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:
Ok, not much left this week. Sorta a lull. But hey, if ya need a GoPro Hero 8 Black or AirPods, it’s still on sale!
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.
DCRAINMAKER.COM Posts in the Past Week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page this past week:
Ok, a bit of a quieter week. This week might be semi-quiet as well as I prep things for the 7-10 days ahead – but next week will definitely make up for it.
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 to clear out the backlog):
1) Quick Page to see all Zwift Steering Events: In the approximately 72 hours after steering launched, Zwift changed how and what events steering would be available on….about 3.5 times. Making it darn near impossible to figure out exactly which events you could use it on. But, if you were among the thousands that bought a Sterzo, you now have a handy option via the Zwift Hacks site to filter all events with (or without) steering enabled.
2) Unbricking a bike with Raspberry Pi to run Zwift: Last year Flywheel got sued by Peloton for stealing code. They lost, and ultimately killed the bike platform. While not ideal at all, Peloton offered customers a swap to a Peloton bike for free (which, is a pretty sweet deal). In any event, if you had one of those Flywheel bikes, they quickly became clothes hangers. However, this developer unbricked it and made it work with Zwift. Mind you, this is definitely not an ‘Easy Button’ project, but it is super cool.
5) Apple watchOS 7 rolls out public beta with sleep tracking: Remember the sleep tracking I previewed back in June? Now you can give it a whirl too on your regular Apple Watch. As usual, reminder – it’s technically beta. Your watch could be fine, or it could do something horrible. It probably won’t, but this is 2020 after all. I’ll probably give it a whirl in the coming days and see what’s changed.
6) Apple Health Plus Subscription Service Coming? Sounds like some sort of paid platform is on the way to Apple. It’ll be interesting to see what exactly they come up with. Rumors seem to point to instructional related, which might make sense. Though, I don’t see any threat to Peloton unless there’s some unknown hardware partnership.
7) Behind the Scenes on Garmin Instinct Commercial: I’m a bit of a camera geek, so it’s always fun to see how things are shot/made. I presume this one was sometime this winter prior to the world ending. But still, it’s interesting.
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.
I’m hoping for Tempe support. A temperature sensor underneath the saddle, out of the sunlight, would be an improvement over the built-in sensor I think.
TBH I don’t understand why it isn’t supported already while so many other Garmin devices do support it; I’m sure it’ll (modestly) drive sales of the Tempe…
Hmmm. I might try it. I’ve gone back to and have been sticking with 11.2 on my 820 due to battery life, sensor dropouts, green screen, and other issues with subsequent releases. Seems I’ve always wound up using down rev firmware toward the end of a Garmin’s product life as the final versions were worse.
Yeah, they were the week prior. I’ve actually got a post talking about some of those things coming up, combining with something else. Just waiting on something else to drop so that it all makes sense.
Do we assume that the 645 is now a bit of a dead duck in terms of any updates etc, whilst notionally it has been Garmin’s top running watch I’m assuming now the limitation on hardware and planned obsolesence means that the 245 has overtaken it.
I’m reealllllyyyy hoping that “something else to drop” that Ray referred to above is a 655 (or 735). I’ll even order it before Ray’s review drops if it has LTE. PLEASE GARMIN, let me let my wife live track my long runs without dragging a phone along.
The Edge 530 update was actually more important because the 5.66 beta was up and then pulled down quickly. Those of us that were unlucky to have installed it (and have Di2) had a nasty bug which was then fixed in 5.68
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Edge series firmware updates. Perhaps a new accessory product release? I think they’ve done similar before
I’m hoping for Tempe support. A temperature sensor underneath the saddle, out of the sunlight, would be an improvement over the built-in sensor I think.
TBH I don’t understand why it isn’t supported already while so many other Garmin devices do support it; I’m sure it’ll (modestly) drive sales of the Tempe…
Wait, there’s no Tempe support on Edge units? Not even on the 1030+ ?
New models are unlikely. They have had quite a few firmware updates so far and the release cycle is longer than the time they have been out.
Hope, not even on 1030+, just takes it from internal sensor with no option otherwise
^Nope, not Hope!
Noticed a massive improvement in screen response in my 820
Hmmm. I might try it. I’ve gone back to and have been sticking with 11.2 on my 820 due to battery life, sensor dropouts, green screen, and other issues with subsequent releases. Seems I’ve always wound up using down rev firmware toward the end of a Garmin’s product life as the final versions were worse.
So, what about that Ghost Pacer link……? :)
Dah. I had that in a notepad I lost, thought I got everything. My bad. Will add it in something upcoming this week!
Here it is for others till then: link to kickstarter.com
I see you picked up on the ANT+ icon in the Karoo update (it seems like the lack of it was one of your pet peeves).
Yup, noticed it right away when I went to pair sensors. So much cleaner now!
The 245 and 945 also received big beta updates?
Yeah, they were the week prior. I’ve actually got a post talking about some of those things coming up, combining with something else. Just waiting on something else to drop so that it all makes sense.
Do we assume that the 645 is now a bit of a dead duck in terms of any updates etc, whilst notionally it has been Garmin’s top running watch I’m assuming now the limitation on hardware and planned obsolesence means that the 245 has overtaken it.
I’m reealllllyyyy hoping that “something else to drop” that Ray referred to above is a 655 (or 735). I’ll even order it before Ray’s review drops if it has LTE. PLEASE GARMIN, let me let my wife live track my long runs without dragging a phone along.
Garmin has a suggestions page; at worst asking for further 645 support is only a shot to nothing. At least it would let them know
link to garmin.com
It’s definitely worth making sure Garmin hears the FR645 feedback. Personally I think it should at least match the FR245 features.
Note – I did confirm this week that for the FR645 feature firmware updates, that “that ship has sailed”. :(
HI.
I see that the 645 gets Connect IQ 3.2 today.
Do you know what the impact of that potentially means?
Thanks
Thanks
RAS
The Edge 530 update was actually more important because the 5.66 beta was up and then pulled down quickly. Those of us that were unlucky to have installed it (and have Di2) had a nasty bug which was then fixed in 5.68
Wait…you mean you didnt know??!?!?…oh my god…stop the horses…my life will end because theres no Tempe support…what am I gonna dooooo….
Ffs…
Seems pretty valid question though, why not?
After all there’s Varia Vision support, of which here’s probably like 4 people using it.
“This week might be semi-quiet as well as I prep things for the 7-10 days ahead – but next week will definitely make up for it.”
Kickr Core 2020 update incoming?
The way Wahoo worded their PR pile of stuffs – they seem to indicate the line-up we see today is the lineup for the season ahead.