Week in Review – January 19th, 2025

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/X and BlueSky, 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!

DCR Posts In The Past Week:

Here’s all the latest posts on the site:

Sunday: FIT File: Garmin Instinct 3…Let’s Chat
Tuesday: Garmin Instinct 3 vs Garmin Fenix 8: Every Difference Detailed!
Thursday: Garmin ECG Now Available in EU (But not Fenix 7 Pro & Epix Pro)

Stay tuned for the final Instinct 3 review this week, following me putting it through the paces the past few weeks, including a 60KM trek this past Wednesday. Atop that, there’s a smattering of smaller company news I want to catch-up on, and one moderately-sized announcement this week coming up. Maybe more, who knows.

Sports Tech Deals:

Some new ones have popped up this past week. I think the Fenix 7 at $429 is probably the most interesting for people eyeing that new Instinct 3, since this is basically cheaper while having more features. I’ll continue sweeping and adding in a few more of these later tonight, so keep checking back.

	Product	Sale Price	Amazon	Sale Notes
	AmazFit T-Rex 3 - $45 off	$234	Amazon	⚡ This recently announced watch is a very solid deal. Check out my full in-depth review for my thoughts on the good (and catches).
	Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium - $70 off	$729	725
	Garmin Enduro 3: $70 off! $899	$829	Amazon	The lowest price to date for the Enduro 3, whcih is basically the 'cheaper' Garmin Fenix 8 with a MIP/Solar display (but without the scuba or voice calling features). It gets all the Fenix 8 features and updates otherwise.
	Garmin Fenix 7 - Just $429!!! $699+	$429	Amazon	This is actually the lowest price I think I've got on record for the Garmin Fenix 7. It got virtually all new Fenix 7 Pro features until this past fall, and even this past week is still getting some new features. A very soild deal.
	Garmin Forerunner 955 - $100 off!	$399	Amazon	This has been 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.
	GoPro Hero 13 Black - $50 off	$349	Amazon	Not quite as good as the $299 back during the holidays, but this is likely the new-normal sale price. And hey, it's still a very solid camera and my preference for day-time footage (at night, I use the Insta360 Ace Pro 2).
	HoverAir X1 Drone Combo - $100 off!	$299	Amazon	⚡ This has become one of my favorite drones, given it's tiny size (fits in my running shorts pockets) and ease of use. While there's the new Pro-Max drones, those are basically 2x+ the price, and honestly, the video quality isn't really achieving that price point. ***Note: Select the '$100 coupon' checkbox on the site.*** Also, you can select yet another extra battery as an option below that checkbox.
	Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 (40 & 44mm) - $100 off!	$249	Amazon
	Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra - $215 off!	$442	Amazon	This price has continued to stay low since Black Friday, still a very solid deal for one of the best WearOS watches out there.

Note that all of the above are Amazon affiliate links, which do help support the site. I appreciate it!

YouTube Videos This Week:

Here’s what hit the tubes over on the You of Tube; definitely don’t forget to subscribe there to get notified of videos the second they hit!

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:

Some of these are mixed in from the last few weeks that I don’t think got much attention (if any) from the CES timeframe, but caught my eye.

1) Stolen E-bike Batteries Could Be Made Worthless if Bosch was Less Greedy: Such a good article from Thomas on Bosch’s new program. As one who has had an e-bike battery stolen (which in this case, ran about 800EUR, everything about the situation sucks.

2) COROS Feature Updates January 2025: I’m a sucker for anything to do with sensors, and COROS allowing you to rename sensors in their latest update is A-OK with me. They’ve also added both during and post-workout sensor low-battery alerts. As well as a few other items.

3) Zwift Rolls Out Personalized Route Time Estimates: I thought this was kinda cool, if for no other reason than my wife was asking for the feature the night prior, and boom, it magically appeared.

4) Peloton continues to test Zwift-like game in private beta: Will be super interesting to see where this lands. Keeping in mind, during one of the big layoff rounds, Zwift let go of one of their lead engineers…who was quickly scooped up by Peloton.

5) Bankruptcy udge approves Giant’s purchase of Stages: In the list of “things that are no surprise”, this continues to move forward. It’ll be interesting to see which product categories Giant ultimately continues. I’d imagine they’d ditch bike computers, though perhaps there’s a market for them within Asia. And I’d imagine they’ll probably exit the consumer indoor bike scene, though certainly keep up on the gym side.

6) Assembling a minimalist travel-sized bike tool kit: As always, Dave Rome’s gonna cost me a lot of money. Sigh.

7) DJI Flip announced: I’ve ordered one, but it doesn’t arrive till tomorrow. No idea why DHL decided to take nearly a week to get from Amsterdam to Mallorca, but…I guess such is island life. I’ll be putting it through its sports-focused paces as usual. That said, I’m still a bit skeptical of the new design, in terms of travel compactness compared to the Mini 4 Pro (or inversely, the NEO). Seems a bit like a NEO Pro or Mini 5 Pro would have been a better fit for most people.

8) Stryd converts TrainingPeaks & Final Surge Pace-based workouts to Power workouts: This is actually pretty interesting. Essentially, if you’ve got a coach (or otherwise) creating pace-based workouts in TrainingPeaks or Final Surge, then Stryd will automatically convert those targets to be running power targets. While I’m kinda skeptical on the business viability of Stryd in the medium to long term, I do think this is a pretty useful feature for users of their device. Kudos.

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With that – thanks for reading!