It’s that time of year again! The now annual 20% off sale.  Now technically, it’s semi-annual since it happens now and in the spring.  But I don’t think anyone’s complaining about the chance to buy a brand new just released trainer for 20% off.

No matter what you call it, there are some amaze-balls deals in here.  And while my title says all trainers and almost all power meters, the reality is that this applies to boatloads more devices/products too. More about your imagination than anything in finding solid deals.

To briefly back up: Historically speaking we see the biggest sports tech sales clustered in two timeframes: November (up to/around Black Friday), and May. It’s now November, and last weekend we saw companies start to announce sales.  Plus we’ve seen some Black Friday ads start to appear (nothing earth-shattering yet in the sports tech world).

In general, sales fall into two buckets:

A) Retailer driven sales
B) Manufacturer driven sales (specified by the manufacturer, but then sold through retailers)

Within the US, manufacturers have to approve virtually all sales, to stay compliant with MAP policies (Minimum Advertised Price).  Said MAP concept doesn’t exist elsewhere.  So in the case of the Garmin sales below, those fall into bucket ‘B’ above.  Whereas everything else in this post falls into bucket ‘A’ above. Make sense?  Good.

Garmin Fenix 5 & Edge 820 Sale:

So we’ve got one major sale here being driven by Clever Training for 20% off, though we’ve actually got a secondary Garmin sideshow sale going on, which I’ll briefly cover first – because it’s pretty solid!  The Clever Training 20% deal starts TODAY (right now), but the Garmin deals start TOMORROW/FRIDAY, November 10th, and essentially run through Christmas.  These do NOT require any VIP deal, but are straight up discounts available starting tomorrow:

Garmin Fenix 5S – $100 off (Amazon/Clever Training)
Garmin Fenix 5 – $100 off (Amazon/Clever Training)
Garmin Fenix 5X – $100 off (Amazon/Clever Training)
Garmin Edge 820 Cycling Computer (the mapping one) – $100 off, down to $299 for base! (Amazon/Clever Training)

I’m going to let Captain Obvious point out that this is the first time we’ve seen the Garmin Fenix 5 on sale, and Garmin didn’t disappoint here.  Even more is that deal on the Edge 820 actually, which is also incredibly solid – that’s a mere $50 more than the non-mapping Edge 520.  This is pretty much Garmin giving Wahoo the middle finger (after Wahoo did that courtesy to Garmin all summer).  I wouldn’t expect an Edge 820 replacement anytime soon (it’s only been out just over a year).  And while Garmin has historically announced Fenix series refreshes each January (alternating major or minor, with major happening this year), I’m not as convinced that we’ll see that happen this upcoming year per historical norms.

Plus, these two that already started last weekend:

Garmin FR735 Multisport Watch – $50 price reduction (Amazon/Clever Training)
Garmin FR235 Running Watch – $30 price reduction (Amazon/Clever Training)

Note that this being the start of the holiday sales period, things will obviously come into play over the next three weeks.  However, I can say incredibly confidently that you won’t see any deals greater than 20% off for the eligible items listed below in the VIP sale.  You’ll likely see individual watches/bike computers go on sale, maybe maxing out around 30% or so, but since none of those are eligible for this sale, it doesn’t much matter in this context.

GoPro Hero6 Black & Hero5 Black Deals:

Clever Training is running two GoPro deals, both of which are solid, but the Hero6 one is unheard of for a camera that just started shipping 38 days ago!

GoPro Hero 6 Black + 32GB MicroSD Card + $75 CT Points credit: $499
GoPro Hero6 Black In-Depth Review here!

In this case you could use that $75 CT points credit to buy a pile of extra batteries, something like the 3-Way pole, the shorty stick, or any number of other GoPro accessories.  Or socks.  Your choice.

GoPro Hero 5 Black + 32GB MicroSD Card + $50 CT Points credit: $399
GoPro Hero5 Black In-Depth Review here!

Really important for both of these: You MUST choose the bundle from the drop-down list (so you get both the SD card and the credits back)!

Neither of these GoPro deals require the VIP program, anyone can get them!

Clever Training 20% VIP SALE:

In this sale, each Clever Training (CT) VIP member is given a coupon code (THANKYOUVIP) that’s good for 20% off a single non-sale item including all trainers and almost all power meters.  It doesn’t matter if that item is the Wahoo KICKR 2017, a Quarq DZero power meter, or just gel packets.  Your choice, but it’s only available to CT VIP members.

There are a handful of limitations, most notably that it’s not valid on Garmin stuff, GoPro, Fitbit, and one or two others I list down below in the restrictions.

With that in mind, there are some incredible deals to be had for trainers and power meters here – or other high-value items.  Especially new trainers and newly released power meters, even more so going into trainer season.  Here’s some quick guidance on both categories:

Power Meters: You’ve seen all there is to see on new power meter announcements for now, as well as well into next spring (or beyond). The next time we’ll see meaningful power meter announcements is usually in April, clustered around Sea Otter (usually for shipping months later).  So basically – if you want a power meter for this year and want to save 20%, it won’t get better than this anytime soon.  If you’re looking at a pedal based power meter, check out my recent post on it.  And if you’re looking for any power meter at all, be sure to check out my 2017 Power Meter Guide here.

Trainers: This is super simple – everything is out, and don’t expect anything new till at least next summer (likely July).  And even better is that everything is also available these days, or with only minor backorder queues.  Unlike past Fall seasons where new trainers took many months to materialize (like last year), companies are largely on top of it this year.  Wahoo has had their new trainers available since Day 1, and Elite also has had their new stuff shipping since late July (albeit, heavily sold out, so some minor delays exist).  Either way, definitely check out my full 2017-2018 trainer guide here!

The sale is members only, but it’s simple to get started:

1. Sign-up as a Clever Training VIP Member here. Complete that first.
2. Then come back and pick your item of choice out (see below list as starter point).
3. Add members-only coupon code (THANKYOUVIP) upon checkout to save 20%.
4. Enjoy gadget.

There are too many deals to list, because obviously that’d be tens of thousands of items that Clever Training carries, even running shoes and other sports gear.  But you can find all trainers Clever Training carries here on the trainer landing page (it’s basically everyone).  ALL trainers listed qualify for the sale!  Yes, all of them!

You can find all power meters Clever Training carries here on their power meter landing page.

The only power meter excluded from this sale is Garmin Vector 3.  Also, in case you’re wondering, the Wahoo KICKR CLIMB isn’t available for pre-order by anyone (including Wahoo), hence why it’s not available to buy.

I’m going to call out the most notable ones in the table below:

DCR Favorites - Fall 2017

So you’re probably wondering about that VIP requirement?  That’s basically akin to what REI does with their twice-yearly members-only sale.  Except in this case the Clever Training VIP membership only costs $4.99.  And the proceeds of that go to ‘Girls On The Run’, a running focused charity.  So it’s basically a win-win.  You get a massive savings, and an awesome charity gets supported.

And of course, your gadgetry purchase helps support the site here (as all Clever Training purchases do).

Frequently Asked Questions:

Here’s what I expect to be a few frequently asked questions:

How many items can I get a discount for?

One item. Just one, and only one.

Is this per household?

No, it’s one item per member (per human).  Thus, if you have multiple unique VIP members in a household, then you can have multiple people.  You can sign-up to be a Clever Training VIP member here.  I explain more of the details here.

Which brands doesn’t it work on?

At this time, it’s not valid on Garmin (including Vector), GoPro, and Fitbit.  Also, the Wahoo bike computers (ELEMNT/BOLT/MINI) and Wahoo Desk are excluded.

In the cart it says it doesn’t work?

Validate that you only have one item in the cart, and that it’s not one of the above listed items.  Also, validate that you’re a VIP member first.

Do I get VIP points on top of this?

No, since it’s a large sale item. No double-dipping here.

Are there some fancy details I can read somewhere?

Yes, right here (middle of page, some text).

When does this end?

November 18th, 2017 at 11:59PM US Eastern Time.  However, I’d really stress to get orders in now. You’re a million times better off getting your order in and canceling if you change your mind, than waiting.  This isn’t so much a sales pitch, but just word to the wise (be it inventory, etc…).  Clever has done a good job stocking up (containers worth!) based on what demand looked like last year for this sale, but it’s always hard to know.

What happens when it ends?

It’s over. End of the road.  Time to eat turkey for Thanksgiving.  Don’t do Thanksgiving? Fake it – eat Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.

What about Europeans and CT Europe?

In this case, it’s a Clever Training USA-specific sale, though per the next item some things can be shipped internationally.  In the case of Clever Training UK/Europe, you get 10% off all year round on everything, whereas the US folks get caught up on the whole MAP thing I mentioned earlier on.  Still, they’re trying to work through some Europe specific sales for the holidays.

Is shipping free?

Yes, US shipping is free as long as your order is over $49.  For items that can be shipped internationally, it’s $29 flat rate.  Generally speaking, trainers can’t be shipped internationally.

Is this the end of the FAQ section?

Yes.

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Phew – there ya have it! Go forth and enjoy.  And feel free to drop any questions you have down below on recommendations, etc… I’d be happy to try and help ya out.  Thanks for the support!

Once again, it’s time for the annual power meter buyer’s guide!  It’s where I round-up every cycling power meter on the market, and talk through what’s happened in the last year.  I give my opinions of every single power meter on the market, as well as some general guidance on choosing a power meter.

I’ll note that when I first set out to update/write each of them I thought to myself “It seemed like kinda a quiet year”.  But what I failed to realize until I had to type it all up was that almost every company in the power meter market released something new in the last 12-14 months.  See, many companies announced items at Eurobike/Interbike 2016 (a year ago), but not many delivered until this past winter (2017).  Thus, in a lot of ways there hasn’t been a comprehensive look at what’s happened till now.

What we didn’t see this year was the dramatic price drops that we saw in years past.  Instead, we saw modest price drops.  Partially because there isn’t a ton of floor left to drop prices significantly, and partially because there was no single major product price driver drop.  Still, we did see some incredibly compelling product price lowering – WatTeam down to $399 for a dual left/right setup, and Power2Max with their NG ECO down to $499 for a crank spider based offering.

To recap all of the major power meter announcements and reviews I’ve published since last year’s guide (in reverse chronological order):

Power Meter Pedal Shootout: Vector 3 vs PowerTap P1 vs Assioma
4iiii Announces New Precision Podium Power Meter Lineup
Favero Assioma Power Meter In-Depth Review
Hands-on: Garmin Vector 3 Power Meter
Hands-on: Stages LR Dual Left/Right Power Meter
Power2Max NG ECO In-Depth Review
Power2Max NG Power Meter In-Depth Review
ROTOR 2INpower In-Depth Review
Quarq DZero Power Meter In-Depth Review
WatTeam PowerBeat Gen2 Power Meter In-Depth Review
4iiii Precision Pro Dual Left/Right Power Meter In-Depth Review

Note, I’m excluding running power meters here.  I think there’s something to be said for such a post, and very soon (with at least four running power meters on the market right now).  But 3 out of 4 of those offerings are just weeks away from exiting beta, or in a beta-like state, so I think I’ll wait till December or January for that.

The goal of this post is NOT to give you a final answer that says ‘this is the power meter to buy’.  If there’s anything I want to change in the industry it’s the mindset that there is a single perfect power meter for every consumer.  Thus, if you ask someone for “the best power meter”, and they give you any answer other than “it depends”, don’t trust that person.  That person should be asking you your specific use case, bike placement limitations, and how much you want to spend.

The cycling market has many unique use cases and thus you’ll need to take into consideration your specific requirements.  For example, it’d be silly to go out and buy Garmin Vector if you’re looking to put it on a mountain bike.  And similarly, it’d be silly to buy a PowerTap hub if you currently have HED H3 wheels, since it wouldn’t fit there.

Note that I’m not going to cover why you’d use a power meter here, nor how to use it.  For those, start here with these posts.  Instead, I’m just going to focus on the products out in the market today, and those coming down the road.

Finally, remember that power meters tend to be about as fiery as politics and religion.  So keep in mind this is just my view.  There are certainly other views out there (all wrong of course), but this comes from my perspective of trying out all the products below and hearing feedback from literally hundreds of people per day.  There are no doubt edge cases I can’t easily cover in a single readable post, but I think I’ll cover 99% of the people out there.  The remaining 1% can consider a donation of gold and/or expensive rocks for my further thoughts.

With that, let’s dive into things.

Power Meter Placement:

Before we start diving into the brands, features, and functionality, we should probably talk about placement.  The reason being that unlike a bike computer that works on just about every bike on the planet, power meters actually have more limitations than you might think.  Some limitations are straight technical (I.e. it won’t fit), and some are preference based (I.e. I don’t like it).  In either case, for most people, this section will help narrow down the selection a bit.

Let’s just briefly ensure we’ve got everyone on the same page as far as where these things all go, starting with the below photo and using the text after it as a guide.

As you can see above, we’ve got five main areas we see power meters placed today:

1) Rear wheel
2) Crank spider
3) Crank arms
4) Pedals/Cleats
5) Bottom Bracket/Axle (not visible, behind tip of arrow)

There are tangential products on other areas of the bike (like handlebars), but none of those currently on the market actually have strain gauges in them.  Thus they are more estimations (albeit some highly accurate) than actual force measurement devices.  So for much of this post I’m keeping the focus on what’s known as “direct force power meters” – which are units that measure force via a strain gauge of some sort.  And finally, I’m not going to talk about companies that have gone out of business (I.e. Ergomo, Brim Brothers), or products that haven’t been made in a long while (I.e. Polar chain power meter).  Not that I’d recommend either anyway at this point.

Back to my photo-diagram, I want to expand out the crank area a bit and talk specifically to that.  Here’s a quick cheat-sheet of which products are where (I’ve added a single-line item for non-direct force options):

Rear Wheel: PowerTap hubs
Crank Spider: Quarq/SRAM, Power2Max, SRM, PowerTap C1, Team Zwatt Zpider, FSA (Power2Max OEM)
Crank Arms: Rotor, Stages, Pioneer, 4iiii, WatTeam, ROTOR 2INPower, Team Zwatt Zimanox, Shimano, XCadey, Cateye (4iiii OEM)
Pedals: Garmin Vector, PowerTap P1, Polar/Look combo, Favero Assioma, Favero bePRO, Look, Xpedo
Pedal Spacer: LIMITS
Bottom Bracket: ROTOR INpower, Team Zwatt Zpindle, Race Face/Easton
Non-direct Force Power Meters: PowerPod, iBike, Arofly, PowerCal

In the case of left-only variants of some of those products (Polar/ROTOR/Garmin/PowerTap/4iiii), it’s still the same placement, just on the left side instead of both sides.

Features and Functionality:

Now that we’ve covered where each unit goes, let’s talk about the features that the power meters on the market have today.  Think of this like a ‘list of terms’ you’ll need to be familiar with.

Total Power (Watts): This is the obvious one – every power meter has this today (even estimated ones!).  This is simply measuring and transmitting your total power output to a head unit of some type.

ANT+ Support: Another relatively obvious one, the vast majority of power meters on the market today transmit via ANT+ to compatible head units.  This allows you to use one of dozens of different head units out there.  I’d be very hesitant to choose a non-ANT+ power meter unless you already know which head unit you’re going to pair to it (for example, the Polar V800 or Suunto Spartan).

Bluetooth Smart: Bluetooth Smart (or BLE/BTLE for short) has become the norm on power meters now as a dual ANT+/BLE configuration.  However, I’d warn that the head unit support for Bluetooth Smart power meters remains (STILL!!!) a mess with different units working on different head units, even varying by firmware versions.  Thus by and large even companies that support dual ANT+/BLE power meters on their head units (like the Wahoo ELEMNT/BOLT), are recommending folks use ANT+ when connecting from the ELEMNT to power meters, as it tends to work better.  In time that’ll resolve itself, but the industry is still growing there.  We are finally seeing Garmin support BLE power meters in all of their 2017 devices (Fenix 5/Edge 1030/FR935), so that’ll likely help drive some firming up of workability too, purely due to sheer numbers of people using Garmin units.

Left Only Power Meters: These power meters only measure power from the left side.  All of these units then simply double the left power and produce total power.  Stages really exploded this category with their left-only power meter, and other vendors followed suit including Garmin (Vector S variants), Rotor (Rotor LT, ROTOR inPOWER), 4iiii (some models), LIMITS, and Polar (Keo Power Essential) and many more.  Note that all bottom-bracket power meters are left-only power.  There are likely more I haven’t listed here.

Estimated Left/Right Power: This became all the rage just prior to true left/right units coming out, starting with the Quarq RED unit offering left/right power.  That platform works by essentially splitting your crank in half and assuming that any power recorded while pulling up is actually coming from the left side, whereas pushing down is from the right side.  Thus, an estimation.  It’s good, but not perfect.  Note that even with true left/right power (below), there’s actually very little in the scientific community around what to do with the data.  While you may think that perfect balance would be ideal – that hasn’t been established.  And some that have looked into it have found that trying to achieve balance actually lowers your overall output.  The only thing folks agree on is that measuring left/right power can be useful for those recovering from single-leg injury.  The PowerTap C1, Power2Max units, and all SRAM/Quarq models currently on the market use this method.

