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!
![clip_image001[5]](https://media.dcrainmaker.com/images/2022/08/clip_image0015.jpg "clip_image001[5]")
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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.
4
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!
5
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.
First here…happy birthday and enjoy your day…happy trekking
Great review
Ha-ha hope your not addicted, you’ll be doing the El Camino next
Hi Ray,
You decided to go hiking with the FR955 and not with the more mountain-oriented Fenix or Epix. Is it a question of battery, weight and/or functions? Enjoy the hike and happy delayed birthday.
I had a lot of watches on my trip, including the Fenix 7. Functionality speaking, the FR955 is almost identical, with only a handful of very minor differences (e.g. notably coloring on gradients with ClimbPro, or inability to have the zoom levels ‘stick’ after changing).
The FR955 was the one that was set to splice each day up, versus a long activity on the others.
Happy delayed birthday
Great to hear, have fun! The morning report sounds great, esp. the special one on race day. If I ever run a marathon again, I trust it won’t tell me to ‘move’ or complain that I am not active enough on that day either. (Even if that was probably triggered by tapering in the preceeding week)
Happy birthday of course – and thanks for the warning :)
Takes 10 days away from the computer to go for a birthday hike the Tour du Mont Blanc, but still logs, tracks, videos and photographs the whole way. Wonder if you could go away with absolutely no tech?
Obviously we benefit that you can’t, hey that’s why we’re here.
And Happy Birthday again!
Hahaha – I was chatting with Des one night, and compared to the amount of gear I usually bring, he was pretty impressed with how little I brought (for me). In my full post on it, I’ve got some photos/weights showing the normal pack vs the extras I had.
what a great place to stay alone!
Gorgeous!
Being in the camp that I’m smart enough that I don’t need to be reminded of my birthdate I consider this a waste so I went onto the Garmin Connect website to remove the (fake) birthdate that I had in there so this won’t annoy me on . It wouldn’t let me do that unless VO2 max (cycling) was populated. That shouldn’t be a required field if someone isn’t really a cyclist, only occasionally riding for fun.
It’s interesting that the force you to enter one random number to remove another random number.
I like the pic with the cows. Who was more surprised? 🤣 Luckily you have not used a red tent. I assume you traveled with an in Reach device – in case a cow falls on you or something like this…
I’m going to throw it out there that I can’t be the only one with Tactix 7 that feels ultra let down with all the upgrades and rollouts that all thebotger watches are getting. Especially when the now last generation models are receiving the upgrades.
What are you missing? Tactix 7 is getting all the same updates as Fenix 7 / Epix 2 are getting. Tactix isn’t part of the beta program, so you might have to wait a couple months longer than the Forerunner/Fenix/Epix crowd that partakes in the beta program, but you’ll always get all the same updates within a couple months.
Happy birthday!
In fact there’s an older Garmin watch with exactly that feature, just not for us guys. Garmin show the Happy birthday screen in their promo video at 0:34: link to m.youtube.com
However, the confetti throwing muffin is a first :-)
Happy birthday. That’s a trek I’ve wanted to do.
Also, classic DCR [paraphrase]:
“I unplugged for 10 days, and my only online activity was daily Strava updates and 200 Instagram Stories.”
Happy Birthday! Awesome to see they added that as part of the morning report. Looking forward to mine in a few months!
Have you seen you can add your name to the morning report so it’ll say “Good Morning, Issac”? That struck me as another one of those minor details that makes my 955 feel more personal.
Hi Ray,
Do you have an updated eta on when morning report is coming to the Fenix 7? Just curious how long we may have to wait. Thanks.
Really cool trip! Now I want to do the same :-) Any idea when the full post is coming up on the tour du Mont Blanc? Looking forward to it. I was wondering about the camping gear you brought with you, what tent, mattress and sleeping bag did you use?
Belated: Happy Birthday!
Do you have any insight into when the Morning Report will make it to Fenix/Epix now that 9.33 is target code and it wasn’t included there?
Hello,
help community, 955 and f7 are experiencing critical HRM issues with heart strap, see forums. And Garmin doesn’t give a damn about that. Ray helps us!
I was wondering what the digits are on the right of the screen, 25/10 in your case and 7/(9/5) in mine… It’s a birthday present, an upgrade from the 235 for me and I’m finding all the data on the watch face confusing!
Great reports always, such a great source of information.
Merci et bonne journée ☺️
It’s the high-low temperatures for the day. :)