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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!
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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.
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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.
This is pretty cool. Do you know if there are any plans to add it to existing saved routes? They have the photos but not the location the photos were taken. It would be nice to have it for all the reasons you mentioned, especially if it is a route you did not create.
Plotaroute.com is my go for route plotting. Lots of features that are really useful. It’s free but I’m happy to pay for Premium.
This is a nice addition to route planning on Strava and definitely a nice incentive for some to justify Premium price.
However, it terms of route planning I think Komoot is still vastly superior (and its subscription has more route-oriented perks compared to Strava).
Fatmap seems the better place to put this. Hopefully they integrate them better
IDK. Checked it out on the routes I ride and doesn’t seem that informative…except maybe for scenic content, but the pix shown on my routes are only OK in that respect. For planning routes, I generally rely on satellite and, where available, street view. I can usually discern surface and road/trail type from the satellite views.
The challenge is there’s no Street View in Strava (that’d be awesome, but alas…not). So you’re left going back and forth between Google Maps and Strava.
damn, i guess i’ll have to komoot route still for street views as i have to see road conditions a lot of time on my ride!
They could pull in pictures from open source streetviews, like Mapillary.
I’ve biked loads of gravel roads or trails where I live with a Gopro MAX on my head, and uploaded to both Mapillary and Google Street View so that others can use it to plan there route more easily. Like, is this route suitable for my bike, or can I walk it with a stroller etc. Would be cool if Strava incorporated these images somehow.
Great new feature set and thanks for the intro into it.
Comparing Strava to Komoot I would like to point out that besides the pictures (green dots) there are the highlights (red dots) that are community based POI‘s that usually also contain a huge amount of pictures and descriptions. So strava might have some more picture points, but one would have to count the highlights also.
That being said I use both – Komoot being my favorite with collections, sharing routes, multiple day trips and so on…
One major difference is that Komoot added pictures on the map specifically with trails in mind (Komoot Trail View), so one can judge the underground (very handy planning gravel rides in area’s which can be more MTB’ish). While scanning now through Strava, it is more related on highlights and pictures from the surroundings from a specific point, while not focussing on the tracks/roads. So, if you want nice views, Strava is better, but if you want to judge track surface, Komoot works better. Probably also one of the reasons Komoot has a lower coverage, since its algorithm focusses on trailsviews only without people/bikes in it.
Unfortunately, I still do not see the benefits to Strava Premium. The best chance they have to pull me in is to fix their route creator which, while the tools are good, dies on its underlying map data, which just isn’t that good for offroad stuff.
If it was to offer an OS Maps underlay, I’d be all over it. Absent that, it’s going to be a no.
No Coros Pace 3 review? Is Ray too busy testing out the new sleep features on the Venu 3?
Nope, would be happy to test out the COROS Pace 3.
Sounds like that’s a question for COROS. Actually, a lot of questions for COROS, but maybe that’s an entirely seperate post. Despite their attempted public smear campaign against me last week from their ‘actual’ CEO in China, I’m still game to test that unit just like any other. Of course, they’ve also banned other reviewers that have been critical of accuracy lately.
I am very disappointed with Coros, they had dug their own grave by eliminating the ant+, now they have jumped into it. RIP.
Such a pity you’re not testing the Pace 3…. I was really looking forward to your review before making up my mind and finally replace my good old M430. On paper, the Pace 3 has everything I need/want (and more), at a very good price point. Of course, provided the new heart rate sensor improved significantly (when compared to the Pace 2).
There are reviews around. I watched DesFit’s review on YouTube, and The Quantified Scientist has one there as well. (Didn’t watch that one, no maps, no ANT+, so not for me, so no point in watching.)
Yes, I’ve watched those reviews, but for the moment they are not “in depth” reviews (not yet at least, maybe they will do more tests). I am getting used to Ray’s very high standards, I have to admit! Really curious to see if the new HR sensor can be on par (or almost on par) with my old 340, which did very well in my case.
Looks like they are using the same HR sensor of the Coros HR arm band, which might be a good sign (the M430 has the same Hr sensor of teh OH1/verity sense…)
Sorry about the smear campaign. Seems like the CEO isn’t too smart. Pretty stupid of him/her to pull these shenanigans around the launch of their best product. Your willingness to still review the product shows your integrity.
This seems to be their ‘PR’ response from dkrey:
“We did not allocate an early media sample for Ray on this launch for the PACE 3. Before each product launches, we are given an allotment of samples that we can allocate to media/reviewers from factory availability (in this case it was ~30 units in our global market).
For the PACE 3 specifically, with the limited samples available, we are always faced with a tough decision of what type of media and which reviewers we think may add the best consumer insights to various different consumer types we thought most valuable for the PACE 3. We very much respect Ray’s platform and are open to working with him again for pre-release product launches in the future, but decided to go with other options for the PACE 3.
We also understand that not including Ray in the pre-release batch of media samples means that we miss out on quite a significant piece of viewership, but made sense to us to give this approach a go this time around. We still look forward to reading a review from him soon!”