The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter and Facebook, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!
So with that, let’s get into the action!
DCRAINMAKER.com Posts in the Past Week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week:
It was a bit light last week, as I’m prepping stuff for reviews for the next week. Between now and the end of Eurobike in 6 weeks I’m currently tracking 29 new product announcements (plus ones not in my tracker yet). Hold onto your hats!
Sports Tech Deals – One Day Left!:
While the Clever Training 20% off sale ended this past week, there’s still an opportunity for you to pick up a handful of different trainers from REI for 20% off. These deals end tomorrow, Monday May 28th at 11:59PM US Pacific Time. All these links support the site, or, if you’re picking up anything else at REI, use the below link first and then wander from there.
Technically it’s a members-only sale, but it only takes a second to sign-up and then use coupon code ANNIV18 for REI. Oh, you can get free shipping to your local REI store. Woot!
For those curious, the Tacx Neo is my go-to trainer that I use when I’m not testing something else. But if you’re looking for the best bang for the buck from the available trainers in this sale, it’s the Tacx Flux.
In addition, you’ve got these sales still remaining for a few days longer:
$100 off all Fenix 5s – 5/18-6/16
$50 off Edge 25 units (base and bundle) – 5/18-5/28
20% off on Saris and CycleOps – 5/18-5/30
$50 off Edge 520 5/18-5/28
Here’s the full listing with links that support the site though:
This is the go-to sale price for the Fitbit Charge 6. It happens often, but it still doesn't take away from the fast that it's argueably the best bang for your buck fitness tracker out there.
This is a good deal, especially since it's gotten virtually all of the Edge 1050 updates, and then a boatload more. That said, it wouldn't surprise me to see this drop further to $449, as it did this past summer.
⚡⚡This is the lowest price we've seen on the Garmin Edge 540 to date, which has gained virtually all of the new Garmin Edge 1050 features as well. This is kinda an insane deal for this unit.
⚡⚡This is the lowest price we've seen on the Garmin Edge 840 to date, which has gained virtually all of the new Garmin Edge 1050 features as well. This is one of my main units I use daily.
⚡ This is the lowest price to date for the Garmin Epix Pro series, likely due to the Fenix 8 coming out a few months back (Epix as a brand was merged into the Fenix 8 branding). Still, if you don't care about diving or voice bits, this is an incredible deal.
⚡⚡⚡ This is a crazy super strong deal. Note the Epix received all of the software updates of the Epix Pro. This deal keeps floating between $399 and $429 - frankly, at either price it's an awesome deal.
⚡ This is the lowest price to date for the Garmin Fenix 7 Pro series, likely due to the Fenix 8 coming out a few months back. Still, if you don't care about diving or voice bits, this is an incredible deal.
This is the first time we've head a meaningful sale on the Forerunner 165, released earlier this year, down to $249 for the Music edition, and $199 for the non-music edition.
This is Garmin's mid-tier running watch, and is a very polished option with good multi-band GPS, and of course, a boatload of running metrics. This model also includes offline music such as Spotify and Amazon Music.
This is one of Garmin's most popular running watches, and it's down to a very strong price. I often use this in my accuracy testing comparisons when validating other watches, due to it's very strong GPS performance. Note this is the base edition without solar. It'd be hard to find any better deal in sports watches today, from any company (given this has full mapping, tons of new features even this week, etc...). I say '$100ish', because it's usually been on forever sale at $499, so $399 is a strong price, though, it dipped to $319 for Amazon Prime Day.
This is the lowest price we've seen ever on the Forerunner 965, since it's launch. It's still Garmin's top-end Forerunner watch, and I expect it to stay that way for a while. It's one I often use in comparative testing as a reference device.
This is a solid deal. Garmin Instinct 2X - $100 off!It's best thought of as an Instinct 2.5, as it has almost enough features to really be more of an Instinct 3 (which doesn't exist at this point).
This is the largest discount we've seen to date on the Tactix 7 Pro unit. Note the other Tactix 7 Pro units/variants are also on sale for 20% off too (this link takes you to all of them).