Actual or True Left/Right Power: This is limited to units that can measure your power in more than one location.  Thus why we see it on pedals, as well as the more expensive crank-arm or pedal based power meters.  You can’t measure it directly at the spider, instead you have to measure it upstream of that such as the cranks (ROTOR dual system, Infocrank’s dual system, Pioneer’s dual system, WatTeam dual, Shimano’s dual system, 4iiii’s dual system), pedals (Garmin, Favero Assioma/bePRO, Polar/Look, Look alone).

Pedal Smoothness & Torque Efficiency: These two metrics are available in the high-end power meters which contain true left/right power measurement as well as a supported head unit.

Cycling Dynamics: This is Garmin’s suite of Garmin Vector specific features that enable data such as platform offset and where in the stroke your power is coming from (power phase), as well as seated and standing position.  Polar also has a variant of this in some of their new cycling units as well with their own pedals.  Up until recently, other manufacturers couldn’t display this, but Garmin has effectively opened the standard up last month, so now it’s up to other companies/apps/head units to add support once ANT+ finalizes it.  Still, I generally don’t see huge value in this day to day in my training.  It’s geeky yes, but not a purchase decision swaying item for me.

Battery Swapping: All but one unit on the market today (SRM) supports battery swapping by yourself.  SRM requires you to send it in (but gets way longer battery life in between swaps).  The vast remainder of the shipping units out there today utilize a CR2032 and similar coin-cell batteries. Most get between 200 and 400 hours of run-time before you simply replace the battery.  However, some of the newer units like the PowerTap P1 that runs on AAA batteries get a bit less time, as do units such as Favero and WatTeam that use rechargeable batteries (using micro-USB cables).  Still, other rechargeable battery options like the Power2Max NG can get longer battery times per charge, along with Team Zwatt’s and Race Face/Easton’s models.

Calibration options: All units on the market today support some sort of calibration function, though to what extent is what differs.  Some have numerous options (I.e. Quarq with an app allowing you much further access), while others are more black-box (I.e. Stages and Polar).  For the most part, your primary concern here is really that some sort of calibration occurs, and that you can trigger it to happen on demand.  Beyond that, it tends to get to more advanced calibration and torque checking methods. It should be noted that the term calibration can have very specific meanings to different people (technically most people are really doing a zero-offset).  But for today’s post I’m going to keep it a bit more generic.

Ok, with all the core power meter features covered, let’s dive into the brands available today.

The On-Market Options:

We’ll start with products that you can effectively take home today. They’re in the market, available today for purchase and you can more or less install them today on the bike.  They may have slight backorders if you were to order today, but units are shipping to consumers (which is where I draw the line).  For the purposes of this section I’m focusing on direct force power meters (DFPM’s), in a later section I’ll cover non-DFPM’s.

Additionally, in the following section after this, I’ll cover announced but not yet shipping units that are on the road to market.

Note, this list is arranged in no particular order, you can use the sidebar shortcuts to quickly skip to different products.  Also note that I’ve updated sections as appropriate for this year, but for products that haven’t changed, I’m not going to re-invent the text just to re-invent that text.  I’d rather spend that time eating cookies and ice cream.

PowerTap Hub:

PowerTap has been around more than 17 years – longer than most folks realize actually.  Though their popularity has really grown in the past few years, especially in the US.  The iconic PowerTap hub replaces your rear wheel hub, which means that it’s tied into a single wheel.  This makes it easy to move between bikes, but also makes it difficult if you have separate training and racing wheels – ultimately costing one of those two situations to lose out on power.

These days the PowerTap hub products ship with a dual capable ANT+/BLE cap.  But if you find an older G3 unit that has an ANT+ cap on it, you can buy the dual caps or the BLE-only cap.  Thus it’s pretty flexible that way.  I use the dual caps on my units without issue across a wide number of devices.

Advantages: Easy install if you buy a wheelset with it pre-installed (my recommendation).  Auto-zero while coasting helps keep things in check without you thinking about it.  Manual calibration is easy, and swapping out batteries and the electronics pod quick and straightforward.  Good customer service.

Disadvantages: Limited to a single wheel, so training vs racing scenarios can be tough.  Also limited on things like disc wheels.  And if you have multiple bike types where the wheel type changes (I.e. going from triathlon to cross), you may be in the same pickle there.

Would I buy it: Absolutely, and in fact, it’s one of the units that I’ve bought myself as a workhorse in my power meter testing (two units I own…three soon actually).  Based on what I’ve seen, the PowerTap is the closest I get to ‘set it and forget it’ when it comes to power meters on the market today (talking specifically to calibration/offset variance and stability).  However, if you’re one that changes wheelsets frequently in your training, I’d be more measured in deciding whether it’s worth not having power somewhere (I don’t think it is).

Relevant Posts: CycleOps Joule and PowerTap Wheelset In-Depth Review, PowerTap’s new hubs, Bluetooth Smart Trainers, iPad apps, and more, A sneak peek at two new PowerTap products (including high-speed data cap)– Note that I don’t really have a super-new In-Depth Review of the PowerTap G3, for no particular purpose, though you’ll find data from it in virtually every one of my power meter reviews.

PowerTap Pedals:

Since we’re on PowerTap products already, we’ll continue that trend with the P1 pedals.  I’m separating out these three products because they’re so different (different placement, etc…).  Versus if a product is simply a slight model change by the same company (I.e. Quarq Elsa to D-Zero), I’m lumping them together with differences noted in that section.

As for the P1 pedals, they were announced in the spring of 2015 and started shipping in the summer of 2015.  Since then they’ve been adopted by many people, primarily due to their simplicity and ease of use.  They can record some advanced metrics to the PowerTap mobile app, but not to the extent that Garmin Vector or Pioneer do. No worries though, they do have total power, left/right power, cadence, and other core metrics.  Additionally, they also have dual ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart transmission.

Advantages: Easiest install of really any power meter out there (except perhaps the PT hub if it’s already in a wheel), no pods or torque wrenches required.  Just a simple hex wrench to install and off you go, no settling period required either.  Pricing is competitive with other full left/right units currently shipping.  I view the AAA battery as an advantage, though a small group of folks sees it as a disadvantage (I love that I can get a replacement anywhere in the world at any tiny little store on a route if need be).  Finally, no pods are on the units – so nothing to worry about breaking easily.

Disadvantages: Only a Look-Keo pedal/cleat type, and at that it’s not exactly a Look-Keo pedal (slight differences).  Also, the battery life is more limited than some other power meters.  Finally, there’s been a handful of folks that have seen issues with play in the spindle, though that’s largely dissipated in the last year or 18 months.  PowerTap says that they addressed some early manufacturing issues there.  Note that any earlier reviews seen on the interwebs with power spikes have long seen been resolved in a firmware update last winter.

Would I buy it: Up until this fall, the answer was a resounding yes.  But with Favero Assioma now sitting $250 cheaper, and Garmin Vector 3 priced the same, it’s a harder pitch (see my full power pedal recommendations here).  I’ve argued that PowerTap should be priced at $899 vs $999, and then it’d be ‘fair’ (since Garmin’s new pedal is sleeker and has more data).  Still, you’ll find either of the two sets of PowerTap P1 pedals I own floating around my bikes in-use as test units constantly.

Relevant Posts: PowerTap lowers P1 pedal price to $999, matches Garmin Vector 3, PowerTap P1 Power Meter Pedals In-Depth Review, First rides with the PowerTap P1 Pedals & PowerTap C1 Chainring…and more, PowerTap announces P1 Power Meter Pedals, also PowerTap C1 chainring unit

PowerTap Chainring:

At the same time that PowerTap introduced their new P1 pedals in the spring of 2015, they also announced a new line – the C1 chainring power meter.  This unit ships with the chainrings, per the pod you can see attached to the chainrings above.  The company started shipping the product late fall of 2015.

I used the unit quite a bit across multiple seasons and into the winter without any issue.  It’s essentially very similar to that of the Power2Max and Quarq units.  The only major differences you’ll note are really more around compatibility with various cranksets.

Advantages: Dual ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart compatibility, ability to install onto your own compatible crank arms, price, and long battery life.

Disadvantages: Limited chainring compatibility is really the main one, being that the company is only offering certain compatibility options. For many people this won’t be an issue – but it’s worth noting.  Like most of the other crank-spider region options (Power2Max/Quarq/etc…), it’s not hard if you know what you’re doing – but might be slightly intimidating to those not as familiar to figure out which model is compatible with your bike.  Fear not, it’s easy for your bike shop though.

Would I buy it: Yes, I have no issues buying this unit.  It’s been proven reliable and accurate, and after nearly a year of being on the market, I hear virtually no complaints.  I kinda put the PowerTap C1, Power2Max and Quarq units all in the same boat: All are great options and all are fairly similar in features  (and roughly in the same price range) – simply go with whatever fits your requirements around compatibility best.

Relevant Posts: PowerTap C1 Chainring In-Depth Review, First rides with the PowerTap P1 Pedals & PowerTap C1 Chainring…and more, PowerTap announces P1 Power Meter Pedals, also PowerTap C1 chainring unit

Power2Max:

Power2Max has been on the scene for roughly a little over 5 years now.  Since then they’ve repeatedly driven down the costs of power meters in the industry, and gained significant market share in doing so.  This year was no different by starting to ship their Power2Max NG units they announced at Eurobike 2016, as well as announcing and starting to ship their less expensive Power2Max NG ECO units this past summer.

The units are typically sold with or without cranks, so you’ll need to add your own, or purchase them from Power2Max pre-installed.  The new NG units bring with them dual ANT+/BLE (the Type-S is ANT+ only), as well as a rechargeable battery.  It also brings a bit of a steep increase in price.  Whereas the NG ECO units still have ANT+/BLE, a coin cell battery, and skip on some of the advanced pedal metrics that you won’t actually use.

When I use the Power2Max (like Quarq and PowerTap), I find them among the least finicky and most ‘easy to use’.  Day in and day out in testing, these units tend to ‘just work’ for me with very little calibration worries.

Advantages: The least expensive crank-based solution on the market today (NG ECO specifically due to price).  Solid accuracy with a growing crankset compatibility matrix.

Disadvantages: On older units, there isn’t a method to turn off auto-zero today on units (which is really only an issue for the most advanced of advanced users), but the newer NG units do support it. Beyond that, it’s really hard to find disadvantages of the current units.

Would I buy it: No problem at all here, as noted above – it’s probably the best deal for a complete (captures all power, not just left) power meter on the market today, primarily the NG ECO.  I love that they’re well into the ‘just works’ category.  I have no concerns with purchasing any of the variants (NG ECO, NG, or even the older Type-S) – just be sure that if you get the Type-S, it’s one heck of a deal.

Relevant Posts: Power2Max NG Power Meter In-Depth Review, Power2Max NG ECO In-Depth Review, A look at the new Power2Max NG power meters, The Power2Max Type S Power Meter In-Depth Review, Power2Max drops prices…again. Now $610US, Power2Max releases new Type S line, expands compatibility, Power2Max introduces Type S mountain bike power meter, additional road bike models

Garmin Vector:

With Garmin embarking on their 4th year of Vector, they released their 3rd generation Vector, aptly named ‘Vector 3’.  The goal here for them was to basically do away with all the past complaints, be it big or small.  Gone are the pods that hang off the side, gone is the requirement to use a torque wrench to install it, and gone are the re-branded pedals.

While the company started shipping Vector 3 in early October to consumers, fulfillment has been slow going and delayed a bit.  Still, I’ve been using it since late July and really impressed – especially with the final production unit.  You’ll likely see my in-depth review drop any day now.  I’ve been constantly swapping bikes with it, and it just works.

Garmin is the only company that offers Cycling Dynamics today (though, that’s soon changing), which includes all assortment of metrics on your pedaling style.  Some of these metrics can be interesting from a bike-fit standpoint, but many don’t yet have a specific training or racing purpose.  I’d hoped by now we’d have seen some science-like papers or something that showed the value of these, but nothing has happened in that realm – a number of years on.

Advantages: Cycling Dynamics, full left/right power recording, Vector 3 is now totally portable with no pedal torque wrench required.  It looks like a normal pedal finally.

Disadvantages: Pedal choice (just Look-Keo compatible, albeit with a Shimano Ultegra upgrade/accessory kit available for Vector 2 units…not Vector 3).

Would I buy it:  Yes (finally, I haven’t recommended them for years).  I’m really liking mine, and I suspect it’ll become my default pedal going into the new year.  The main reason I’d switch from the P1 to Vector 3 is primarily that it’s a nicer looking pedal, though the Cycling Dynamics pieces doesn’t hurt.

Relevant Posts: Hands-on: Garmin Vector 3 Power Meter, Garmin announces Vector2 (and 2S), also upgrade kit for original Vector owners, Garmin Vector In-Depth Review, Garmin announces Vector S: $899 power meter, also announces Cycling Dynamics,

Favero Assioma:

A few years back Favero came out of nowhere one summer to debut the bePRO power meter pedals.  Surprisingly for a company nobody had heard of, they shipped near-immediately and were actually accurate.  Oh, and they had great pricing.

This past summer they repeated that performance with their Assioma pedals (seen above).  This added Bluetooth Smart capabilities, as well as simple installation that didn’t require any complex tools.  A simple hex wrench and you were done in a few seconds.  I reviewed them as well this past summer and found their accuracy solid (and moveability also solid).  Better though is that they came in at $795USD for the dual leg set, the lease expensive dual-power meter pedal option on the market.  They are rechargeable, and get about 60 hours of battery life per charge.

Advantages: Price – the unit is $795USD for the dual pedals, installation is easy and no longer requires tools like the older bePRO pedals. Accuracy is solid, and it can quickly and easily be moved.

Disadvantages: The small pods still remain, and they require slightly different cleats (same as PowerTap P1 pedals).

Would I buy it: Absolutely, I have zero issues with this unit.  It’s a great alternative to the Garmin Vector 3 or PowerTap P1 pedals, simply saving $200+ over those options.  The only downside compared to Vector is that it’s not quite as sleek, nor does it have Cycling Dynamics.

Relevant Posts: Favero Assioma Power Meter In-Depth Review, The Favero bePRO Power Meter In-Depth Review

Quarq:

Years ago, Quarq became the first non-SRM crank-based power meter that was actually affordable.  Starting off on straight road bikes, they’ve expanded to other areas including track and cross bikes.  The unit replaces your existing crank spider and depending on the model is typically sold with specific crank arms attached.  You’ll need to ensure your bottom bracket is compatible, but if you shoot the Quarq folks an e-mail I’ve found they can usually help anyone figure that out easily.  All Quarq power meters are made in South Dakota (US), along with servicing and shipping from there.  The Quarq Cinqo was actually the first power meter I bought, and what The Girl subsequently purchased as well for her training.

Last year (2016) at Eurobike they introduced the DZero generation of units, which slightly increased accuracy but more importantly added Bluetooth Smart compatibility/connectivity.  The units didn’t start shipping till the winter though, and Quarq struggled with backorders well into the spring. These days things are all caught up though and from my testing, the accuracy is solid and is easily a trustable power meter.

Advantages: Crank-based design means no wheel swap issues. Accuracy on-par with other units.  Can swap chainrings without issue.  Easy replacement of battery, and can utilize phone apps for further calibration.  For me, it has a high ‘just works’ factor.  The addition of Bluetooth Smart into the DZero Units was much needed.

Disadvantages: Crank arm selection has diminished some with SRAM acquisition (reducing compatibility), and while some pricing adjustments recently have helped, they do tend to be a bit more expensive than the Power2Max or PowerTap C1 options.

Would I buy it: From the standpoint of “Have I bought it?”, the answer is definitely yes. In fact, a DZero unit is set to become my base crank power meter on a new bike I’m building and should arrive in the next week or two.  Plus, I own an older Quarq Cinqo, then a Riken, and The Girl also uses the older Cinqo.

Relevant Reviews: Quarq DZero Power Meter In-Depth Review, First Ride: Quarq’s New DZero Power Meter Series, Quarq introduces new $799 RIKEN AL power meter, Quarq/SRAM RED Review, Quarq RIKEN In-Depth Review, Eurobike 2014 Power Meter Roundup: Quarq News

Stages Power:

As many know by now, Stages really started the whole left-only trend, in that it’s attached to your left crank-arm (seen above), and thus is only measuring the left leg power.  It simply doubles the left-leg power to get total power.  This means if you vary, or vary in certain conditions, then the power might not be accurate – or something that you could compare to years from now on different products.  They were also the first one to do dual ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart dual broadcasting.

