Heads up!!! Here’s your massive holiday sports tech deals list! This includes the Garmin Epix for just $419, the Apple AirTag 4-Pack for just $69, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $249, (or the brand new Hero 13 or $299!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list of 100+ deals here!
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
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 2024 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.
I received an update for garmin forerunner 620 a couple of days ago. Any idea what was in the update?
More than likely you’re referring to the 2.60 update for the FR620. I will list the updates below for this specific update but for more details see the official Garmin page at link to www8.garmin.com.
Changes made from version 2.50 to 2.60:
Enable operation of WIFI channels 12 and 13 by region.
Corrected WIFI communication errors on certain networks.
Corrected issued with GPS failing to update when GPS is disabled.
Various minor fixes.
Changes made from version 2.30 to 2.50:
Added feature to allow the CONNECT key to wake the device and start a Wi-Fi transfer.
Fixed issue where running dynamics data could drop out during an activity.
Fixed issue where the reported battery capacity could be inaccurate.
Improvements to indoor distance and pace calculations.
Fixed issue related to the recovery adviser feature not displaying properly.
Improvements to the interaction between foot pod and GPS.
Fixed issue with resetting totals not working correctly.
Added feature to inform the user when returning to the target range of a workout step.
Fixed various issues with smartphone connectivity and the LiveTrack feature.
Fixed issue with running workouts contained in triathlon/mixed sport schedules not being retained on the device.
Fixed several other minor issues.
Updated translations.
Changes made from version 2.20 to 2.30:
Fixed an issue where the watch could still display UTC for time of day after acquiring a GPS fix, regardless of the user’s current time zone.
Disabled Wi-Fi auto upload attempts while the device is charging to prevent a potential issue which could drain the battery.
RossM, received FW as well, this is GPS firmware update. Tried with few runs, distances measured are around 2% more, on same routes with old FW, not sure if this is good or bad.-)
Last week was the firmware update, this week was a chipset update. Typically speaking chipet updates are to address various items in the GPS chipset. It usually doesn’t introduce a wholesale massive shift in accuracy (though, it can), but often addresses edge cases.
You can easily track most Garmin firmware updates here: link to gpsinformation.net
I wasn’t sure if you were just going to include it in next week’s list but Nike+ Running was just updated with the ability to add a run. Oddly, the update included auto-pause but I’ve had that active on mine since 1-2 updates ago.
I really like the addition of the ability to add runs in the mobile app as I no longer use Nike products or software to record my runs. I use a Garmin FR620 and then manually input the data into the Nike+ app in order to keep the social aspect going with my numerous friends who only use Nike. I prefer the details provided by Garmin Connect and Runkeeper Elite.
Looks like Garmin turned on a lot more of the “modern” Garmin Connect site this morning. I’m a Vivofit user but now the sports centric stuff is coming online… weight, calendar, training plans etc. are all there in their “big” page format but the mini-desktop widgets for many just have place holders. You no longer really need to go to the “classic” site and can do everything from the modern page.
All that said… horrible UI, not a single thing new that is anything other than slightly different looking… so there is that.
Yeah, slowly but surely adding in the rest of the pieces. That said, I’m still not a fan. Kinda agree with your take – I didn’t get anything new out of it functionality-wise (except Vivofit stuffs), and ultimately the data displays feels more cobbled together than before.
Totally agree.
Garmin does not ever seem to grasp the various ways people would use Connect. They just grabs bits and pieces of ideas from other sites and slap them together.
No daily runner motivation or social features like Daily Mile.
For the data obsessed, deep dive metrics trends are completely buried in individual activities.
Group and trainer based functionality is non-existent.
Size of modules isn’t compatible with displaying useful trends or graphs.
Still no swimming workout options; has been listed as ‘Coming soon!’ for 2 years.
Ray, thanks for the mention of my Di2 article. Per your suggestion, I added a section entitled “What Components do I need to put together my own Di2 system?”
If there’s anything you need, please let me know.
Awesome, nicely done!
Quarq has now added a firmware update section to their website, with the changelog of all versions of firmware.
link to quarq.com
Awesome, thanks! Just updated to that instead. Much better! Now, if only I could convince Stages to do the same as well…
Man that MT bike video made me feel old.
Ray, did you go for Ui2 or Di2?