The new Hero 13 just came out, which mostly just adds a bunch of new accessory options. If you don't plan to purchase those accessories, then this is a solid deal.
This is a great deal for this tiny little thing, which should really be named the Go 4, given how many new features it has (including 4K). It also has all the Insta360 sport integration features with Garmin & Apple, to overlay your Garmin/Apple data automatically on your footage.
This is something I use frequently when shooting out and about and I need to re-charge a crapton of drone batteries, action cameras, or just cameras and such. I also use it on trips to Eurobike and elsewhere to keep equipment charged. I've even bought a solar panel to hook up to it (surprisingly effective). Heck, I've even powered a KICKR trainer ride from it!
I mean, I guess. Really, I don't see why anyone would buy this trainer at any price above $299. With the JetBlack Victory at $399 being more accurate, quiter, including WiFi, including Zwift Cog support (or mechanical cassette), including dual-Bluetooth, including Race Mode, and...one could go on and on.
This is the go-to sales price for the NEO 2T, though has become more frequent over the past year. It's still an incredible trainer, and is the top-end non-moving trainer from Garmin/Tacx.
This package includes the KICKR CORE with the Zwift V2 Cog, but notably now also includes the Zwift Play controllers. Basically, this saves you about $100 or so, and is the first time we've seen them bundle it.
⚡⚡ This is actually a very solid deal, and the first time we've seen this discounted. In fact, frankly, this is the first time in years it feels like Wahoo is actually doing a legit sale on something. Kudos.
This is lowest we've ever seen the KICKR SNAP priced. While the trend has moved towards wheel-off/direct drive trainers, this is still really solid deal if your budget it tight. That said, if you're in Europe, Decathlon has the D100 on sale for $199 also, and in my testing, I'd go with that almost every time.
Enjoy (and thanks for helping support the site, even if it’s just buying toilet paper using the Amazon link on the sidebar).
3) Suunto’s big firmware update: Normally I list these down below, but this one is notable enough that I wanted to call it out up here. This post is a good overview of the new features. I’ll be covering said new features shortly in a slightly different manner. Hang tight.
4) Study published on Stryd running metrics: Note, this study doesn’t look at the power accuracy/numbers of Stryd, but rather the underlying pieces like ground contact time and vertical oscillation. Those are critically important to get right in order to estimate power. However, the bigger challenge is some agreement on what exactly is power in running (how it’s defined and at what point/way it’s measured), and then from there you can do accuracy testing. (via Titanium Geek)
5) Triathlete Magazine 2018 Buyers Guide: This was released online now (previously just on newsstands). I wrote some sections in here, albeit, an eternity ago now.
6) Garmin now the 2nd largest smartwatch manufacturer after Apple: They shipped over 1 million ‘smartwatches’ last quarter. Do be aware that these studies don’t generally get actual numbers from vendors, but are more wild-assed guesses. Also keep in mind the definition of a ‘smartwatch’ changes more often than an Instagram model’s clothes. It varies from quarter to quarter, and publication to publication.
8) A Fond Look Back At The Hysterical Anti-Citi Bike Hysteria: Change is hard, and in the case of NYC a half-decade ago – implementing a bike share program had more than a few people strongly against it. Funny bit of ‘turn back the clock’.
Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:
Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one-liners are perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good? Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin firmware updates.
Garmin Edge 1030 BETA firmware: Reduction of suck (hopefully). Apparently lots of folks have been having issues since 4.00 came out a couple weeks ago (I’m still on 3.90). This is supposed to fix some of those introduced issues. Note, you can downgrade to 3.90 if you’re having problems.
Garmin FR935 BETA firmware: Added Physio TrueUp – This syncs across the advanced fitness features between certain devices.
Suunto Spartan Series Firmware Update: This adds in intensity zones, better training target options, alongside more notification history and HR on the watchface itself.
A crapton of app GDPR updates: A bunch of apps and platforms also had minor updates this past week focused on GDPR compliance. Too many to list here.