But this past year at Eurobike (2017) they finally announced intention to sell their long-awaited dual option, which has both left/right sides.  It’s what Team Sky has actually been using for years in testing. The option is slated to start shipping here in the next month or two, though I did get in a preview ride or two back in August.  Once they have final production versions of the dual units, I’ll definitely do a review there.

For now, the focus is on their single leg option.  If you are really set on a single leg unit– they make a great number of different crank arm configurations, and their underlying tech is solid.

Advantages: Inexpensive option.  Easily moved from bike to bike with a simple Allen/hex wrench. Contains both Bluetooth Smart and ANT+ (and dual-broadcasts).  Their new Gen2 design seems to resolve most people’s waterproofing concerns that caused earlier deaths.  Also, their firmware update this past spring seems to have resolved many triathlete’s issues with head units not picking up signal while in the aero position (far less common on road bikes).

Disadvantages: Left-only approach means simply doubling left-leg power, may not be fully accurate representation of your power (high or lower).  Note that existing left-only units are NOT upgradeable to dual leg units.

Would I buy it: This is a much more complex question (that really applies to all left-only units).  Technically speaking it’s a well-made unit that accurately measures the left side.  From a pricing standpoint, it’s tough to recommend the left-only approach with other options in the same price ballpark that fully capture all power.  Further, as I’ve collected a tremendous amount of power meter data over the past few years with 3-5 power meters concurrently, I’ve started to understand my specific personal left/right balance biases.  For most of my riding, there’d be no major issue with Stages.  However for longer or higher intensity rides where I might fatigue more, I see some inaccuracies on Stages due to my personal leg differences.  You might be the same, or you might be perfectly even.  I don’t know.

I know it’s easy to point at Team Sky and simply say “It’s good enough for Froome”, but again remember that Team Sky has been using the dual setup (not the single leg setup) for years, and so it’s not really same-same.

Relevant Review: Hands-on: Stages Dual Left/Right Power Meter, Stages 2016 Sea Otter News, Stages drops prices, down to $529US, Stages Power announces carbon crank options, talks a bit about dual-leg power, Stages Power Meter In-Depth Review Update

4iiii Precision:

Next, we’ve got 4iiii Precision.  They announced three years ago at Interbike, and are now onto their third generation of products – the latest being their ‘Podium’ lineup.  Their initial product line started with a $399 left-only power meter, but these days they have both left-only and dual left/right options.  They also sponsor/equip two WorldTour Pro teams.

I’ve seen really good accuracy on both their single and dual leg setups, as I showed in my review this past spring.  I haven’t spent much time with their slightly updated Podium lineup they announced at Interbike, though I don’t expect that to be a substantially different product.

4iiii is a great option when you want to get into dual-leg power either cheaper than most other options, or if you want to go single-leg now and upgrade later.

Advantages: One of the least expensive power meters on the market today at $399USD. Can be applied to most cranks (non-carbon). Contains both Bluetooth Smart and ANT+ (and dual-broadcasts).  Ability to upgrade to dual-leg on some models is key.

Disadvantages: Left-only approach means simply doubling left-leg power, may not be a fully accurate representation of your power (high or lower).  However, if you have the dual-leg setup, that’s not a concern.

Would I buy it:  For the dual-sided, absolutely.  For the left-only, sure, but take the exact same general left-only comments I made for Stages and apply them here.

Related posts: 4iiii Announces New Precision Podiiiium Power Meter Lineup, 4iiii Precision Pro Dual Left/Right Power Meter In-Depth Review, 4iiii Precision Power Meter In-Depth Review, 4iiii Announces New Factory Pre-Install option, Dual Timelines/Prices,  A Brief Update on 4iiii Precision Power Meter: Starts shipping this week, 4iiii’s Introduces $399 Power Meter, Precision: My First Ride With It

SRM:

SRM has been around since the beginning of power meter measurement, and I don’t think there’s anyone that would argue that SRM doesn’t produce solid power meters.  But no power meter out there today is perfect.  Not even SRM.  They all have conditions where they do really well, and conditions where they do less well.  It’s understanding those conditions that’s most important.  Which doesn’t take away from SRM, but rather simply serves to note that I believe there’s a bit of an urban legend with them being the ‘gold standard’.  Many of the products in this post can produce just as consistently accurate power as SRM (which again, SRM is good at doing).

This past year SRM released their rechargeable unit, which had long been in development and trade show display.  However, the challenge for the company at this point remains the high price as well as lack of connectivity like Bluetooth Smart support.

Advantages: It’s a well established brand with a well understood product. The reliability is generally very good.  With ANT+ you can use any head unit you’d like, and aren’t limited to just the SRM head units.

Disadvantages: Expensive. Servicing isn’t as open as other power meters on the market today.  If looking at their head unit (not required), the current generation is simply really expensive for what you get.  No BLE support.  Also, some SRM units have problems with Wahoo ELEMNT/BOLT bike computers.

Would I buy it: While I do actually own one, I certainly wouldn’t recommend someone else buy one.  With the exception of very specific technical use-cases that other power meters can’t fulfill (higher speed recording rates with older head units), I feel that for 98% of the market today, there are more budget-friendly options that are just as accurate.  I don’t subscribe to the “gold-standard” concept, maybe at one historical point, but not in this market.  And as the Pro Peloton has proved, virtually every other power meter in this list is just as good as an SRM (if not better).

Relevant Posts: Eurobike 2016 Power Meter Roundup: SRM, Eurobike 2015 Power Meter Roundup: SRM, First look at new SRM PC8 head unit with WiFi/GPS/ANT+ & Bluetooth, Eurobike 2014 Power Meter Roundup: SRM.,  Interbike 2014 SRM: Their iOS app, PC8, and their thoughts on low-cost power meters

Pioneer Power:

Pioneer has iterated nicely through two generations of power meters over the last four years, plus other crankset models, roughly paced at a new set of models per year.  This year was true as well as the company rolled out Shimano R9100 support for the units.  They maintained their price point at $999USD for a dual system (sending in your own cranks), and a slight dip in price to $559 for a left-leg system (also sending in your own cranks).

The Pioneer approach is a bit different than most other power meters on the market in that you don’t do the install yourself, but rather, you get the kit sent to you fully installed after sending in your crank arms.  Additionally, it’s one of the few units on the market with true left/right high-speed data (starting at 12 samples per second (at 60RPM); faster the higher the cadence).  The company does though sell complete cranksets (like the above pictured one) ready to go, but of course since that includes the crankset, it’ll cost ya a bit more.  Note that the higher speed data is only available on their Pioneer head units.

Advantages: Has the highest recording rate of any dual-leg power meter on the market today, measures left/right power and associated metrics more in-depth than anyone else.  A completely pre-set system once it arrives to you.  Any choice of chainrings you’d like on the planet. Plus, the $999 complete system price for dual-leg isn’t too bad (for your own cranks).

Disadvantages: For crank arms, you’re somewhat limited to certain cranksets though that has definitely improved.  There can be a small delay when you send away your own cranks to get it installed (versus buying a pre-installed set), though realistically very few power meters are available next-day anyway.  Some have seen very minor delays in track-start type situations, but I think that’s very limited in scope.

Would I buy it: No issues at all for the dual system.  I’m a bit mixed on the left-leg side.  If you don’t plan to buy their head unit or upgrade to a dual left/right system down the road, then honestly there are cheaper (and better) options from Stages and 4iiii that do dual ANT+/BLE.

Relevant Posts: Pioneer announces new power meter options, head unit upgrades, bike sensor modeling, Power meter prices plunge further as Pioneer & SRM join PowerTap in price cuts, The Pioneer Power Meter System In-Depth Review, Interbike 2015 Power Meter Roundup: Pioneer, Eurobike 2015 Power Meter Roundup: Pioneer

Verve Infocrank:

Verve introduced their Infocrank power meter in 2014, and continues to chug along with updates to the platform and hardware options.  This dual crank-based power meter has strain gauges on both crank arms.  Additionally of note is that the unit has custom designed crank arms that are specific to Infocrank.

The unit transmits on ANT+, and uses small coin cell style batteries that you can go ahead and replace as required (no sending in needed).  I tested one for…well, an exceedingly long period of time. And I saw absolutely zero accuracy issues with it – and can validate their claim that you don’t ever need to worry about pressing the ‘calibrate’ function on your head unit.  Of course, at the same time, most other power meters are fairly accurate as well – but Infocrank seems to be more hassle-free when it comes to that side of things.

While they did introduce some data analytic options over the past year or so, we haven’t seen them add in Bluetooth Smart support yet, which is becoming a competitive requirement for all power meter vendors.

Advantages: Complete end to end system that’s mostly ‘install and forget’, gets fairly long life on coin cell batteries.  The company claims higher levels of accuracy compared to the competition, but I’d say it’s more of a ‘just as accurate’ statement instead.  Though the lack of requirement to occasionally manually zero is handy and low-maintenance.

Disadvantages: You’re limited in crank compatibility, since the units are built into their crank arms.  The batteries can also be a bit fickle to find in out of the way places (thus, carry backups if you’re in the countryside somewhere – SR44 silver oxide batteries).  Also, no Bluetooth Smart support.

Would I buy it: It’s tough. The price is higher, though sure, cranks and chainrings are included – but that’s far from justifying the price increase compared to other units that are just as accurate.  Also, the lack of Bluetooth Smart support is challenging.  So there’s nothing technically wrong with the unit, but I think it’s sliding back into being uncompetitive these days.

Relevant Posts: Sea Otter Power Meter Tidbits: Stages & Verve Infocrank, Verve Infocrank Power Meter In-Depth Review, Eurobike Power Meter 2015 News Roundup: Verve Infocrank, Eurobike Power Meter 2014 News Roundup: Verve Infocrank

ROTOR Power:

ROTOR has been in the power meter market for more than five years now, and has iterated through four different products in that time.  They’ve changed technology and partners along the way, but I think they’re finally in a good spot with their latest 2INPower system, which was announced last year (2016), though made widely available in 2017 and that’s when I tested it this past spring.

The 2INPower system is unique in that it’s one of the few power meters to actually work with elliptical chainrings (of which ROTOR is famous for).  Additionally, they have a pretty extensive suite of software tools for doing pedaling analytics (primarily indoors). They also went with a rechargeable battery as well as adding in Bluetooth Smart support, both of which worked well for me.

From an accuracy standpoint, I found it great outdoors across a wide variety of conditions, but I did have some weird indoor trainer quirks that ROTOR couldn’t solve.  These quirks were echoed by other people, none with a resolution.

Advantages: Compatibility with ROTOR cranks and elliptical chainrings (most power meters don’t do this accurately). Ability to track additional stroke/balance metrics through their software platform.

Disadvantages: Limited compatibility with cranksets.  Note, the older ROTOR sets do NOT do Bluetooth Smart, but 2INPower does.  Though, I don’t really recommend the older ones anyway.

Would I buy it: It’s tough. My challenge with it is that I saw accuracy issues indoor (as did others), and at the end of the day ROTOR couldn’t provide any resolution to that (for me or otherwise).  If that was resolved, I’d have no issues with it technologically.  Pricing is trickier though.

Relevant Posts: ROTOR 2INPower In-Depth Review, ROTOR announces new INpower power meters, starting at $779US, First look at new ROTOR Power Meter, Eurobike Power Meter Update Post: Quarq, ROTOR, Pioneer, Brim Brothers & Ciclosport

WatTeam PowerBeat:

WatTeam broke onto the market a couple of summers ago (2014) with the announcement of a $499 left/right power meter system, which as of September is now down to $399, or $259 for the single-leg system!  The sensors attach individually to your left/right crank arms, and then have separate communication pods that hang off the side of the crank arms.

They started shipping about two years ago, but then ran into snags and had to pause for a year.  Then last winter (2016/2017) they resumed shipping and you’ll remember my in-depth review around then.  Overall things were pretty solid, though I did notice two quirks (extremely rough cobbles and some hard sprints caused issues).  They’ve since fixed the cobbles piece.  This is something that’s definitely worth reading through the review to understand the precise limitations and whether or not they might impact you.  And for the price, it’s definitely worth considering.

Advantages: Self-install, price is incredible, and by far the lowest dual left/right power solution on the market. Also, doesn’t require a specific pedal type.

Disadvantages: Some limitations on crankarm compatibility, plus the sprint accuracy issue I saw is still outstanding.  Some might also dislike the install procedure, but it’s silly easy.

Would I buy it: For the right person, yes.  I think as a triathlete you could actually use this unit without issue, since most triathlete training/racing (non-ITU) doesn’t involve huge sprints.  Instead, it’s more about sustainability of power.  Plus, the pricing is incredible.

Related Posts: WatTeam announces $259 power meter pricing, new models and more, WatTeam PowerBeat Gen2 Power Meter In-Depth Review, A Fall 2016 Update from WatTeam and their $499 PowerBeat, A WatTeam PowerBeat Spring 2016 Power Meter Update,  A Preview: A Week Riding the Watteam PowerBeat $499 Power Meter, A chat with the CEO of Watteam and their new $499 power meter: PowerBeat, Watteam’s PowerBeat: A first look at prototype/beta power data

Race Face/Easton:

Next up we’ve got a small gaggle of new units from Easton and Race Face, cohesively branded as their CINCH power meter.  The two brands are both owned by Fox Factory.  The CINCH unit is designed to be compatible with road, mountain, and cyclocross bikes, making them a bit wider spread on the compatibility front than some other power meter companies that may target just road riders.  The main draw here is enabling both companies to offer consumers units that are compatible with their group lineups with minimal hassle to get a power meter.

The underlying tech though is actually kinda interesting.  In this case, for reasons that are a bit weird – neither Race Face nor Easton wanted to disclose that the units were actually powered by Sensitivus (more commonly known as the company behind Team Zwatt).  In fact, you may remember this very crank from my Team Zwatt preview test a year ago.

As for the tech itself, the unit is left-only as it’s placed within the bottom bracket and won’t capture the power from the right leg.  This makes the left-only nature similar to that of Stages, 4iiii Precision (non-dual), and many others offering single-sided solutions.  Though, priced from $599USD for the unit itself, it’s a bit more than those companies.  Also, it’s micro-USB rechargeable, and gets about 400 hours.

Advantages: Broader compatibility with mountain biking and cyclocross bikes.  Reasonably long-term battery life, dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart.

Disadvantages: A bit pricey for a left-only unit, though options are admittedly slim for off-road usage.

Would I buy it: I haven’t had a chance to test it in-depth, so it’s too early to say.

Related Posts: Sea Otter 2017 Power Meter Roundup

Team Zwatt:

Team Zwatt launched last summer via crowdfunding with a few different power meter options.  Behind the scenes they also provide the technology for Easton/Race Face power meters.  This past spring they started shipping their own Team Zwatt units to customers, and it sounds like things are mostly caught up these days.  I’ve had a few readers receive units lately, and mostly stuff seems to be working well.  I’ve heard of minor teething issues with the subscription service, but nothing that’s a blocker.

What’s unique about them is their subscription approach, which lowers the upfront cost of the unit by supplementing it with a subscription service fee.  This way if you take a prolonged break from needing a power meter, you can turn off the power meter function while still leaving it on your bike (and stop paying for it).  While I did test out a beta version a year ago, I haven’t tried a final production model yet to see how it all works now that things are past the testing phase.  Still, I think it’s definitely a compelling model if priced right.

Advantages: Lower upfront cost, a few different power meter attachment options, company has experience as an OEM to other brands – so not really an unknown startup.

Disadvantages: Pricing is a bit questionable longer term, especially compared to some other models on the market these days.

Would I buy it: It’s hard to say. The pricing model is both a pro and a con, and I’m not sure for me specifically if that pricing model works.  But if it works for you – go forth!

Related Posts: Hands-on: Team Zwatt launches subscription based power meter, Sea Otter 2017 Power Meter Roundup

FSA PowerBox:

Last year FSA partnered with Power2Max to put together what was at the time a unique branded option from FSA by Power2Max at a relatively reduced price.  It was (and still is) a very solid deal.  This past summer Power2Max made that power meter available themselves as the Power2Max NG ECO.  It’s the exact same physical unit, just different branding, and very slightly different firmware.

In my Power2Max NG ECO in-depth review you’ll see that it does exceptionally well.  And likewise, on another of my bikes I’ve had the FSA PowerBox as well since summer, and it too is very solid.  Both are great.  The only difference to be aware of is that the two companies sell different crank arm configurations, and in the case of FSA you have to pay extra for a firmware update to enable Bluetooth Smart.  Whereas with the P2M NG ECO unit it comes with it.  But again, you’ll need to look at what crank options you want to see what makes the most sense for ya.

I’m hoping to get my review finally published here soonish, though you’ll find data in a number of my product reviews already from the last few months.

Advantages: Accuracy is solid, super easy to use.  Generally good pricing once you remember that the carbon cranksets are included within the price.

Disadvantages: Bluetooth Smart costs a bit extra, so you’ll want to factor that into the price.

