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Week in Review–February 23rd, 2020

WeekInReview

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!

Sports Tech Deals of Note:

Here’s some continuing sports tech deals.

ProductSale PriceAmazonOther siteSale Notes
Apple Watch Series 10 - $50 off
$399/$499 (cellular)
$349
Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium - $75 off$725This is a nice little deal for this unit which just came out.
Fitbit Ace LTE Kids Activity Smartwatch - 22% off$179This was just announced this summer, and is their first full smartwatch focused on kids activity tracking and gamification.
Fitbit Charge 6 - 38% off!
$159
$99This 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.
Fitbit Inspire 3 - $30 off$69
Fitbit Sense 2 - $70 off$179
Fitbit Versa 4 - $40 off$119
Garmin Edge 1040 Cycling GPS - $100 off!$499This 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.
Garmin Edge 540 - $100 off$249⚡⚡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.
Garmin Edge 540 Solar - $100 off$349This is the lowest price we've seen on the Garmin Edge 540 Solar to date, which has gained virtually all of the new Garmin Edge 1050 features as well.
Garmin Edge 840 - $100 off$349⚡⚡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.
Garmin Edge 840 Solar - $100 off$449This is the lowest price we've seen on the Garmin Edge 840 Solar to date, which has gained virtually all of the new Garmin Edge 1050 features as well.
Garmin Edge Explore 2 - $40 off
$299
$269This is a great little unit, though, with the sales on the Edge 540 and 840 series, you might want to look at those instead.
Garmin Epix Pro Series - 20% off!
$899/$999
$649⚡ 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.
Garmin Epix Sapphire/Titanium (Gen 2) - $400+ off!$399-$429⚡⚡⚡ 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.
Garmin Fenix 7 Pro - 31% off (All Variants)
$799+
$549+⚡ 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.
Garmin Forerunner 165 Music - $50 off!$249This 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.
Garmin Forerunner 255/255S - $100 off$249This 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.
Garmin Forerunner 255/255S Music - $100 off!
$349/$399
$299This 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.
Garmin Forerunner 265 - $100 off$349This is the first time we've seen the Forerunner 265 on sale, and it's solidly priced right now at $349
Garmin Forerunner 265s - $100 off$349This is the first time we've seen the Forerunner 265 on sale, and it's solidly priced right now at $349
Garmin Forerunner 955 - $100ish off!$399This 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.
Garmin Forerunner 965 - $50 off!$499This 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.
Garmin Instinct 2X - $100 off!$349This 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).
Garmin Tactix 7 Pro - 20% off$1,049This 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).
GoPro Hero 12 Black - $100 off!$299The 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.
GoPro Hero 13 Black Bundle - $60 OFF!$339This is the first time we have seen the newly announced GoPro Hero 13 Black on sale. Solid deal, this is my daily use action cam!
Google Pixel Watch 3 (41mm) - $70 OFF$279Click to add $70 coupon into the cart. Bringing price down to $279!
Insta360 Ace Pro Action Cam - $50 off$299This is the previous edition, as the Ace Pro 2 just came out a few weeks back, but this is still a very solid camera from a year ago.
Insta360 GO 3S Tiny 4K Action Camera - $60 off!$239This 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.
Jackery Portable Power Station - $60 off!$199This 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!
Tacx Flux 2 Smart Trainer - $200ish off
$899
$499I 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.
Tacx NEO 2T Smart Trainer - $200-$300 off
$1,399
$899This 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.
Wahoo KICKR CORE Zwift One (COG V2) + Play Controllers
$499
$499This 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.
Wahoo KICKR MOVE - $300 off!
$1,599
$999⚡⚡ 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.
Wahoo KICKR ROLLR - $100 off
$599
$499
Wahoo KICKR SNAP - Lowest Price Ever
$499
$199This 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.

DCRAINMAKER.COM Posts in the Past Week:

Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page this past week:

Hahahaha…nothing! I had grand plans. But those got wiped away by enjoying a ski vacation with the kiddos, and enjoying wine at night when they fell asleep. Fear not, that avalanche of content will arrive this week instead!

Stuff I Found Interesting Around The Interwebs:

Here’s a not-so-small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet (and in this case, some of these are from the past few weeks…as my backlog is a bit longer):

1) How Lego streets would look with bike lanes added: I like it!

2) The UCI and the teams are locked in a power struggle: A great explainer from CyclingTips.

3) Peloton competitor Flywheel’s bikes get bricked by Peloton: I’m never a fan of competition via litigation. It basically means a company is too afraid to compete on their merits (functionality/price/brand/etc…), even when ripped off.  So on one hand, it’s pretty dirty to effectively brick (via lawsuit) a competitor’s devices. Yet on the other, giving those users a replacement bike is probably a pretty good deal for most Flywheel users. Heck, an even better deal for those Flywheel users that might have wanted to offload a Flywheel bike, since a Peloton bike rarely loses much value 2nd-hand (thus, sell the Peloton bike).

