Heads up! Here’s your massive list of sports tech deals! This includes the Garmin Forerunner 965 for just $499, Garmin Epix for $449, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium for $735, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $299, and plenty more! Go check out the full list here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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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.
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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!
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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.
There was a Powertap P1 firmware update too. Fixing the “right pedal missing” issue.
Seems to work for me.
link to powertap.com
that one is super annoying. i hope it fixes it for me, too.
I liked your story about the police encounter better….
Bonjour, pour votre information, en Europe, les GPS sont utilisés depuis longtemps sur les terrains. Les rugbymans en sont équipés (rectangle à l’arrière de leur maillot), et les données sont remontés en temps réel à l’entraineur qui peut suivant le nombre d’impact, le nombre d’accélération, le rythme cardiaque ou encore la distance parcourue changer ces joueurs.
Have read of the Facebook comments on the article about getting pulled over…. not great.
link to facebook.com
Funny, hadn’t seen that link before.
A few random observations:
A) I never both to enter car vs bike debates online, it’s futile, even when 100% correct per the law
B) I do find that UK/Australian bike haters are far more angry/aggressive then American ones. Sure, American drivers will simply run you over and shrug their shoulders, but the level of online chatter/hate (or even radio commentary as I heard) doesn’t rise anywhere near what I see from UK/Australia folks
C) I don’t see as much bike-hate in continental Europe anywhere near the level in UK/Australia. Probably lots of reasons for this, but more than would fit in a book or two.
I don’t know why this is the case, and sure, it’s generalizations, but the reality is that I feel like I read enough text on the topic from numerous countries to say that generalization is roughly correct.
I think a lot of the bike hate is sometimes valid and perpetuated by a few bad actors.
Example. Ray, you remember Rockville pike in MD/DC. Super busy fairly high speed 3 lane major road. On too many occasions to count, I have seen a road biker taking up a lane during rush hour.
I acknowledge as bikers we have the right to do that, but it is just not smart. I bike commute daily, and my quickest route would be to take 2 major roads from my house. But I don’t, because there are lower traffic slightly longer ways I can take.
Yup, totally agree. People see a cyclist doing something stupid once, and they forever label all other cyclists the same.
…availability heuristic at work
Why would you ever want to bike on 355 even when not rush hour? Crazy….
So looks like the wahoo update doesn’t fix the calculating average power incorrectly bug with the Assiomas.
Why wahoo? Why?
Any ideas what is going on with the GoPro Hero Sesson line? I was about to order one from Clever Training and when I looked today the Hero5 Session is out of stock and listed as discontinued by the manufacturer. I am disappointed I have lots of points I was going to use to drop the price down into my price range.
GoPro announced they will cease the Session lineup, effective immediately. Which basically means they stopped fulfilling the channel over the last little while.
One thing that GoPro is really darn good at is having older unit/model inventory near-instantly disappear. So if you were looking for a Hero Session form factor camera, I’d snatch it up now before they go away. The Hero5 Session is still available on Amazon: link to amzn.to ($199), as is the Hero Session for $149, but honestly I’d spend the extra $50 for the Hero5 Session over the not-5 variant. Mostly because the image quality is drastically better in the Hero5 variant.
It was smaller & more compact than the full-sized models. While the image quality wasn’t as great as the higher end models, especially in low light, the tiny size meant I could put it places that it was almost invisible. IMO this is a bad decision to discontinue the Session line.
For a kickstarter project:
link to kickstarter.com
Speaker for a bike that uses the garmin mount to attach. Still trying to figure out the best way to add background music for a bike ride
Hmm, interesting. I still feel like the waterbottle location is best, stick one of those JBL tube speakers in there and call it done.
Re: Murder by Apple HRM. Interesting that article says “Apple has been keen to have the Watch treated as a medical-grade device”
That would seem like a high hurdle but also proving that the data recorded on the device was accurate, ie the ability for the user to screw it up is infinite…. “so you’re saying I should be wearing it on my wrist?!” :)
A parody by ABC (Australia) TV show “The checkout” on how much ‘we’ spend on bike gadgets.
At 2:17, that could be your bike Ray :-)
link to youtube.com
Hi Ray!,
I know that this is a completely off-topic question, nevertheless, here it goes: I am pretty sure that for (at least) one of your reviews you used a device that could record data from many wireless devices (sensors), so that you obtain simultaneously tracks from several GPS receivers, power meters, heart rate monitors, etc…Am I right? If so, could you point me to somewhere I can read about it?
Thanks in advance!
Yup, here ya go! link to dcrainmaker.com
Thanks for the quick answer! I’ll check it out!