Would I buy it: I’d have no issues buying it.  I’d just want to do my research and ensured it fit my specific crankset requirements.  But technologically it’s solid.

Related Posts: Sea Otter 2017 Power Meter Roundup

Shimano Dura-Ace Power Meter:

Last year prior to the 2016 Tour de France, Shimano announced their Dura-Ace integrated power meter.  While Shimano is starting with their high-end Dura-Ace, everyone in the industry knows how this story ends (by going to cheaper models eventually).  Still, the product does have some minor quirks in terms of hardware design. Some of that is likely done to have it match the general Shimano Dura-Ace aesthetic, more than just technical reasons.  The pricing (which is confusingly different across the world) may be a stumbling block for now, but I’m sure that’ll eventually be less of an issue.

The company had planned to start shipping earlier in the year (2017), but kept pushing that back.  However, they did seed a handful of units within Japan back in September, and have very slowly dripped out a few more units to various markets.  I’ve only seen a single plot’s worth of data from any 3rd party, and that was shared to me by a competitor of theirs – so I’d take it with a grain of salt.  Shimano had promised a review unit to me by mid-September, but that keeps getting pushed back.  Still, I’m looking forward to trying it out once they’re ready.

Advantages: Integrated into Shimano purchasing/distribution, one vendor to deal with.  Has Bluetooth Smart app configuration options.

Disadvantages: Magnet based means slightly more complex install, unknown accuracy, unknown longevity.  Only ANT+ power broadcasting though, Bluetooth Smart is purely for settings tweaks.

Would I buy it: Maybe, but I need a unit to test it.  Also, I’m hesitant on pricing at this point.

Related Posts: Eurobike 2016 Power Meter Round-up: Shimano, First Look: Shimano Dura-Ace R9100–Now with power meter option

Polar/Look Pedals:

(This section talks specifically to the Polar-branded Look/Polar combo, see next section for Look-branded option)

The Polar/Look Power System pedals is more than 6 years old at this point, though it’s had a few overhauls along the way – most notably now being full Bluetooth Smart compatible, which gives it compatibility

Note that there’s been a bit of a relationship status change been Polar and Look, so things are in a wonky state right now.  Look announced their own dual ANT+/BLE version two years ago, though availability of that is questionable at best.

Polar also has their Keo Power Essential, which is a left-only option.  In this scenario you just get the left pod and pedal, and then it doubles the power for the right side.  This has the same inherent limitations as Stages and others, but also offers a lower price point than the full Keo dual-pedal system.

Advantages: Pedal based means theoretical portability, system largely ‘just works’ once you get it installed. Appears accurate, but really hard to validate all aspects.  On Polar head units, you do get more pedal metric information than most units offer.

Disadvantages: Installation is a bit complex. Not as easy as Assioma/Vector3/PowerTap P1. Limitations on crank widths/lengths.  Only Bluetooth Smart support (not dual ANT+/BLE).  Generally overpriced.

Would I buy it: Definitely not.  Plus, I’m not even sure Polar is actually selling this thing anymore (certainly not making it).

Relevant Review: Polar Look Keo Power System–Pedal Based Power Meter–In-Depth Review, Polar announces new Keo Power systems, and V800/V650 power meter update plans, and more!

Look Keo Power:

(This section talks specifically to the Look-branded option)

As noted in the previous section, Look spun off their own product from the previous Polar partnerships two years ago and started shipping earlier this year.  That product upgraded the pods used, as well as added dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart solution.  In other words, it became a viable option within the power meter world.

The only problem is – aside from seeing this on a couple of sponsored riders in the WorldTour, I’ve yet to see any real-life people with this.  And I’ve even heard from a few DCR readers that sent in their Polar pods to Look to get them ‘upgraded’ to the dual ANT+ variant, only to never get them back (many months later).  So…yeah.

Advantages: Pedal based means theoretical portability, dual ANT+/BLE allows multiple head units.

Disadvantages: Only one pedal type, limitations on crank arms/types.  Incredibly overpriced when it launched.

Would I buy it: No. It’s overpriced. Simple as that.  At $1,500 for the dual set, that’s far more than the PowerTap P1’s which do exactly the same thing and don’t require funky installation or have pods hanging off the sides.  Plus, it’s really unclear whether this is even a product anymore.

Relevant Review: LOOK’s new dual ANT+/BLE Power Meter Pedals: A bit more information

LIMITS Power:

LIMITS came onto the scene during the spring of 2015, as part of an Indiegogo campaign that planned to ship by the end of 2015.  That didn’t happen.  However, they did recently start shipping initial units over the last 3-4 weeks.  The unit sits in between your pedals and your crank arm, offering near unlimited compatibility.  It’s priced at sub-$300.

I’ve historically been very skeptical of their product, timelines, and company.  Like, the most skeptical I’ve ever been of a product.

Earlier this summer (2016) I received a production unit from a backer who attended their launch event, which I published a detailed comparative review of sorts here.  In short, it failed.  The company then went back and worked on some further firmware updates and minor hardware changes, which aim to fix those issues. However, by and large, those firmware updates haven’t fixed the issues.  In the last few weeks (Oct 2017) they sent out notice that they’re working on a new Gen2 version, and people still waiting on their Gen1 versions will get that instead, eventually.

Advantages: Compatible with virtually any pedal type, crank arm, or wheelset.  Inexpensive.

Disadvantages: Simply isn’t accurate, battery caps easily break off, questionable horrible customer service.  Some people are concerned with q-factor changes (basically increase in distance between your two pedals), though, most don’t realize your q-factor changes anyway between a mountain bike and road bike for example.

Would I buy it: No, not at this point.  If they can address accuracy issues (which they haven’t after more than a year), that’s different.  I’ve yet to see a single data set from someone with multiple power meters showing accurate data.

Relevant Posts: LIMITS Power Meter Accuracy Data

RPM2 FOOTPOD POWER METER

The RPM2 power meter is essentially a footpod (insole) that you put in your cycling shoe to measure power.  The company started in the medical space, and then branched out into the cycling and running realm.  Initially they only supported their own app for recording of power (which was a non-starter), however they’ve since branched to ANT+ compatibility as well.

The company started off focusing on the elite athlete as their target market, but has since rebranded as ‘casual cycling use’.  I haven’t spent any time with this unit unfortunately however.  I’ve gone back and forth a little with them on getting units, but nothing much ever materialized.  It’s tricky because there’s specific measurements you need for each foot (not just shoe size), and thus the units aren’t resalable either.  I haven’t heard of any DCR readers having a good experience with it unfortunately.

Advantages: Not bike dependent being insole based; can move easily from bike to bike simply inside your shoes.

Disadvantages: Resale value is effectively zero, being it’s sized to each of your feet individually.

Would I buy it: Given the disadvantages, I’m struggling to see a reason I would buy it.

XCadey Power Meter

This is a left crank arm power meter similar to the design of Stages.  The price has been appealing for many people because it’s sub-$200.  Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any evidence that this Chinese power meter is at all accurate.  From the company’s own eBay pages (which is where they sell it), they use power meter comparison graphs that quite honestly look horrible.  The power is often wrong by upwards of 80w (compared to an SRM and PowerTap hub data they provide), and in fact it’s virtually never aligned properly.  You’d be far better off looking at a non-DFPM such as PowerPod down lower for roughly the same price.  Or spending a bit more on something like the WatTeam single-sided unit.  While some have asked for a review, I’m honestly hesitant to waste time on a product that the company can’t even bother to cherry pick the best possible data to publish on their sales/marketing pages.  What’s the non-good data look like if this is the best they have?

Advantages: It’s still at least a Shimano crank arm even if it doesn’t provide accurate power numbers.

Disadvantages: It doesn’t appear to provide accurate power numbers.

Would I buy it: Nope.

Non-DFPM Devices:

Finally, we have a few options that use calculations to determine your power output.  These units don’t actually measure your work effort using strain gauges, but instead rely upon other environmental factors.  Thus the name of non-Direct Force Power Meters (DFPM).  Some take offense to these being called ‘power meters’ since they lack a strain gauge, but frankly that’s stupid.  There’s no international definition that states how a power meter shall measure power, but rather just that it measures it in some way.  These units come to a measurement via different methods than direct force measuring strain gauges.  I don’t care whether they use strain gauges or small chipmunks, as long as it ends up accurate.  Inversely, if it’s inaccurate, then it’s useless – even when using a strain gauge.

Historically (in all the years I’ve been doing this), I’ve kept these as a separate category – in large part because they were indeed so different in terms of not just product design, but also accuracy.  However, I do want to highlight the PowerPod as being one that for the right consumer I would recommend.

PowerPod: This was launched at Interbike 2015, and then started shipping about 60 days later. The concept is built upon the iBike technology of using aerodynamics for power.  In my in-depth product review, I found it did very well against a suite of power meters in a wide variety of conditions.  For a $299 power meter, it does quite well.  There are specific edge cases where it might not handle as well, but if you understand whether or not you fall into those edge cases – then you can make the right decision.  I do think the unit is on the edge of pricing though, in that at $399 from 4iiii you get a direct force power meter that reduces those edge case (albeit left-only).  Whereas I think a $249 price point is far more wide-reaching (and they tend to do $199-$249 on sale).  My In-Depth review can be found here, as well as the boatloads of people in the comments who are largely quite happy with the device.  Finally, the company also started shipping a dual ANT+/BLE option, which helps compatibility a bit more as well.

PowerCal: The PowerTap PowerCal (offered in both ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart) is a heart-rate strap that also transmits power information.  It monitors your heart rate and then uses the rate of change to determine power.  While many hard-core power meter users are afraid to even glance at the thing, I found that when you started looking at real-world data, it wasn’t actually all that bad.  And in fact, it was far more accurate than you’d expect.  In general, I’d recommend this for someone that may be buying a heart rate strap anyway and is interested in power (since you’re basically just spending $50 more, it’s about $99 these days).  While there are some apps out there that can attempt to do the same thing, none of them re-transmit back over ANT+, so the data isn’t included on your bike computer.  Check out the full review above for the limitations on where it works well, and where it’s not so hot.

iBike: I haven’t tested out the iBike in a few years now, however, this is effectively a head unit combined with the PowerPod noted above, which determines your power output.  My challenge with the iBike has primarily been the head unit side, and not the power meter side.  Compared to the head units of today, the head unit is just horribly dated.  But I think the company is on the right track with the PowerPod and focusing on a solo power meter rather than the full package.  So far so good there.

Arofly: This small pressure sensor power meter only works with phones (their app specifically), and their mini head unit.  So unlike the other three above that don’t require a phone and app, this does.  I briefly tried the unit back last spring (with the phone app), and found the experience less than awesome.  Since then they made a bunch of tweaks based on some of that feedback, but ultimately it still requires their app or their head unit.  To me, that’s basically a non-starter.  Nothing good comes of that.

Unreleased/Cancelled/Etc Products:

Next, we’ve got power meters that are currently in a pending shipping state.  This means that as a regular consumer, as of the date of this publishing, you can’t actually get your hands on one quite yet (though, some do offer pre-order options).  Nonetheless, since I’ve been fortunate enough to actually ride most of these, I can offer a bit of perspective on them.  Of course, until they do release a final product things could change.  Ones that look promising could flop, and others that have challenges could be superstars.  We just don’t know.

What we do know however is that nobody in the power meter market has actually hit their projected timelines for initial release of new products (I’m not counting minor variants).  Seriously, nobody.  Not SRM (new rechargeable model took years until finally this spring), not Garmin (Vector was years delay), nor Polar (Bluetooth edition took years too).  Despite what the interwebs would tell you – it’s rather difficult getting a mass produced accurate power meter, regardless of whether you’re a company with hundreds of millions in revenue (Garmin), or a startup (WatTeam).  Remember that it’s easy getting 95% there in power meter development, it’s the last 5% that can take years (and often does). Nonetheless, here’s what’s in the theoretical pipeline.

XPEDO THRUST E:

Next, we have the perennial party crasher at bike events worldwide, the Xpedo Thrust E.  This pedal-based unit has been continually shown for a number of years as ‘almost ready’, typically just ‘2-3 months away’.  Astoundingly, last year (2015) they actually said March 2016 – as opposed to the usual 3 months away.  Then by Interbike 2016 it was “Maybe March 2017”.  I checked again at Eurobike and Interbike, and they said they’re working on it.

Either way, there were a lot of “maybe’s” said within their discussion.  Simply put – I doubt we’ll ever see it ship at this point.

Luck Shoe Power:

This Spanish company is making a power meter cycling shoe. Well technically it’s a bit of a shim that slides under their cycling shoes, but either way – it measures and transmits your power.  I briefly saw them at Eurobike in August, but they weren’t able to provide clear timelines then.  They had it on some bikes and were pedaling, but they seemed non-confident in it as a product.  Still, if they can achieve accuracy for the prices they’re talking – that’d be awesome.

Relevant posts: A Look at Luck’s Cycling Shoe Power Meter

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Finally, a quick listing of companies that have ceased to make any noise at all in the last 12-14 months (official or rumors), and as such, I’d consider them off-market:

Ashton Instruments: Ashton Instruments made the media rounds at Interbike two years ago (2014), and then I visited with them again during the spring of 2015 where they demonstrated their bottom bracket based system, which they hoped to sell for under $500 in the spring of 2016 (last year).  These former MIT students have the foundation for a potential power meter company and product, and were able to demonstrate it to me both indoors and outdoors.  They also have riders on one of the local teams testing out basic prototypes of the platform.  Note that the solution will be limited to measuring left-only power.

Dyno Velo: I visited these folks at Interbike 2015.  They’ve got a bottom-bracket region power meter, very similar to what Ashton Instruments is doing.  As I noted in the post, I think they have the potential to have a solid product if they can make it a bit more consumer/bike shop friendly.  Their pricing will likely be in the same ballpark as the Ashton Instruments option (and targeting the same customers).  At that time they wanted to ship in early 2016, but I thought they’d need to make some minor tweaks to their designs in order to achieve that.  Still, nothing major since then.  I get the feeling they thought my post last year was the end of them (ok, maybe not ‘got the feeling’, they said exactly that).

Brim Brother’s Zone:  This was a Speedplay based cleat power meter that was long in development.  As of October 2016, the company ceased operations. While they got close, they ultimately couldn’t transition from 95% of the way there to 100% of the way there.

I suspect we’ll see more companies join this group over the next year, as the price of power meters continues to drop and thus push viable budget options into being non-viable due to consumers going with name-brand options they trust at only a slight price premium.

Buying Used Power Meters:

Everything in this post is talking about new units whereby you are the original owner.  So when I talk about costs there, that’s my baseline.  With that in mind, there’s nothing wrong with buying used cycling gear.  However, in the case of power meters, I’d caution that accuracy is of the utmost importance.  After all, if you’re buying an inaccurate/untrusted power meter, you might as well just send me the cash instead and I’ll send you back random numbers.

Thus if you buy a used power meter my only caution would be to spend the money to have the manufacturer validate/test it, this is especially true if you don’t know the source of the unit.

For example, I’d be less concerned if you had a close friend that used a PowerTap for six months and then decided to swap it out for something else due to changing their rear wheel for a disc.  In that case, you would know if your friend was having issues with it, and the reason behind the sale (new wheels).

Whereas, if you buy randomly from an unknown person you don’t know the history behind it and I’d be inclined to ensure a trusted 3rd party can complete a test on the device to ensure accuracy.  In most cases, the best 3rd party to complete that test is the manufacturer itself.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, as I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy used.  I’m just saying trust…but verify.

So what should I buy?

At the end of the day, there’s no single right answer to this question.  There’s only ‘best’ answers for a given individual situation.  I’ve tried to outline all the major pros and cons of each unit on the market, and in simple language whether or not I’d purchase it (or, purchase it again).  I’d probably narrow down first where you plan to place the power meter (I.e. pedals vs crank arm vs etc…), then narrow down a brand.  Placement will drive usage (I.e. changing bikes or not).

The landscape will continue to change.  As I noted in the above sections, the market continues to expand, and thus you’ll continue to see new brands – and we’ll continue to see drops in prices as we have every year for a number of years now.  However, just like last year, I don’t expect to see any further price drops this year, with the first round likely not coming until probably Spring 2018.  Unlike last year there’s no announced but not yet shipping product that the industry is collectively waiting for to determine if they have to adjust pricing (last year it was WatTeam).  As such, I don’t expect any major pricing shifts anytime soon, perhaps not even till next summer/fall.  And finally as noted somewhere up above, I don’t expect anything otherwise unannounced will hit on the market until spring.

Of course, if I haven’t covered something – feel free to plop questions down below.  Thanks for reading!

Over the last 6 weeks I’ve been wearing the Apple Watch Series 3 Cellular edition to see how well it works not just in daily use, but more importantly sport and fitness use.  This review is all about sport and fitness, since there’s a gazillion other places you can read about general stuff like looking at the pretty apps screen above.  Or just general apps.  Or talking to Siri.  Of course, I’ll briefly touch on those things below, but my focus here is how well this performs while working out or racing.

