100% according to the watch and gps gets lost continuously…
So does this product work well with cycling or not?
Within the modes, you can change to cycling mode. The basic change there is that it switches to speed metrics (i.e. MPH or KPH), but it doesn’t support speed/cadence sensors.
Hi All – Just as a heads up – my In-Depth Review of the unit was published this morning, can be found here: link to dcrainmaker.com
As is normal, I’m going to go ahead and close this post to new comments, and if you have any questions, feel free to post them on the review post. Thanks!