I had my Di2 given to me, but despite being a long term Dura Ace user, if I’d had to pay, then I think I would’ve gone for UI2 since I think the price premium on the Dura Ace is no longer worth the money.
I’ve also had some reliability issues with the 11 speed Cassette on Dura Ace (on my second one, and this ones on the way out too), and based on a thread on weight weenies, others have had issues too… Apparently the Ultegra equivalent is fine though!
Shimano seem to be quietly ignoring the problem.
Current plan is Ultegra, but, gotta sort that out on Tuesday when the LBS opens back up.
The temp in strava seems a bit high this weekend for recorded rides
FYI- Bought the Edge 500 earlier this week and the code did work. $143.99! WooHoo!!!
Having issues with my fenix 2 update. Ran a half marathon on Saturday. At mile 5 I lost my HRM-RUN connection. Could not get it back. At 8.38 it locked up and had to be power button reset. I was able to resume the activity but lost a full mile. Killed my virtual partner pace. Went from about 15 seconds ahead to 6:30 behind when it rebooted. Fortunately I knew about where I was on my pace and it was all downhill from there so I was able to keep ahead and beat my goal. Still would not reconnect to the heart rate strap until I ended the activity and restarted the watch. Did not have any of these issues on my 12 mile run the weekend before before the update.
Ray,
just curious. Is there a lot of difference with calories calculated on a 810 with/without using a powermeter?
It’s generally in the same ballpark, usually not spot-on, but pretty close.
Ray, I’m curious about the Hooptracker. Well, in generic terms, I’m curious if you’ve seen any work in higher resolution INDOOR position tracking? I read through the Hooptracker page only to be disappointed at the end to find it’s not tracking your position in any way, it actually tells YOU where to shoot from and keeps score. I figured it had to be that way, but it still made me wonder…
So any work being done in that arena (heh)? As far as I know, you’d really need to add triangulation in some way, which would mean putting a couple radio transmitters on the court on each side of the mid-court line and then have one in the shot sensor. But with no low cost building blocks for this technology, well, the cost is going to go through the roof (yeah, I did it again).
Curious if you’ve seen anything happening in your trade show travels.
–Donnie
There has been talks about it, some of it being done by Google and others for doing indoor GPS acquisition. There was an article somewhere about it last year sometime, relating to malls. I think we’re a long ways away from seeing it either commonplace in indoor sports, or to the point of having high enough accuracy in indoor sports.
I have seen similar technology being used in an entirely different realm. Take a look at the way this device works:
link to amazon.com
I feel like something like this could be used to do indoor sports position tracking.
Actually, Mitch, I don’t see that as something that will work. It’s using one broadcast point and combining that with what it knows about its own ability to move. Basically it’s getting data from itself likely using wheel speed. You can’t do that with an athlete.
Thanks for the reply, Ray. Sounds like there’s not much more than what I already knew about. :(
It would be way cooler to combine some high res position data with accelerometers/gyro inside a watch to know when you actually shoot a ball that you could get some really interesting basketball workout data, anyway. Not sure it’s terribly useful for too many other spectator professional sports, though, so likely not enough money around to drive it…
–Donnie
Isn’t that exactly what Apple’s iBeacon does/will do?
No. As I understand iBeacon, it will give you fairly detailed proximity information in terms of distance from your phone to the beacon. But I don’t think the range is designed to go 50′, I think it’s more like 30′. If it can go more like 75′ reliably in an open room, then you could theoretically create your own app that could listen to three beacons (since they are BTLE, not standard BT) and calculate position. But I doubt the accuracy is quite good enough to get fairly accurate position data on a basketball court. *shrug*
–Donnie
I was hoping that the new “modern” update to Garmin Connect would give us some more metrics in planning our workouts. Actually, I was hoping for just one- 3sec average power as a cycling target metric. It is really annoying to make your workout online in Connect, send it to your device and then go into your device and have to change instant power it to average power (as the actual numbers reset too).
Unfortunately, nothing to do with workouts has changed. yet…?
Hi Ray, I was researching about Hexoskin and was wondering whether you wrote something about it. And I found only this little notice. Do you have it on your “to-do” list, do you plan reviewing it? Thanks for your answer and your great work! Barbora
No, nothing written about it yet – haven’t tried one. Sorry!
Thank you anyway! Hope you will give it a try :)