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With that – thanks for reading and have a great week ahead!
Garmin released a new map for the edge 1000. You can install it for free with Garmin Express. But now you need an additional micro-SD card. Because the size of the map 20180.10 is bigger then the internal 10GB memory.
Ray, re GDPR and data portability. How do you think companies will handle requests now and in the future? In theory we should now be able to request data and get it back in format that’s structured/machine readable and can therefore be imported into another site (or even better the transfer between sites is automated).
i know you talked about only certain devices getting it (only edge 1030 on the bike side), and in the connect IQ post talked about them maybe opening it up to more devices (hopefully my 820 and the 520?)
Do you see it working between your devices yet? In the Betaforum we are having no results really.. and between my 820 i see no sync up. (I am not even expecting any of the training score stuff)
at it’s most basic it seems to send 520 activites from GC to the 5x. These appear in the 5x history and it uses these to calculate training status etc on the 5x
no syncing of HR data so you still get the usual gaps in GC/GCM
The 5 homepage image links are still broken? Firefox browser with Windows 7 64bit. Cursor changes to a hand but no link even though it’s present in the html. Didn’t have this problem previously on same desktop pc?
Does TrueUp also mean that if you were to reset your device, the physiological metrics like VO2Max and Training Status will be restored when you re-setup the device and sync it with your Garmin Connect?
Doesn’t this happen already if you pick the right options for the setup procedure? I am guessing physio trueup won’t add this function, because it really just downloads other activities from GC and then re-runs the FirstBeat Analytics taking those activities into account.
No. You can back up / transfer some settings and activities manually. They aren’t stored in Garmin Connect. If you don’t do this you can’t restore anything after a reset or to a new device.
The stuff you can backup and restore is activities, records, and settings. It is not the Training Status, VO2Max, and other Firstbeat-type data.
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Garmin released a new map for the edge 1000. You can install it for free with Garmin Express. But now you need an additional micro-SD card. Because the size of the map 20180.10 is bigger then the internal 10GB memory.
Ray, re GDPR and data portability. How do you think companies will handle requests now and in the future? In theory we should now be able to request data and get it back in format that’s structured/machine readable and can therefore be imported into another site (or even better the transfer between sites is automated).
Seems the Stryd study was done only on a treadmill. They tend to do this
I really wonder why a researcher would focus on a single product when numerous vendors offer the same metrics.
Hey Ray.. regarding Garmin Physio True up
i know you talked about only certain devices getting it (only edge 1030 on the bike side), and in the connect IQ post talked about them maybe opening it up to more devices (hopefully my 820 and the 520?)
Do you see it working between your devices yet? In the Betaforum we are having no results really.. and between my 820 i see no sync up. (I am not even expecting any of the training score stuff)
it’s working on the 520 > fenix 5x
at it’s most basic it seems to send 520 activites from GC to the 5x. These appear in the 5x history and it uses these to calculate training status etc on the 5x
no syncing of HR data so you still get the usual gaps in GC/GCM
The 5 homepage image links are still broken? Firefox browser with Windows 7 64bit. Cursor changes to a hand but no link even though it’s present in the html. Didn’t have this problem previously on same desktop pc?
+1 – same problem…
+1 “Happy” that I’m not the only one.
+1 – same problem from Safari and Chrome on macOS
Works again. ?
Does TrueUp also mean that if you were to reset your device, the physiological metrics like VO2Max and Training Status will be restored when you re-setup the device and sync it with your Garmin Connect?
+1
I’d like to know this too. Thanks.
Doesn’t this happen already if you pick the right options for the setup procedure? I am guessing physio trueup won’t add this function, because it really just downloads other activities from GC and then re-runs the FirstBeat Analytics taking those activities into account.
No. You can back up / transfer some settings and activities manually. They aren’t stored in Garmin Connect. If you don’t do this you can’t restore anything after a reset or to a new device.
The stuff you can backup and restore is activities, records, and settings. It is not the Training Status, VO2Max, and other Firstbeat-type data.
link to support.garmin.com