4) Pandora Apple Watch App allows offline use: Slowly but surely we’re seeing more music streaming apps add true offline caching support for the Apple Watch (where you don’t have to have a phone nearby). Spotify, notably, is still missing.

5) A study on what happens to your weight if you get a free car: While there is some debate on the nuances of the study – I think the overall trend is quite clear: It certainly doesn’t help your health.

6) The impact of Coronavirus on tech companies: After having multiple calls over the last two weeks with companies on this matter, I’m pretty confident this report will, in time, dramatically underestimate the impact on the tech sector. The key aspect over and over is the underlying components/chips that make up a given product. Many products have dozens if not hundreds of underlying components from just as many manufacturers.

7) Strava adds yet another new feature: This time, activity cropping to mobile. Note that there has always been activity cropping on web, but not mobile. Nice! I’m just waiting for when I can see which device was used for a given activity (i.e. showing ‘Wahoo BOLT’ or ‘Garmin Fenix 6’) on mobile, which is currently on web.

Sports Tech Device 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 and a few other firmware updates.

Garmin Vivosmart 4 Firmware Update: Simply listed as ‘stability improvements’.

Wahoo BOLT/ROAM/ELEMNT Firmware Update: This adds instant torque display for certain power meter types, as well as fixes a Di2 issue.

With that – have a great week ahead!

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18 Comments

  1. Markus

    Anyone else have problems since the last Wahoo Bolt firmware update? My Work (kj) field shows twice the value now. Furthermore, hitting Pause generates gaps in the reading, e.g. gaps with zero altitude (and other series). Strava filters these out but not Trainingpeaks.

    With regard to the kj field I know of two other Bolt owners with exactly the same problem since Friday or so.

  2. Markus

    and the gaps

    Before the firmware update everything was fine. never had an issue with the Bolt

  3. JD

    How does the Peloton platform work?
    Does Peloton allow limited levels of connectivity for some 3rd party devices, but Flywheel was trying to fully integrate their service using an alternative bike?

    • Peloton is closed (as are most of these types of bikes). A Peloton bike however can at least connect to ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart HR straps though. :)

      In this case, Flywheel basically just copied the Peloton idea and ran with it (more or less like the others). That’s the part Peloton is sueing over. Frankly, it’s silly. And I suspect eventually one of them will win over Peloton with the right legal team. Flywheel just didn’t have that team.

    • Mike Prytherch

      And a large bank balance which I think it also a big contributing factor

    • Definitely. Always is with lawyers. :)

  4. Dave Lusty

    You’re alive! We were starting to wonder ;o)

  5. Mike

    My Bolt doubled the distance on my easy spin this morning. A 19 mile ride uploaded to Strava as just short of 38 miles. I’ve submitted a support ticket already to Wahoo.

  6. Tizzledk

    Spotify not doing this is very, very annoying. Its like they decided ‘Apple is being anti-compeitive so we will do our best to only do bug fixes’….crazy.

  7. MattB

    The option to crop my Strava activities isn’t there for me on the iPhone app… would be very handy to access it as I keep forgetting to stop my watch before driving back home from the day’s skiing this week! Do I need to manually update or something? It should be on auto-update as far as I know..

  8. Mike

    Any info about Garmin FR 655?

  9. Pretty sure, that popped up in the verge comments too, but I was shocked to see LEGO Streets without bikelanes.
    I remembered and checked at my brother’s house, they had bikelanes in the 80s and 90s!

    In those glory days, their bricks and advertising also lacked any blue/pink separation.

    • interesting comments on The Verge:

      Cars are not going away and acting like they are going to be rapidly replaced by bikes is not forward-thinking that helps us progress towards lower emissions, it’s wishful-thinking that impedes that progress.

      Truth is, if you build bike lanes, the bikes will come. At least that is what they believe in the Netherlands.

  10. Jared

    Can I buy a used Flyhweel and trade it for a Peloton? Seems like the cheapest way to get one by far. Used Flyhweel bikes near me are going for under 1,000…It seems like I could easily flip the Peloton on the used market for 1,500.

  11. Richard

    I think the Venu sale is over, as neither site shows a $299 price.

  12. ReHMn

    The positive effect of the coronavirus is that air pollution and smog in the involved cities have decreased by more than 25%…

  13. BoneFive

    Any info about Garmin Instinct 2? Plenty of leaks around the net about it having solar and so on. Or is your lips sealed by garmin?