Of course, in many ways the Apple Watch Series 3 isn’t appreciably different for sports usage than the previous Apple Watch Series 2 unit.  In theory, it’s got the same heart rate sensor, as well as the same GPS capabilities.  What it gains though in ‘GPS+Cellular’ edition is…well…cellular service (and the associated magical red dot).  It also gains an altimeter, for better tracking of elevation. But in reality, most of the new features actually came with watchOS 4, which was introduced at the same time.  Most of those features got rolled out to previous Apple Watch units as well, as I outlined here.  So do consider that in many ways you can achieve almost everything in this review with previous generation Apple Watches and save a few bucks.

Note that I went out and bought my own Apple Watch Series 3 Cellular unit, at an Apple Store on launch morning.  With that – let’s dive into things!

Unboxing:

Not feelin’ like text and photos?  No worries, we can start off with an uber-detailed unboxing video I put together of the Apple Watch Series 3. I cover weights, size comparisons, and tons more.

Still want some photos though?  No problem!  First off, we’ve got the box itself, which sits behind all the things I took out of the box.  Namely because I forgot to take a picture before I started the video.

Inside you’ll find the watch itself.  The red dot on the digital crown means it’s the cellular version.  It’s how you can spot the cellular version a million miles away.

Then there’s the charging cable.  This is the same as all past Apple Watch charging cables.  So if you’ve got those lying around from previous editions – then you’re well positioned for multi-location charging:

Then there’s a small USB wall adapter.  If in Europe or elsewhere you’ll get the plug for your local country.

Then there’s the watch itself.  But you’re gonna get like 5 million photos by the end of this review, so here’s what it looks like chillin’ in the box:

And finally, you’ll have noticed the secondary band.  The watch comes with a small and large band, which slides off by pressing the small button under the watch band.

As usual from Apple – super clean box setup.  There’s also, of course, the paper manual and quick start guide that you saw in the video, but those somehow ended up flying off the table during the unboxing video and didn’t get photographed.  They were shy.  As always though, you won’t need the manual by the time you finish reading this post.

Weights and Sizes:

Taking a quick detour to look at the sizes and weights of the watches, I’ve lined up the Apple Watch Series 3 LTE with the Fitbit Ionic and Garmin Vivoactive 3.  Essentially, what are likely to be the three most popular fitness/sports focused watches this fall for the mid-range market.

Here’s how the three look side by side:

As you can see, they’re all fairly similar in sizes.  The Garmin is a bit more rounded than the Apple Watch, while the Fitbit is a touch bit bigger in terms of face.  Ultimately though, they’re all fairly similar.

Here’s a look at them from a slightly different angle:

Then to take a crack at the weights, I put all three on the scale.  I used the sport band in the case of the Fitbit Ionic, merely because I hate the regular stock band.  You can check out that in-depth review though for weights of all the band types.

All the weights are in grams, with the Fitbit and Garmin units being identical at 43g, and the Apple Watch sitting in at 63g.  Keep in mind this is the 42mm Apple Watch, so it’d be slightly heavier than the 38mm variant.

The Basics:

To begin, we’ll start at the very beginning: The buttons.  I note this because when it comes to sport usage, this will become a clear item to pay attention to, especially for which apps you use to track your workout.  The Apple Watch has two buttons on the side.  One is a generic button towards the bottom, whereas the other is the digital crown, which can be both pressed and rotated (useful for zooming in and out or changing pages in an app).

In addition of course is the touchscreen, used for navigation within the watch. Further of note is that the watch can ‘sense’ whether or not it’s on your wrist.  So when it’s removed from your wrist and put back on, it’ll require you enter a pin to access it.

Apps are installed on your watch using your phone (only iPhones by the way), where you can select which watch apps in the ‘Watch’ app on your phone to sync to your watch.  Most iPhone apps offer Watch apps, merely because Apple has a long-standing practice of penalizing those phone apps that don’t offer a watch app, by generally skipping over them in ‘featured’ areas of the App Store.

You can enable/disable individual apps on your watch (seen above), but generally speaking, any configuration of a specific app occurs within the phone app for that watch.  So, for example, you configure the Stryd Apple Watch app from within the Stryd iPhone app.  And so on.

Beyond the installation of apps, you’ll do most of your general setup of your watch from the phone app.  You can see some of these configuration options below.  These include things like the watch face (which you can also tweak from the watch itself), as well as more detailed features like how text message responses work.

And it’s through some of these more detailed features that you really differentiate the Apple Watch compared to more sport-focused watches (Garmin/Suunto/Polar/Fitbit).  Take for example the text message responses.  First off, you can actually respond to text messages (something you can’t do on the other four brands I noted).  Not only that, but you can customize those responses and/or pick from a ton of pre-canned ones.

I’ve long said that the best ‘smartwatch’ from a business/day to day standpoint is the Apple Watch, and that remains the same with the Apple Watch Series 3.  Where we see a divergence though is the sport and fitness pieces, which is essentially where the Apple Watch isn’t as strong as the other options on the market (as I’ll cover in depth here).

Switching a little bit into the health realm, one of the new features that was introduced with watchOS 4 is the elevated heart rate notifications.  This allows you to be alerted when your HR rises above a given threshold while your watch says that you’ve been inactive.  This can be indicative of a heart-related issue.  It’s actually a feature I often hear readers ask for, and two members of my extended family had been looking for similar features as well.

Now that said, I’ve found this feature does often trigger false positives, about once per week or so.  Almost always in the shower.  My HR will not actually be above 120BPM, but it thinks it is.  And it also thinks I’m inactive.  Of course, a false positive here isn’t a huge deal, since you can easily re-check your HR via the watch or other means.

When it comes to daily activity tracking, the unit monitors steps and heart rate, as well as your standing time.  It doesn’t consider flights of stairs one of the rings, but you can see it within the phone and watch activity apps.  You can configure some options for activity tracking within the Watch configuration app, but most activity tracking is done via the ‘Activity’ app on your phone (left – watch app, right, activity app):

Which is of course seen on your watch, even as a watch face if you want it to.

You can also see a more textual version of the same thing:

The ultimate goal on your Apple Watch is to complete the ‘rings’.  Each ring represents a different daily goal to reach.  Pink/Red for Move goal, Green for Exercise Goal, and Blue for Standing goal.  Each goal differs, but if you complete all three goals you get a puppy.

The watch itself will remind you at ten minutes to the top of the hour (i.e. 5:50PM) to complete your standing goal, if you haven’t done so yet:

Actually, to back up a bit you don’t get a puppy when you unlock all your goals for the day, but you can unlock achievement badges which are non-motivating icons that have the same amount of excitement as a fake 99 cent police officer’s badge for Halloween.

Still, I do very much like the history pane within the app, as it makes it simple (painfully or otherwise) to see your long-term progress.  You’ll also note the tiny green dot above certain days.  That shows a specific workout (as opposed to stuff grouped into the exercise category, such as just a brisk walk to the store).

Finally, you can compete in sharing for challenges and daily activity stats within the app itself.  In fact, when you add contacts, Apple is even smart enough to know which of them have the Apple Watch and which don’t.  Regrettably, I don’t have too many friends with the Apple Watch.

Sport Usage:

It’s fair to say that a significant chunk of Apple’s marketing resources on the Apple Watch are aimed at courting the fitness crowd.  You’ll see that through the company’s numerous ads.  Of course, there are some slight nuances between a more general wellness focused slant versus an athletic/sport focused slant.  And some of that becomes quickly apparent when you start using the Apple Watch (any model).

Part of the appeal of the Apple Watch and other smartwatch platforms that have app stores is the ability to go beyond the basics of the built-in apps and go with 3rd party apps to fill gaps.  And as you’ll see in this section, that’s a darn good thing – because the default Apple sports experience leaves a lot to be desired.  As such, this section is fully on the default experience.  Whereas if you scroll down a bunch, I touch on some apps and filling in those gaps with much better 3rd party experiences (albeit, at a cost).

In any event, to start with using the default workout settings, you’ll dig around the colorful dots on your watch and find the neon green/yellowish colored one with a little runner icon:

After tapping it you’ll see a list of sports.  The last sport you used will show up first in the list, along with the duration spent in that sport.

In total, the available native sports are: Outdoor Walk, Outdoor Run, Outdoor Cycle, Indoor Walk, Indoor Run, Indoor Cycle, Elliptical, Rower, Stair Stepper, High Intensity Interval Training, Pool Swim, Open Water Swim, and Other.

You can scroll through the sports to select them on your watch.  Additionally, within the Watch app on your phone, you can tweak a handful of settings.  These include Running Auto Pause, Power Save Mode (turns off optical HR), as well as workout playlists.  I personally leave the power save mode and running pause off, since I want all the data!

You can also slightly choose which data fields to use in the default app for each sport.  Up to five fields in total can be added.  If you want other fields you need to remove a given field to make room:

In any case, back to the watch, and to select a sport – in this case Outdoor Run.  You can configure goals for your workout, like time or duration, which will give you progress towards that goal mid-workout.

Once you do so it’ll start at that moment to search for satellites and acquire your HR.  And this is super important to understand: It doesn’t tell you it’s doing this, nor does it tell you the status of that.  Why does this matter? Because the watch implies that it’s ready to go the moment you tap that icon and gives a three-second count-down.

But in reality, it’s not at all ready.  In fact, if you look at most of your workouts, you’ll notice a 2-3 minute gap until it acquires heart rate, sometimes satellite too (as I’ll cover within my accuracy sections later).

And this happens over and over and over again.  Not just for me, but many people.  Part of the ‘issue’ here is that if you go for a workout with your phone, the Apple Watch will leverage that for GPS, not the watch itself.  But if you leave your phone behind and walk out the door, the handoff there telling the watch to look for GPS lags significantly, so it’s almost as if it’s caught off-guard. Note that it doesn’t appear to leverage cellular service for GPS acquisition.

What’s strange here is that every GPS watch made in the last half-decade has two things:

A) A GPS status indicator/icon: This lets you know it’s found GPS and ready to go
B) GPS Satellite cache: This helps the watch acquire GPS signal in a couple seconds

But the Apple Watch definitely doesn’t have item A above, instead you just have to guess.  And for item B above, it doesn’t seem to work well.  It shouldn’t take 2-3 minutes to acquire GPS outdoors.  That’s like the days of 2008-2011 for GPS watch acquisition times.

Either way, my recommendation is wait a minute or so after opening the ‘Workouts’ app on your watch, but before starting a workout, if you want the most accurate data.  With that, pressing start begins your workout and starts showing you data:

The unit will show you pace and distance and HR in real-time.  Even if it hasn’t locked onto satellites yet, it’ll use the accelerometer for pace and distance.  Whereas for HR it’ll show an empty/swirling heart icon if you don’t have that locked yet.

If you’ve enabled features like auto-lap, it’ll trigger notifications every kilometer or mile.  Note that the Apple Watch can connect to 3rd party Bluetooth Smart heart rate straps, in the event you don’t trust the optical HR sensor.  It cannot connect to ANT+ straps though.  Of course, many straps these days are dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, like the Wahoo TICKR series or 4iiiii Viiiiva.

When it comes to sport settings, for other sports like pool swimming, it’ll also ask you to confirm the pool size:

Pool swimming won’t use GPS of course, but rather the accelerometer internally, so it needs to know the length of the pool to be able to determine the total distance.  But there are some quirks to be aware of with the default.  First is that the pool size can only be whole numbers – like 25 meters or 35 yards.  It can’t be partial numbers.  In Europe, a 33 and 1/3rd meter pool is somewhat common, and there isn’t a way to set that within the app.  So I end up with weird distance at the end of the swim since it shaves off a third of a meter each length.  All other swim watches known to mankind take into account these sorts of pool size quirks.

More importantly is that using the default app the screen turns off automatically when you start swimming.  So if you’re accustomed to tilting your wrist just slightly underwater when you push off the wall to see pacing, time, or distance, you can’t do that.  The screen will remain black/off.  So it’s really only useful after a set when you’re at the wall.

When it comes to openwater swimming, it’ll use GPS then.  Given the time of year and travel schedule I wasn’t able to get in an openwater swim with it.  However, since the GPS hardware is identical to the Apple Watch Series 2, I will note that I’ve actually seen fantastic GPS accuracy there.  And even better is that since watchOS4, you can now actually export openwater swims.  Woot!

No matter the sport, you can swipe to the left to pause/stop/lock or create a multisport activity.  When in swimming mode, it’ll automatically lock the touchscreen.

While it does technically support a multisport activity, it’s a little bit wonky.  The way it works is by letting you change to another workout type, but it’s not quite as automated as you’d see in a typical triathlon setup.

Once you’ve completed your workout, you’ll get a simplified summary page of the workout stats.  Nothing fancy, but just top-line stats.

You can though get a bit more detail on aspects like HR charts and recovery graphs within the heart icon (for HR data) on the watch itself:

And then finally, on the ‘Activity’ app on your phone you’ll see the workout listed in the workouts section:

Again, the information is somewhat basic here compared to most other sport watches on the market, but it also covers much of the core stuff you’d be looking for.  Of course again, if you use 3rd party apps on the Apple Watch, then you’ll get more detail and more options.  I discuss that after we chat about accuracy.

Heart Rate Accuracy:

Next up we’ve got heart rate accuracy.  Apple says there have been no physical sensor changes between the Series 2 and Series 3 watches, though undoubtedly they’ve continued to tweak algorithms like all manufacturers do.  Accuracy roughly falls into two buckets: 24×7 HR, and workout HR.  As is usually the case with most devices these days, I see no tangible issues with 24×7 HR.  It works well across both normal daily routines as well as things like sleep.  Speaking of which, I talk about RHR values and 24×7 monitoring here and why it’s interesting.

When it comes to 24×7 HR, the Apple Watch measures at a rate of once every 5-6 minutes while at rest, and slightly more frequently if on the move).  This data can be seen on the watch itself (above), as well as within the Apple Health app on your phone (different from the Activity app):

You’ll notice above that it actually separates it out into a few categories: Heart Rate (all day stats), Resting Heart Rate (per day), Walking heart rate, and Heart Rate Variability.  From a timing standpoint, once every 5-6 minutes is actually less than almost all companies these days (which are now mostly at once every 1-2 seconds).  But I don’t think it’s a huge deal either.  You can trend pretty well off of every 5 minutes, as long as it’s truly that frequent (and it does seem to be).

Before we move on to the test results, note that optical HR sensor accuracy is rather varied from individual to individual.  Aspects such as skin color, hair density, and position can impact accuracy.  Position, and how the band is worn, are *the most important* pieces.  A unit with an optical HR sensor should be snug.  It doesn’t need to leave marks, but you shouldn’t be able to slide a finger under the band (at least during workouts).  You can wear it a tiny bit looser the rest of the day.

Ok, so in my testing, I simply use the watch throughout my normal workouts.  Those workouts include a wide variety of intensities and conditions, making them great for accuracy testing.  I’ve got steady runs, interval workouts on both bike and running, as well as tempo runs and rides – and even running up and down a mountain.

For each test, I’m wearing additional devices, usually 3-4 in total, which capture data from other sensors.  Typically I’d wear a chest strap (usually the Garmin HRM-TRI or Wahoo TICKR X), as well as another optical HR sensor watch on the other wrist (many models during this testing period).  Note that the numbers you see in the upper right corner are *not* the averages, but rather just the exact point my mouse is sitting over.  Note all this data is analyzed using the DCR Analyzer, details here if you want to use it yourself.

First up we’ve got a relatively simplistic run from two weekends ago.  It was with a baby stroller, which adds a bit more complexity to optical HR measurement, thus, it’s an interesting test.  Along for the ride were three other Garmin watches connected to a Wahoo TICKR-X HR strap, as well as the new Epson 307 optical HR-enabled watch.  So basically three HR data sources.  Here’s the overview (and the DCR Analyzer set here if you want to dig deeper):

What I want you to pay particularly close attention to is that the blue line for the Apple Watch starts about two minutes into the run.  You’ll see this for almost every workout you do.  This is because the Apple Watch takes 2-3 minutes to acquire your HR.  And during that time it won’t record anything until it gets a lock.  Most other watches tell you the status of HR lock prior to starting the workout, but the Apple Watch doesn’t.

Now, the next thing you’ll notice is that the Epson watch got off to a bad start for some unknown reason, perhaps related to the stroller.  However, after that point all of the watches were very close.  And in fact, looking at the rest of the plot despite some variability in intensity, it stayed on quite nicely.  I could dig deeper into the above plot, but honestly there’s little reason to since it looks fine.  So let’s switch to another one.

Next, we’ve got a run with some nice intervals at the end of it.  Along for this run is the Apple Watch Series 3 with the Samsung Gear Sport, as well as two Garmin watches tethered to the Wahoo TICKR X HR strap.  Here’s the full data set.

