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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!
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Have some fun in the travel section.
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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.
Hi Ray
What bike stand/platform are you using in the vlog on the trainer comparisons?
Cheers
James it looks very similar to the Cycleops motion rig that Ray and Shane were on during Eurobike this year. It moves forward and backwards as well as tilting from side to side. I mentioned to Ray in that video that all he needs is the road feel from Tacx and then he has the ultimate indoor setup.
Here ya go: link to dcrainmaker.com
Google does like to keep adding neural network functionality so it has a strong possibility
link to emberify.com
search terms make it hard to find though as exercise, training, etc are all used for not exercise things
At first I read the Fenix update as they were canning (getting rid of) text replies on Android devices and I was wondering how I missed Garmin adding that feature before. Any word on that coming to iPhone at some point?
No path to iPhone available, due to iOS restrictions (other companies running into the same wall).
I used to have an option of text responses on my forerunner 935 paired to my android, but now I can’t find this option any more. Have they been removed from the 935?
Still no Galileo update for the Edge 1030… :-/
There used to be mopeds with a similar drive to that Rubbee. Kills your tyres.
Dear Ray – thank you for your video comparing the sound of kickr vs neo. It really seems there is not much of a difference there.
Maybe you or the other folks around could help me a bit with my decision on which trainer to buy. I am looking at the following options – a. tacx flux (€550), b. elite direto (€ 650) or c. kickr core (€ 800). It seems as if the main difference between direto vs core is the noise level, right?
Any more thoughts /guidance ? THank you so much to all of you
I think it depends on whether you plan to get something like the CLIMB. Since the CORE is compatible and the others aren’t, that’s one aspect to consider.
Beyond that, I think most people would say the road feel is slightly better on the CORE than the Direto/Flux, merely because most people would say a KICKR17 was better than those two (and this is basically what that was).
Accuracy wise they’re all fairly similar. I’d rank the Direto and CORE the same here, and the Flux a bit behind it.
Ultimately, ways I’d narrow down a decision:
A) Do I care about noise? If (really) so, CORE. Neither of the other two are ‘loud’.
B) Do I care about KICKR CLIMB, if so, CORE.
From there, you can can look the nuances of specs and try and decide. But it’s all very very similiar.
Thanks a lot – the climb is not an option for me, the noise level however is important.
Ray, I note you have had the Arion insoles and Runscribe pods along with various other run related products but can’t find any significant feedback on how you found them, whether they add value. There are a number of products claiming to help improve your running form I just wondered whether you had any thoughts which had not got as far as a full review. Many thanks. Jeremy
This is so stupid, I’ll admit, but do you know the one feature I wish my Fenix 5 had that my older Garmin Vivosmart had? I liked that if I met my steps goal by some multiple of my goal, it would do another celebration and say 2x, 3x, etc….
I really wish they would bring that into the Fenix 5 as well.
heh, now that I think of it – it is a tad annoying that my girlfriend’s $149 Vivoactive HR has a feature that my $600 Fenix 5 doesn’t…
With Extended Display Mode being added to the newer firmwares on the Edge devices I wonder if Varia Vision will get an update soon. Also would be nice if garmin finally opened up the ant+ profile as its still not available for download:
link to thisisant.com
Unless I’m missing something and its under a different name. Also one of the problems with trusting garmin being in control of Ant+
“let’s ensure we don’t get too carried away with the term AI and whether this is real AI, or just simply a slew of if/then statements.”
agreed! term is too often used in a inflationary way.
in your opinion, when/where does AI in the realm of coaching start?
True, many people (especially in management) confuse AI with a step by step IF-THEN loop of events that were initiated by a human, like a stack of dominoes. But at least to me, true AI is about initiating actions – not continuing them. Now while I could potentially see the ‘coach’ doing a litany of analysis of your O2 saturation, tidal flow, bp, hr, base metabolic level, etc and creating a training plan tailored to you: that to me really still isn’t AI. It’s just luxury-grade personalization that may or may not help you. And it may be even able to update on the fly as it receives new metrics, but I still don’t see that as AI.
Defining what is AI is always kinda tricky.
Instead, I think it may be easier to define it according to the circumstances.
I think Chris gets close – but I’d take it a step further. IMHO, true AI in this scenario would be when the system starts to look at metrics that weren’t initially programmed. For example, pulling location data and account for impact of travel – like me flying AMS to NYC today and the impact on my body – just like my actual coach would do.
Or, coming up with coaching recommendation that most humans wouldn’t think of. Something that makes a human coach cock their head and go “Huh, that’s an interesting idea – it might just work”. To me, that’s AI.
Giving a training plan based on lots of data that you feed it is AI, at least what AI is from the perspective of those who work with it and not scifi authors.
Its about training a neural network. As I said earlier, Google is in this field. The hard part is what do you train the network with. What is the input data and what is the results from that input that you’re training the network with. You can’t just feed it noise and expect it to produce a useful training ai, even google has limits to how much computer power they can use to train the neural net.
for example:
link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Google is certainly in this field, as are a number of other companies.
However, I’m far less confident Google is going to be doing AI in this segment. I suspect, given they’ve got no meaningful experience in sports exercise science, that they’re just doing programming with some simple pattern matching. Perhaps a sidedish of machine learning.
Google fit was just updated (so useful for getting more data) and google has a new patent for google coach: link to mysmartprice.com
makes sense.
and i like that idea of yours about using location data to adjust load based on travel stress
… as your actual coach just does it if you pay him a lot and so he can afford to stay close to a very small number of athletes.
Hey Ray,
I was hunting and pecking via Amazon and I saw that a seller is selling the Magene trainer here in the US with local delivery. Being I’m not sure how the link system that you have for Amazon works, I thought I’d give you the link and then if you can add it – great. If not, well at least then it’s nice to see that apparently there is more interest in it than simply in Asia.
link to amazon.com
Very nice – thanks for the heads up – I didn’t know that’s on Amazon. Appreciate it!
Hey all,
Has anyone still had undercounting of elevation issues with the Garmin 935 10.10 update? It doesn’t seem like it is fixed at all for me, still seems to be the same issue. Did Long’s peak yesterday and the total elevation gained was off by ~1,000′ (lower) and the max elevation was also off (lower) by 400′, even though I was sure to calibrate the elevation via my phone and my friends watches to make sure the watch started off right, not too low, not too high. This is annoying because clearly in FW 8-ish the elevation was pretty spot on – within 10s of feet. Thanks!
Sample size is tiny but almost same ride last weekend and the weekend before on both my Edge 1030 and 935:
week – 935 – 1030
1- 1,572 ft – 2,106 ft
2- 1,909 ft – 2,031 ft
1030 was running 5.00 both weeks and 935 was 9.7 week 1 and 10.10 week 2.
Seems better to me
Any plans to review the Arion insoles any time soon? I believe they have been shipping them a while and am interested… but wondered if you are currently testing, or in contact with the company with a view to testing.
Nothing at present, though they are at least nearish by me.
I ran with them a long time last year, until the hand-built beta units I had basically disintegrated. Which is to be expected for anything that’s still a prototype.