In this run I had to wait forever for the Samsung device to find GPS signal, which caused the chest strap to dry out and I forgot to wet it again (cold day).  So you see the ‘blocky’ looking start to the chest strap.  You also see that the Apple Watch doesn’t’ start until about 4-5 minutes in this time.  After that point the units are largely the same, except there’s the catch.

The Samsung Gear Sport might ‘look’ to be accurate here for the first 70% or so, but it’s only by luck.  That’s because my HR intensity was very even.  In reality, it only plotted about 5 HR data points that entire first 38 minutes.  That’s far more visible once you look at the last 15 or so minutes that I do some sprints in.

The scale kinda makes these look wonky, but essentially I’m going from 160bpm to about 182-186bpm for each interval.  What you notice on this is that the Samsung just cuts a straight line through it all, plotting one point at the peak and one at the base of each interval, then it connects the dots.

The Apple Watch does reasonably well actually throughout this, following the ebb and flow until the last interval, the hardest, in which case it incorrectly plots a 199bpm HR as my max.  That’s a tell-tale sign of HR cadence lock, when your HR locks onto your cadence.  This often happens when going down hills, or in sprints (as was the case here).  The actual HR was about 185, per the TICKR-X.  Of course, the TICKR also showed a few hiccups in there on the previous one.

Next, we’ve got another run, this one with a bunch of stops and starts in it.  Again, despite waiting for 5 minutes outdoors for the Apple Watch (on the workout screen) to find HR, it still waited another 5 minutes into the run to actually lock and record that.  Here’s the full data set.  In this set, we have the Garmin Vivoactive 3 optical HR up against the Apple Watch 3, compared to a chest strap.

What you notice is that at a high level things do look pretty good across the board.  Where it does struggle a little bit though is when I stopped, each time you can see it delay catching the HR dropping down.  The TICKR (chest strap) is fastest, and the Vivoactive 3 is a little behind that on some (and less fast on others).  Whereas the Apple Watch seems to almost spike a little bit each time.

Next, let’s switch gears to some cycling. Cycling is actually really hard for optical HR sensors to get right when worn on the wrist.  This is because your wrist is usually flexed tight, and further opens up the band to light getting in.  Additionally, bumps on the road can be impactful as well.  Here’s an hour ride across the city to do some loops at a park before coming back.  I’ve got a Garmin Vivoactive 3 on one wrist, the Apple Watch 3 on the other, and then the chest HR strap paired to a flotilla of bike head units for some power meter tests (it’s why you see multiple copies of the TICKR X listed below).  Here’s the full data set.

As always, the Apple Watch takes about 2-3 minutes to lock HR.  I do want to be clear here: If this was any other company, people would crucify them for this.  Yet somehow everyone is giving Apple a pass on this year.  Still, moving along you’ll see that the first 15 or so minutes things are kinda mixed in stop and go cycling.  This is usually what I see with optical HR sensors in this type of riding.

However, once I get to less trafficked areas around the 15-minute marker, you see near perfect alignment until the 52-minute marker as I get back into the city again.

The one thing you’ll see if you look really closely on some of my sprints, is the slight delay that both the Vivoactive 3 and Apple Watch exhibit coming off the sprint (going easy again).

Of course, once I get back to stop and go riding, everything goes to crap:

The Apple Watch appeared to simply get lazy at times and ignore any efforts, while the Vivoactive 3 seemed distracted.  Meanwhile, the chest strap did seem on-point here for what my efforts were.

Ultimately, what I see here is about the same as the Garmin optical-HR enabled watches for accuracy.  It’s generally good for me for running, save occasionally minor quirks.  And it’s generally good for me for cycling as long as I’m consistently riding.  Whereas if I’m in stop and go type situations for riding, then it’s rougher (true of both Garmin and Apple).

Of course again, no other watch I’ve ever tested has the issue of just ignoring the first 3-5 minutes of HR.  This is 100% because Apple doesn’t turn on the optical HR sensor until you start a workout, at which point that’s the absolute worst time to try and acquire HR since it’s got to de-noise things like arm movement, running cadence, and who knows what else you’re doing.  This would be trivial to solve if Apple just did HR lock on the screen prior to pressing to start a workout.

GPS Accuracy:

There’s likely no topic that stirs as much discussion and passion as GPS accuracy.  A watch could fall apart and give you dire electrical shocks while doing so, but if it shows you on the wrong side of the road?  Oh hell no, bring on the fury of the internet!

GPS accuracy can be looked at in a number of different ways, but I prefer to look at it using a number of devices in real-world scenarios across a vast number of activities.  I use 2-6 other devices at once, trying to get a clear picture of how a given set of devices handles conditions on a certain day.  Conditions include everything from tree/building cover to weather.

Over the years I’ve continued to tweak my GPS testing methodology.  For example, I try to not place two units next to each other on my wrists, as that can impact signal. If I do so, I’ll put a thin fabric spacer of about 1”/3cm between them (I didn’t do that on any of my Apple Watch 3 workouts).  But often I’ll simply carry other units by the straps, or attach them to the shoulder straps of my CamelBak.  Plus, wearing multiple watches on the same wrist is well known to impact optical HR accuracy.

Next, as noted, I use just my daily training routes.  Using a single route over and over again isn’t really indicative of real-world conditions, it’s just indicative of one trail.  The workouts you see here are just my normal daily workouts.

I’ve had quite a bit of variety of terrain within the time period of Apple Watch testing.  Be it from major mountains and trails of the Alberta (Canada), to the deserts of Las Vegas, to the streets of Paris.  It’s been everywhere!

First up we’ll start with a city run I did yesterday.  Nothing too long, just a simple lunchtime run.  My route includes being next to buildings, under bridges, through tunnels, and past panda bears.  All of which could impact accuracy.  The watches for this run are listed below.  And as with all my data here, here’s the link to the DCR Analyzer page for this set, if you want to zoom in more.

At a high level, things mostly look pretty good.  Let’s start by zooming in though.  In this case the Apple Watch did acquire GPS from the very beginning.  In large part because I stood around freezing my ass off for 12 minutes waiting for the Samsung Gear Sport to acquire GPS, which gave the Apple Watch plenty of time to do so as well.

In any event, the first five minutes or so along the river were just fine.  Then it was into the gardens for some loops.  What’s funny about these gardens (besides the real-life panda bears), is that they often trip up so many GPS units I test.  I think it’s because the garden pathways are so sharp that it makes it silly easy to spot GPS accuracy issues.  The trees are present, but not super dense.

Looking at the above I’ve highlighted four areas of concern.  The upper and left ones are areas of concern on the Apple Watch, where it either cut corners (left), or dove into the bushes (top).  Meanwhile, the lower two were for the Vivoactive 3 where it also went bush-diving for no apparent reason.  What’s interesting is that it actually did it both loops in the exact same spot, which typically implies some sort of interference type issue.

As I exited the park I ran across the street and across the bridge.  The FR935 was most accurate here, and both the Apple Watch and Vivoactive 3 tracks ran through traffic and buses randomly, while all three watches nailed the bridge spot-on itself.

Next, we’ve got the tunnel.  It’s perhaps 200-300m long.  It’s a great test of how a GPS unit handles losing signal, as well as regaining it.  Ideally you’d get a clean break/drop at the entrance to the tunnel, and then the same thing at the exit.

While the Apple Watch gets close to that, it’s actually slightly offset from the real tunnel.  The Garmin units meanwhile get the entrance/exits closer, but then do a kinda odd ‘bend’ mid-tunnel.  None of which add more than a handful of meters either way, so it’s not something I’d nitpick too much.

Finally, you can see below where I turn onto the bridge, that the Apple Watch misses the ramp I have to run up, and shortcuts the whole situation.  The Garmins get it correct.  Meanwhile, a short distance later at the bottom of the picture you’ll see the Apple Watch stays perfectly on the road whereas the Garmins go through some buildings by a few meters.

Overall though, in the above run, that’s largely nitpicking – but that’s what I do when tracks are mostly pretty good.

Next, let’s take a look at a run I did a few weeks back on an Island.  This was the same trio of watches, and here’s the full dataset.

Now what you’ll notice immediately is the wonky gap or straight line that the Apple Watch did for the first few minutes (it’s that red line you see across the middle of the picture).  That’s a perfect example of the unit briefly finding and losing GPS at the start.  See, it was within range of the AirBNB house, and thus my phone.  Yet, as soon as I started running away from it, it lost phone Bluetooth Smart signal and had to re-acquire GPS from the watch.  I’m actually surprised it had enough range on Bluetooth Smart since the phone was inside the house, but go figure.

The not acquiring GPS at the start isn’t unusual.  The secondary quirk you’ll see with the Apple Watch GPS is the just sorta ‘gliding’ around corners.  It’s like Mario Kart where it just drifts around.  Take for example this section later in the run:

The Apple Watch just casually floats through this whole section like a bird, ignoring the buildings and the path we took.  This is a super common occurrence, and oddly is exaggerated in the Apple Workouts/Activity app itself, where everything seems to be tweaked to make it more ‘flowy’.  The weird thing is that the above corner cutting doesn’t always happen, as you can see in the very same picture above, where the other turn along the beach was fine.

Through lots of trial and error, what I’ve somewhat figured out is that workouts where you take your phone with you (and thus, it leverages the phone’s GPS) exhibit FAR more swinging/cut corners, than those with just the watch by itself.

Finally, I’ve got a bunch of cycling workouts, but the simple reality is that all of them are boring from a GPS standpoint.  They’re boring for two reasons: First, is that when cycling I have my phone on me, so it’s actually using the phone’s GPS.  And second, the data looks just fine and dandy.  Here’s one set for example.

If you zoom in a bit here and there you’ll find examples of cut corners, again, with leveraging the phone as the GPS source since it’s within range.

Overall though, the Apple Watch GPS accuracy isn’t bad.  It’s not spectacular, but it’s also not bad.  It’s roughly on-par with other mid-range GPS watches that I’ve tested, each having their pros and cons.  The one catch though is the start of a workout.  It’s really best to wait a bit outside, away from your phone (if you aren’t running/cycling/whatever with it), to ensure it gets GPS from the very beginning.

Data, Apps and Cellular:

Now up until this point I’ve talked totally a native Apple Watch 3 experience.  No 3rd party apps up till now were used to capture the workouts or daily activity data seen above in the analytics sections.  I do that mostly because I want to ensure that mistakes made by 3rd parties in relation to GPS or HR recording aren’t reflecting on the base device.

However, there are a number of cool apps out there that I’ve used or toyed with that I want to briefly highlight.  First is the main app I use for getting data off the watch.  As it stands natively, the Apple Watch doesn’t integrate with any 3rd parties like Strava or TrainingPeaks or anything.  So to get data off of it you need 3rd party apps.  My favorite lately is a super simple app called HealthFIT+, which simply takes your workouts and exports them as industry standard .FIT files.  It can upload those to Strava, TrainingPeaks, Dropbox (as of tomorrow or so), e-mail, and Apple Cloud.

The app costs $2, and is what I’ve used for all of the data analysis you see above.  Note, another app that’s similar in this vein is RunGap.  And that works well too (you can read a better review of that here).  But I find the swimming pieces and such just work better with HealthFIT+.  Also, I’m kinda a simple person. Just give me the files and let me do my own thing.  Whereas RunGap has more options/details.

Next, I used Stryd a bit, which connects to their Stryd running power meter footpod.  This app was just released, and is a good option if you’re more geeky endurance focused and want to get into running power but don’t have a Garmin or Suunto watch to pair to it to do so meaningfully.  The app is free, and is loaded as part their regular phone app.  Of course, you need their footpod, which is pretty pricey.

If you’re looking to replace a portion of the mapping/navigation features of a Garmin or Suunto watch, check out the WorkOutDoors app.  It has things like importing GPX routes to navigate with, as well as caching of maps offline so you don’t need a phone or cellular service.  That’s actually really impressive.  Heck, your $600 Garmin Fenix 5 (non-5X) can’t do that level of mapping/caching.  And even the 5X doesn’t allow you to cache different map types like this beyond what’s on the unit already for your region.  It’s neat.

And here it is on the watch:

Note there’s other fitness apps I use from time to time like iSmoothRun and RunMeter/CycleMeter, though I didn’t use them as much this go around.

(Note: I don’t have any paid/whatever affiliation with any of the above apps. I paid my two bucks or what-not for all of them…and plenty more.)

Finally, a brief word on cellular capabilities.  I bought the cellular edition, largely in thinking that I might end up using those capabilities, primarily in running.  But I found that over time I didn’t actually use them much.  On the cycling front, I always have my phone in my back pocket anyway.  And in running, well, I didn’t much care what was going on in the outside world.  That said, most of my runs the last month or so have been shorter (under 90 minutes), and thus the need to get ahold of me in that time period is less.  Whereas if I was training for a marathon right now with 2-2.5hr long runs, then it would probably be handy to be more reachable (especially with a wife due any hour now).

I will note that getting the cellular pieces set up on launch day/weekend was kinda messy, and required multiple attempts with ATT (my provider).  But once set up it worked well enough in day to day scenarios.  However, it broke again when I went to Canada (so I fixed it again), and then it broke again when I went overseas to France (and once again, I had to attempt to fix it).  All of which is mostly understandable, but at the same time the ATT agents don’t seem to know how to deal with the international pieces very well for the watch, even when you call the international services support desk.

And when it comes to functionality, certainly there are elements like Apple Music streaming that was just turned on last week, but for most other apps it doesn’t matter…yet.  Especially fitness apps.  Perhaps down the road we’ll see companies like Strava get around to adding truly live segments to their app, but for now, the cellular pieces aren’t leveraged much in the fitness realm.

Plus, you can find tons of other reviews out there about music, Siri, cellular, Apple Pay, text messaging, and so on.  As I said at the beginning, I’m all about the sports here!  Plus, I’ve covered things like Apple Pay and others in past posts.

Product Comparison:

I’ve added in the Apple Watch Series 3 into the product comparison database.  This allows you to compare it against other fitness/sport watches that I’ve reviewed.  Not for watches like the Samsung Gear Sport, I haven’t quite put it in the database, likely this week.  The good news is that you can make your own comparison here if you want against any watch in the database, which is pretty massive.

For the purposes of below I’ve compared it against the Fitbit Ionic and the Garmin Vivoactive 3, which are the ones most people will be comparing it against (plus the Samsung Gear Sport once I add it in).  Also note, with a unit like the Apple Watch specifically, there are many cases below where “with 3rd party apps” can be used.  The same is largely true of Garmin, and eventually Fitbit.  I’ve tried to thread the needle of apps that I roughly know exist where I’ve listed that.  But it’s not a perfection in terms of knowing every app on earth.  Ultimately, I don’t think any consumer does (or should).

Again, remember you can make your own comparison charts here using the product comparison tool/database.

Summary:

In many ways the most important new features of the Apple Watch Series 3 aren’t at all new hardware.  Sure, cellular connectivity and its red dot gets all the attention, but I haven’t seen it be a huge deal for my day to day workouts.  Instead, it’s actually some of the new watchOS 4 items that are more interesting here, both the user-focused features like the heart rate charts and alerts, but also some of the developer focused features like finally being able to export/access swimming workout data (as an example).  All of these features combined make the Apple Watch (regardless of series) much more compelling than in the past, especially for more casual fitness and sport users.

The main strength of the Apple Watch as a fitness device is the app ecosystem.  But it’s also its main weakness.  Apple itself has made relatively small enhancements to the native fitness features specifically, year over year, compared to any of the big sport watch makers.  Instead, they rely on 3rd party apps to fill in those gaps and provide a more on-par experience to their hardware competitors.  And in many ways, that works out.  Sure, you’ll pay more for apps to get those features, but not more than a few visits to Starbucks would cost ya.  However, none of those apps boil the ocean in one fell swoop, in that no single app does it all.  So you end up with a motley collection of apps to equal what you might find on a similar product elsewhere.  In some cases the app might do it far better, whereas in other cases it might fall short and leave you with a fragmented experience.  It’s a mixed bag.

Yet at the same time, for less complicated tasks like running a 5K/10K or even a marathon – it will fit the bill perfectly fine for most people.  And when you’re not doing those activities it continues to be the best all around smartwatch on the market.  No other device comes close to the level of polish that the Apple Watch exhibits.

And that’s what this is ultimately about – deciding what you value most.  If you’re looking for mostly an all-day watch that you use for less technically demanding sports, the Apple Watch 3 is an awesome bet.  Whereas if you’re the inverse of that, you may want to look elsewhere.

With that – thanks for reading!

1) Running with the Samsung Gear Sport

Lately, there’s a lot of prep work involved in going for a run.  From the 3-4 GPS watches to the 4-6 running footpod doohickies, as well as a GoPro, and sometimes a phone.  All of which I need to double-check are updated and running the latest firmware versions, which in the case of some new products seems to change almost daily.

I started off with getting the Gear Sport unboxed, which occurred on Thursday actually:

I then spent a bit of time ensuring I had the latest Garmin FR935 firmware and associated running power beta.  Then updated the RunScribe Plus firmware and associated Connect IQ apps.  Then made sure my watches were charged (the Vivoactive 3 was out of juice).  Then made sure the Samsung Gear Sport was seemingly happy, along with the Apple Watch.  All of which had me finally outside and running:

I did about 7.40 miles (about 11.90KM), down to the Eiffel Tower and back.  Nothing fancy, but a few intervals along the way home.

Certainly as I was running along I was watching the various watches.  Only one watch per wrist, with the two Garmins simply being hand-held.  It became clear right away that the Samsung Gear Sport was definitely struggling a bit.  Here’s the end resultant:

I don’t know what’s up there.  I didn’t see that on cycling activities, and I haven’t run again with it (that’s tomorrow’s plan).

Someone from Samsung has reached out to me since my post on Twitter, so we’ll see.

2) Friday Night Live!

Friday evening it was time for another DCR Friday Night Live.  I did it again on YouTube, so if you hit that subscribe button there, you’ll get notified when I go live.  You can watch the whole thing here:

Of note though for this post was that I was using a different camera setup this time.  Historically I’ve used the Mevo livestreaming platform, which generally is stupid-simple to use.  It also has a singular annoyance for me in that I can’t set a specific white balance value (beyond 4 preset ones), so the lighting in the DCR Cave always looks like crap.

This time though I changed the tech.  I bought the Elgato Camlink, which allows me to connect my secondary DSLR (Panasonic G7) camera to my laptop, and then stream using software there (in this case the free Game Capture software).  You can see me threading the cable through the Wahoo KICKR desk in case I managed to trip over it so that it wouldn’t pull my laptop out (hopefully!).

This means I can customize the white balance, and of course generally get a much higher quality picture.

On the audio front, I normally use a Rode SmartLav+ lapel mic, but that connector wouldn’t work with my PC.  So instead I grabbed a Rode VideoMic Pro shotgun that I had lying around and hooked that up to the camera.  I’m usually hesitant on using the Rode shotgun mics in the Cave because it echoes too much.  But this turned out surprisingly good, I suspect because it was closer than I usually place it.

About the only mistake I made was that I forgot to change my laptop’s WiFi from the upstairs network to the underground Cave network.  So this meant the connection stuttered a few times.  It’s not a fully mesh network yet.  I’ve gotta follow Tyler’s advice (he helped me out at CES this past year on the writing front) and pick up a better WiFi situation.  His review is like mine in crazy depth, well worth the read!

3) Hello Ikea!

Saturday afternoon we headed out of the city to Ikea to pick up a few things for organization.  Also, they have Swedish meatballs.

One thing I did find interesting was the wireless charging pads and ‘furniture’.  I know these have been around for two years, but it never really mattered much to me.  Now however with an impending iPhone X, it kinda matters to me.  With the cheapest one I could cut a hole in an existing desk…so I’m considering doing that.

The only thing that’s not super clear to me is if there are significant speed differences between the Ikea charging pads and more current models on the market.  Regrettably, the number of reviews comparing Ikea pads to new pads is very…very…slim.

4) Speedy Sunday Cycling Loops

Sunday morning the weather was stunning so out for a ride I went.  Of course, with a slight dip in temps, that meant I had to figure out where my cycling gloves were.  I reached into the bin and somehow managed to pull out these five gloves.  None of which matched.  WTF?

Eventually I found a matching set and headed out.  Interestingly, there was a running race going on near the Eiffel Tower.  At first this was a slight blocker to my planned route out of town, but then it worked out in my favor as they closed highway lanes in both directions but only used one.  It was like having an express lane to myself!

I decided on doing loops at Longchamp.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I was just in a looping mood.  Sometimes I want something consistent and mindless.  With loops, I’d get a continuous workout, and if I got lucky and found some larger groups, I’d could throw down some watts.

It turned out to be packed, with hundreds of cyclists (my guess is between 200-400 cyclists on the loop at any one point in time).  I was mostly riding with one pack that was 30 cyclists alone.

The only downside is, as usual here, you don’t get a ton of teamwork or coordination.  Most people don’t take turns pulling, and there’s often very little thought to rotating through efficiently.  Thus, like three people end up doing 5-6 minutes pulls, and the pulls are often lopsided.

Still, it was fun and I enjoy getting out on a sunny day and just ripping around and around and around.  I wrapped up by riding back via the Champs-Élysées, mostly because I wanted to run the final Vector 3 units and firmware through a specific section of nasty cobblestones that I know of (not on the Champs-Élysées, but in that general direction).  Since it was the first Sunday of the month, the Champs-Élysées was closed to cars:

Woot!

5) Lunch across town!

Upon returning from riding, The Peanut awoke from a nap and we set off across town via Metro to our friend’s restaurant for lunch.

They opened up just under a year ago now, and Zia was packed this Sunday mid-afternoon for brunch food, with a line out the door.

I had the Dutch Baby Pancakes with Fried Chicken (sorry for my bad cell-phone pic), while The Girl had avocado toast.  Meanwhile, The Peanut devoured a pile of scrambled eggs.

I could eat that fried chicken every day.  Amazeballs.

As an aside, I updated my Paris Restaurant guide listing thingy.  I know a ton of you use it when visiting the city, and we’ve been hitting a variety of new places since summer that are just incredible and definitely deserved to be added.  As always, my listing is heavily slanted towards where we live and places we’ve gone to multiple times, but it’s also heavily slanted towards awesomeness.

With that – thanks for reading, and have a great week ahead!

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!

DCRainmaker.com posts in the past week:

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

Monday: Hands-on: Garmin’s New Descent MK1 Diving Watch
Wednesday: Epson’s New ProSense Running & Triathlon GPS watches: Everything you ever wanted to know
Thursday: In The Queue: Samsung Gear Sport
Friday: The 4th Annual DCR Cave Open House–December 2nd, 2017

Sports Tech Deals of Note:

Two new deals from Garmin this week, in what is partly the beginning of the Holiday/Black Friday sales, and partly just a long expected price adjustment (FR735XT).  Neither should be considered an indication of new stuff.

Garmin FR735XT price drops to $349: You can pick up this multisport watch on Clever Training or Amazon.  This is a permanent price adjustment, and makes total sense.  With the FR935, the FR735XT is playing second fiddle (it’s a year old).  The price was first adjusted back on July 14th from $449 to $399, and now to $349, which I think is an appropriate (and competitive) price for it.

Garmin FR235 on sale for $299: You can pick up this running-focused watch on Clever Training or Amazon.  I see this more as a proper adjustment related to the Vivoactive 3, which basically has more features for less cash.  There’s only a tiny handful of things the FR235 does that the Vivoactive 3 doesn’t, but there’s a massive list of things the Vivoactive 3 does that the FR235 doesn’t.  Realistically, the FR235 should probably be $249.

Oh – and speaking of deals, if you’re a DCR Supporter member, then definitely fish through your e-mail from yesterday for a solid heads-up and deal I sent you!

YouTube Videos I Made 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 that 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.

1) Insurance company offers Apple Watch for $25: Not too shabby at all! All you gotta do is exercise.

2) Zwim – A Heads-Up Display for Swim: Not entirely sure on this.  I’ve tried other units in the past, some work well, some less so.  I think for this particular market I’m more of a buyer when the product is done.

3) Bike riding Toronto police parking officer gets Twitter account suspended: Unfortunately I never saw the previous Tweets to know if perhaps the line was crossed, but at the very least it’s good to see Toronto’s got dedicated cyclists on this.  Kinda neat. (via Race Radio)

4) How Strava, The App For Athletes, Became An App For Cities: An interesting look at Strava’s ‘Metro’ platform/dataset, which is available to cities for planning.  It was of course announced a few years back, but the group and customers has grown.

5) The validity and inter-device variability of the Apple Watch for measuring maximal heart rate: I haven’t looked at the full text to see their exact methodology (requires subscription), but they found good correlation.  Typically I don’t see great correlation with max efforts, unless it’s a very slow climb to that max effort (whereas sprints are tougher).  (via Tim P.)

6) All the Zwift Keyboard Shortcuts in One Easily Printable Page: Just in time for you to spend that upcoming re-found time in your garage this winter.

7) The finances of the ASO (organizer of The Tour de France): Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about how much it all costs, and how much they make.

8) A very detailed breakdown of the Ironman Kona Pro Race using Quarq Qollector: This gives far more detailed data than the typical splits provided on Ironman.com’s website, since it streams every seconds worth of data.  Plus, the guys behind Best Bike Splits put this together.  Worth a look!

Sports Technology Software/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 firmware updates.

Apple Watch 4.1 Firmware Update: Adds support for streaming, among other fixes/tweaks.

Garmin Vivoactive 3 firmware update: A bunch of fixes, some new features, plus notably manual lap support is now added.

Garmin Edge 1000 firmware update: Minor bug fixes.

Garmin Varia Vision firmware update: Minor bug fixes.

Garmin Vivomove HR firmware update: Fixed Hebrew language support.

Garmin Vivoactive HR BETA firmware update: This adds Connect IQ 2.4 support (which is what’s needed for Garmin running power, once it’s released)

Garmin Fenix 3/3HR BETA firmware update: Boatloads of bug fixes, some minor new features.

Garmin Chronos BETA firmware update: Minor bug fix.

Apparently, Garmin was busy this past week.

—

With that – thanks for reading!

It’s that time of year again!

Time for you to start planning your trek to the 4th annual DCR Cave Open House!  Yup, it’s gonna be the fourth open house already – how time flies since we did all that construction!  Here were the first, second, and third DCR Open House events!

The open house is on a Saturday evening for folks that want to come check out the DCR cave, and just in general have fun chatting about sports and sports technology (and wine, cheese, and cupcakes).  Oh, and we give away a bunch of free stuff.  Watches, gift certificates, apparel, and a few random other things I had floating around.  Clever Training is awesome for helping out on that front (they supply all the tech goodness!).

Oh: And you’ll really want to come this year. Why? It’ll be the last open house for the iconic DCR Cave V1.  As much as I love this underground space, it’s simply grown too small for my needs.  As occasional visitors can attest, on any given random day where I haven’t made it look pretty for photos, there’s barely enough room to walk across the room.  And that ignores my slowly filling up every bit of storage space we have. So we’ve begun the search for a much bigger space, and it’s likely that’ll be finalized in the new year.  Thus – last call!!!

About 50 folks came the last few years, and it’s definitely been good times!  Plus, we’ve had a Christmas tree full of prizes to giveaway!

Of course, the evening of the Open House I’ll have plenty of devices around should folks want to play with the latest and greatest stuff.  Anything that’s been announced will be available and fair game for tinkering, including all the newest trainers and watches.  Anything!

Of course, there’s also the DCR group run on Saturday morning, which is a blast.  We do one of my favorite runs around the city, hitting up many of the major sights.  That’ll definitely be on the docket again as always – so you don’t want to miss it!

Because how epic is this shot from last year?  GoPro for the win!

Unfortunately this year the annual Paris Santa Clause 10K run/race is held much later (Dec 17th), so it doesn’t quite fit scheduling wise like it has in the past.  I’ve found most people are tied up around that time frame in December insofar as travelling.

Beyond DCR things, there’s tons of fun stuff in the city to do if you’re coming from out of town.  For example the Christmas Markets are up then in multiple locations – including the Champs-Élysées. Not to mention ice skating should be open at a few major locales around the city.  And finally, for those who want to skate, there’s the weekly Paris Roller events on Friday nights that are always epic (they also have a tamer version on Sunday morning geared towards families).  If you’re looking for other ideas, just drop a note below – happy to point folks in the right direction.

As you can see – it’s a great time of year to visit the city, especially since it’s just ahead of the typically more busy tourist weekends.

Specifics:

For the Open House:

Date: Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 – Starting around 7PM.
Address: Location sent via e-mail few days ahead, but within the Paris 5th Arrondissement near Notre Dame
Closest Metro: St-Michel Notre Dame (RER-B/C) or Cardinal Lemoine (Line 10)
Food: We’ll have various appetizer & dessert items…and lots of wine!
Price: Free of course!

For the DCR Run:

Date: Saturday, December 2nd, 2017 – 9AM
Address: Same as above, I’ll send out a note in the days prior with exact address.

We’ll leave at 9AM from the DCR Cave location (sunrise is 8:33AM that morning).  We’ll divide into two groups on a route that’s approximately 7.5 miles (12 kilometers), though folks can turn around early, or use the Velib’s (bike share) near the Eiffel Tower along the route.  While we’ve historically divided up into two groups, with The Girl leading one, that’s going to be a bit non-possible this year since Peanut 2 will have arrived just a few weeks prior.  So we’ll just be one big group!

You’ll be able to securely store bags/etc during the run here at the DCR Cave/Studio, and there’s also a bathroom here as well.

Upon return we’ll have some goodies to help you replenish your nutrition for a few hours.  For those that want to pickup a Velib pass, you can actually do so before the run, right next to the DCR Cave, it costs less than 2EUR for a 24hr Velib pass.

Sign-up!

For the open house simply use the form below to sign-up (just so I can figure out how much cheese and wine to buy, and cupcakes to make!), we look forward to seeing you then!

Create your own user feedback survey

I’ll use the e-mail provided to send the final details (and a reminder) as we get closer to the date.  We’re looking forward to seeing everyone there!

See ya then!
– Bobbie & Ray

Note: Folks from various sports tech companies are of course more than welcome! Just be sure to bring enough devices for everyone. Kidding! Or not.

Today Epson announced a flotilla of new watches.  Not just one watch, but five different GPS watches from $99 to $399.  They’ve got everything from smartphone notifications to activity tracking, and most models have optical HR too.  Plus, they get into the triathlon realm with a $249 triathlon watch that’s got all the core functions most triathletes need.

This, of course, isn’t Epson’s first barbeque in the GPS watch realm.  You’ll remember some of the past products they’ve announced, which I previously found to be among the most accurate GPS & optical HR measurement on the market. It was astounding.  Heck, they even show distance down to the thousandths place (I.e. 3.678 miles)!  But, with changes to both GPS and HR sensor in these new models, would they hold up?

Now like before, they still announced far too many models for their own good, with most of the differences simply being software tweaks (or battery size).  So in order to keep my wrists available for rockin’ the slew of GPS watches this fall, I focused on one model specifically: The ProSense 307.

That’s the $249 multisport model that does swim/bike/run, plus it includes optical HR.  Further, I flip-flopped on whether to call this a full in-depth review.  I wasn’t able to get in an openwater swim during my time with the watch (wrong season, weird travel schedule).  But I have knocked out runs, rides, and indoor swimming.

In any case, with that – let’s dive into things!

Models, Sizes, and Weights:

Now, if you remember the last time Epson released GPS watches, they literally arrived at the cave with a minivan full of GPS watch models.  I could line them all up and cover the entire width of the room.  This time, they’ve exerted a bit of self-control, and narrowed it down to five models.  Though three of those models are just minor tweaks to battery and display.  Sure, Garmin, Polar, and Suunto all have boatloads of units.  But they also have far more resources.  Ultimately, it’s better to be focused from a marketing standpoint.

In any case, here’s the models, and my super-short distilled blurb.  ALL have GPS in them.

$99 – ProSense 17: Simple GPS running watch, activity tracking, smartphone notifications
$149 – ProSense 57: Everything above, plus optical HR sensor
$249 – ProSense 307: Everything above, plus pool/openwater swimming and cycling support
$349 – ProSense 347: Everything above, but with double the battery life (46hrs GPS)
$399 – ProSense 367: Everything above, but with Sapphire glass

In that context, it’s actually not too bad.  When we first had a conference call back in August about it, I was driving to Eurobike in the RV and pulled over at a rest stop to chat with them.  I think I audibly sighed when they said they had five models.  I thought I was on mute.  But they quickly said to let them explain their logic, and after explaining it I get what they were going for.

I still think some combination of the naming and model count is a mess to explain to a customer at a running shop, but that’s not my problem.

Since I don’t have all the watches (just the ProSense 307), here’s generic PR images of all the units for your fashionista selection assistance.  Yes…all the units.  You can hover above each one to get the specific model and color variant. 11 variants in total.

Now, as I mentioned, I’ve only got the ProSense 307 (the middle bear), which allows me all the functionality they have in the series, but just with the smaller battery life and non-Sapphire glass.  I’ve always thought Sapphire glass on any GPS watch is usually silly (but every vendor does it of course).

So, here’s a look at how the ProSense 307 compares to a few other GPS multi-sport watches from a sizing standpoint:

And then, the weight side of things:

Got all that?  Good!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I don’t have boxes for an unboxing.  Rather, I got it in a Ziploc baggie months ago.  But fear not, the August Ziploc vintage is a fine month.

The Basics:

The unit is pretty straightforward, and virtually all settings can be changed either on the unit itself or via the mobile and desktop/web apps.  That’s a nice touch, as most watches out there tend to offer a subset of settings on each individual platform.  Cool stuff.

In any case, the watch has five buttons.  Three on the right, and two on the left.  Additionally, the watch face in a default configuration will go to sleep automatically if there’s no movement after a few minutes (Suunto and others do the same to save battery if just left on desk/table).  On your wrist, it’ll never fall asleep because the tiny movements you make are sufficient to keep it awake.

Next, to get to the daily activity stats, you’ll simply press the up button once.  This will show your total steps, calories (including BMR), as well as current heart rate.

Note that you can change your step target if you’d like (default is 10,000 steps) in the settings options, as well as whether or not activity tracking is enabled at all.  There are no other options/settings related to activity tracking though.

You can customize the extra data pages displayed (beyond just the summary one above), within the desktop app options.  By default, all of these are off except the ‘Daily Activity Summary’.

Doing so gets you pages like these:

Note that the unit does track sleep, and you can customize your default bedtimes and wake-up times.  Like most watches, it’ll use that to help a bit in determining if you’re sleeping or not.  Though it’s not a strict guide.

Back on the main watch face you can change between four different watch faces using the settings panels:

Meanwhile, if from the watch face you press down, you’ll get a listing of available sports: Run, Walk, Treadmill, Bike, Pool Swim, Open Water, Triathlon, and Stopwatch.  It’ll show you the distance for your last workout of each type as you tap each one, which is kinda a nice touch.  I like it.

Finally, if you press enter from the watch face you’ll get the settings and history menu.  It’s here you can configure things like Bluetooth settings, watch alarms, display/vibration/tone settings and so on.  Pretty much the normal things you’d find in a GPS watch to tweak.

From a backlight standpoint, you can activate that by pressing the middle left button, which turns it on for a default of about 10 seconds.  It’s plenty bright, and there are no issues seeing it in the dark (I’ve done both daytime and nighttime workouts).  The only downside to the user interface is that the responsiveness of the unit is slow, and the buttons feel kinda mushy.  Also, the screen briefly flashes and inverts each time you change a page.  It’d be like what happens if your Amazon Kindle had the hiccups.

Note that the unit does have Bluetooth Smart notifications, which you can configure in terms of whether or not they display during each: Daily use, workouts, and sleep.  In my case, they didn’t come through despite enabling them.  So it’s something I’ll sort through with Epson.  I’ve occasionally seen issues where since I’m wearing multiple watches, Apple doesn’t always send it to multiple devices (usually it does, but sometimes it doesn’t). [Update: As of this morning, it’s now happy, perhaps the final firmware update did it.]

And that…well, that’s pretty much it on the basics before we dive into sport usage.  There’s no other options or fields or features to talk about beyond sports (I’ll have the apps lower down in a different section).  Also, there is no 3rd party app support on the device itself.

Sport Usage:

Of course, the main reason you’d buy any of the ProSense watches is for sport usage.  And previously with Epson’s watches that was basically limited to running (hence the name: RunSense).  But now with the ProSense series, you get a multitude of sports to work with, including swimming as well as triathlon.  All of these sports can be accessed by simply pressing the down button on the right side, which iterates through the core sport mode: Run, Walk, Treadmill, Bike, Pool Swim, Open Water, Triathlon, and Stopwatch

Once you select a sport mode, you can press the middle right button to customize specific settings for it.  For example, the Run sport, we can customize things like automatic lap (AT Lap), automatic pause (AT Pause), create basic training targets like pace or target HR, or even intervals (more on that in a second).   There’s also a metronome function as well the ability to save waypoints.

Note that one big gap is that there isn’t a method to connect to any sensors in any mode.  Meaning, no external HR strap (if you don’t like optical HR) within running, nor cycling sensors like cadence or power meters.  Even TomTom’s previously $90 GPS watch could support HR straps, so it’s a pretty weird gap.  And in fact, Epson’s own $99 ProSense unit does support HR straps, making it even more odd.

Once you’ve decided on your sport, then you’ll go ahead and confirm it by selecting the ‘Start/Stop’ button.  This won’t start the workout yet, but instead will initiate GPS searching as well as acquiring of the optical HR sensor.

In my experience the GPS acquisition tends to take a really long time (upwards of a minute or two, even when starting in the same spot as my previous workout).  While they do provide assisted GPS caching, from talking to Epson it sounds like that’s not working from my app to my unit for some reason.  Hence the delays.

Once it finds all GPS satellites, you’ll be good to go:

At this point you can press the Start/Stop button to start the actual recording of the activity.

Once recording data, you can press the up/down buttons to change the data pages.  You’ll get four data pages you can customize, each with up to three pieces of information.  It’s best to customize these using the app (I went with desktop):

Interestingly, you can pretty dramatically change the layouts of the fields.  So that includes things like graphs as well as tracks using the compass for waypoints.

While running or riding or whatever sport you’re doing, it’ll track as you’d expect with any GPS watch.  You can press the center-right button to trigger laps if you don’t have automatic lap turned on.  All of this is recorded for later review online.

If you’re swimming, before you start swimming you’ll be able to configure the pool size.  In my case, that’s an awesome 33 1/3rd meters.

Then, when in the pool it’ll track your laps and sets.  You can press to pause in between a set, which will create sets online for later review.  But from an accuracy standpoint it matched my actual swim laps/lengths.

Once you’ve wrapped up the workout (of any time), you can save the workouts and get a slew of summary stats.

Most notable in here are stats driven by FirstBeat, including VO2Max and the training benefit (I.e. Lactate Threshold).  These are the *exact* same stats by the exact same company that you’ll find on Garmin watches.  Of course, when I say ‘exact’, I don’t mean that you’ll get as many stats as you do on a new higher end Garmin ($499+).  But FirstBeat powers these stats on both companies, it’s just that Garmin has licensed a broader set of them. Still, it’s great to see Epson leveraging a well-trusted company in the industry, versus just pulling something out of thin air.

One interesting tidbit here on these metrics is that since Epson allows the optical HR sensor during a swimming session (Garmin doesn’t), you’ll get FirstBeat recovery time on swims even without a chest strap.  Of course, there is a catch: Accuracy.  For example, in my swim tonight I noticed that during a slightly harder interval the HR dropped out entirely for the last length (though, you wouldn’t know it looking at the below chart).  During more casual laps, the HR tracked with what I’d consider mostly reasonable for my intensity.

In any case, everything that’s saved ends up on the website via either your mobile phone or via USB cable to your computer.  Which, is a great segue to the next section.

Apps & Website:

Now, for those that remember my previous Epson GPS watch review, you’ll remember I thought it had excellent GPS and HR, so-so interface, and god-awful apps and site.

And more or less, that hasn’t changed much here.  Technically, Epson has improved their site and apps, but ultimately, it was like going from 1987 to 2002.  The mobile app is far more improved than the mobile app of a few years ago, but it’s still pretty dismal.  The website will make anyone harken back to the CompuServe days.  And the funny thing is that yes, it gives you the core running info just fine.  But it just does it in such a clunky way that it makes you feel like you bought something from last decade.

Still, a quick tour for posterity’s sake.  Starting with the mobile app, here’s the dashboard which shows you the current day.  In theory, it’s syncing via the background constantly.  But in reality, that doesn’t happen.  It’s hours old and thousands of steps out of date right now.  I can tap history to look at all the past days.

Except, don’t try and click on anything, as then it resets to showing all the days, versus zooming in on some element.  Also, see above those graphs?  The ones without any values on them?  You can’t tap/zoom/anything them.  You can’t even see the what the bars mean, because there’s no scale.

So, for example, you’ll see your 24×7 HR there, but you can’t zoom in on it to actually see what your 24×7 HR is.  It’s just a squiggly red line with zero numbers.  Throw a piece of spaghetti and red sauce at the wall.  There, now you have your 24×7 HR data.

Next, you can tap into any given workout to see stats.  On the main page you’ve got the workout categories (run/walk/bike/swim), and the latest workout there.  You can then tap that workout to get more details.

You can tap any of the blocks below the graph to display any two given metrics.  That works well enough.

Down below that is lap summary data, as well as the FirstBeat related metrics.  But even within that there’s weird coding.  Why does it show me ‘CODE-06’ and ‘CODE-04’?  That shouldn’t be shown, as the text relating to that is already shown.  Not to mention that the message next to CODE-04 is factually untrue since the very run itself shows me running for over 50 minutes, with HR data.  The second code makes perfect sense, since I was just running with a stroller and The Peanut on a casual run.

When it comes to syncing and settings, the watch, in theory, does background sync via Bluetooth Smart, but in reality it doesn’t work for me.  Epson’s looking into it.  But I have to not only open the app up, but ensure that the app remains open until it finishes syncing.

Of course, it takes forever to change any settings, because every time you click on something you wait.  Open up Activity Settings?  Wait.  Open up workout settings?  Wait a hell of a long time (30+ seconds at best).  Save workout settings?  Wait, no, confirm.  Then wait.  Then confirm again.

The problem here is that you can’t do anything till it finishes thinking.  Which is really too bad, because hidden in all of this are some cool features.  For example, the ability to display the data fields on the watch faces is very much like what Wahoo does, and everyone loves.

And waypoints?  Better than everyone else out there.  In less than 5 seconds I can tap anywhere in the world and save that as a waypoint (with elevation data) and push it to the watch (albeit, that takes more waiting), and I can do that for dozens of waypoints.  I can’t do that at all on Garmin’s app.  Nor Suunto’s.  Nor Polar’s.  Nor Apple’s.  Nobody’s.

And that’s where this mostly comes down to.  Epson needs to really understand that the singular reason I’d hesitate to recommend this watch at these price points is the app and website are so bad.  Sure, someone from 2003 might look at them and say “Oh, that’s not too bad”.  But it’s not 2003, and I don’t understand how it ended up looking like this.

Here’s the website:

And a given activity:

Again, it doesn’t look horrible, but it feels horribly outdated.  Everything enumerates slowly, and in chunks.  Everything has massive chunks of empty space around it.  Tiles often overlap or otherwise render weird.

And you want to export?  Well, they give you .GPX and .CSV.  Exporting to .CSV is useless for fitness data, since no two companies do it the same.  Anyone in the fitness industry who says they export common data to .CSV hasn’t touched a fitness device in 10+ years.  GPX?  Well, that too isn’t used by companies for fitness data either.  These days it’s .TCX and .FIT – across the board, by everyone.

And why is GPX a problem specifically?  Because you can’t export indoor workouts with it.  And since you can’t do that, you can’t export indoor workouts to most apps, because they won’t understand the .CSV files.

What’s so strange about this is that at the same time Epson does a great job at having partnerships with many companies.

Though, disappointingly, it doesn’t seem to fully work.  Some of my workouts never showed up on Strava (like the indoor ones, such as my swim today).  Why?  Because they send to Strava in .GPX…except, when they don’t.

And then while writing this, it wants to update my firmware. Perfect!  Except, this happened:

My Kanji is rusty, but I think something is amiss. I needn’t continue, really, I think you get the point.

GPS & HR Accuracy:

As always, when I do HR and GPS comparisons, I’m aiming to compare the unit to multiple other units worn/used at the same time.  So in the case of HR comparisons, that includes 2-3 other watches or chest straps, with no more than one watch per wrist (any more will impact optical HR accuracy).  Remember, the chest strap isn’t always right, so it’s important to be able to know that sometimes the optical HR sensor is actually correct and the chest strap isn’t, especially in the cooler/dryer fall months like right now.

For GPS, I’m using 2-5 units as well, more with cycling since I have more places I can stash them.  I like to simply go out and run/ride/whatever my normal workout routes, which usually are in/around Paris.  So that includes buildings, tunnels, bridges, trees in parks, and so on.  In the case of the Epson 307, all of the data used here was done in the greater Paris area.  I’m looking at the individual tracks to validate those tracks are where I went.

In any case, I’m going to focus mostly on workouts in the last 5-7 days, with the most final software versions.  I have more workouts on previous beta software versions, but they show some small HR and rare GPS bugs that appear to have been fixed in the final release.  So no need to dwell on that.

In any case, first up is a run from Sunday.  This was a run with a running stroller, where I was pushing the little one.  These are always fun for optical HR accuracy, since it can cause quirks sometimes.  You can look at the full raw data set here.  First though, we’ll start with GPS accuracy, mostly since that’s easiest.

In this case, I was carrying a crapton of Garmin units since I was collecting data on a bunch of Connect IQ apps.  All of those units were strapped to the stroller.  Meanwhile, on my left wrist I had the Apple Watch Series 3 and on my right wrist the Epson ProSense 307.

As you can see from the plots, the watches were for the most part pretty close at a high level, but as you zoom in more closely you see some oddities.  For example, in the first kilometer the Apple Watch and Epson both spent time in the river.  I assure you, I did not.

However, later on, roles were reversed and the Garmins went for a swim while the Apple Watch and Epson stayed put.  This particular section is where I go under a building for a few hundred meters that’s got one open side to the river.  So it barely gets GPS signal, and often causes issues like this.  It’s honestly a complete crap-shoot on whether any given unit does it right on any given day.  I’ve seen some watches go months without issues here, and then boom – craps the bed randomly one day.  Randomly of note, the Descent (basically, a Garmin Fenix 5X) did this correctly here.

As I continue on, things were pretty clean for the remainder of the run.  All the units calmed down and did well.  Though, the terrain also got easier.  So that’s probably one element of it.

Throughout the remainder of that run, from a GPS standpoint there’s nothing of concern with the Epson GPS track.

Taking a peek at optical HR though, it’s got some bumps in the road.  Notably the first 8 minutes.  Now, as I noted earlier, I was pushing the stroller.  I alternated between the left hand and right hand for a few minutes each.  I don’t know which side I started with, but it’s clear that it didn’t work out well for the Epson for the first few minutes.

However, after that, all the units agreed quite nicely, save a few seconds around the 30-minute marker.  Despite a fair bit of variability here, things were pretty good after the initial troubles.  I could zoom in and out on the above set, but honestly, it won’t show you anything more than you can see above.

So let’s go look at another run instead.

This one a more city-oriented run last week, albeit on a bit older firmware.  You can see that at the high level, the tracks are pretty similar.

If I zoom in though (primarily when I first start out), there’s a few GPS quirks, which looking at the firmware notes appear resolved there, and largely appear related to a slight lateral offset.  Once I clear the tunnel, it resets itself and is happy the remainder of the run.

Looking at the HR side of that run, here’s a perfect example of where the Epson’s optical HR sensor was correct and the chest strap and Apple Watch Series 3 weren’t.

You can see the first 7 minutes or so the Epson properly tracks a nice build in HR.  Whereas the chest strap and the Apple Watch both incorrectly pegged me in the 170bpm range on an easy run.

Now, after that point, you see some slight ‘spikes’ towards the last half of the workout.  These appear related to this beta firmware, and I haven’t seen them at this severity on subsequent activities.  I’m not quite sure what’s caused these, but it’s not something I’ve seen after this firmware version…so…shrug.

Next, I had an indoor trainer ride to show you.  But alas, you can’t export that out from Epson in any usable fitness format.  So I can’t show you that.  It’s too bad, because the data seemed pretty good there actually in real-time.  But not even Epson’s own site can plot the darn data.  It’s just blank.  Interestingly enough though, it does show your HR zone splits.  So somewhere in there it has the data.

Next, I had an outdoor ride to look at with tons of comparative data. It too is on a bit older firmware though, so the HR is a bit all over the place. I don’t yet know if that’s because it’s just the way it is, or because of the older firmware.  I have some shorter across town rides that were just between the Epson and Apple Watch 3, but I’d rather wait and do a few more rides on it with the final firmware that I just got today and see how that shakes out.

Ultimately though, the trend I see is that on the near-final firmware in the last few days optical HR looks pretty good, and GPS looks pretty solid as well.  Some minor quirks that you saw around pushing the stroller, but that’s somewhat expected, and seemed confined to the first few minutes.  I’m not sure what was unique about that compared to the remainder, but it was good after that point.

(Note: All the data comparisons were done using the DCR Analyzer.  If that’s of interest to you, I’ve opened it up to allow anyone to make their own comparisons between a device’s files.  Just hit up the link!)

Product Comparisons:

I’ve added in the Epson ProSense 307 into the product comparison tool.  If there’s enough interest, I may add some of the other models down the road.  The product comparison tool allows you to compare the features of watches I’ve had hands-on time with.  For the purposes of below, I’ve compared the ProSense 307 against what I think are the most likely candidates people would be looking at.  But you can make your own comparison chart here.

As for why I selected the FR920XT from Garmin?  Well, simply put, anyone who’s considering this watch doesn’t much care about having the latest and greatest tech.  And yet the FR920XT is still enormously popular and relevant.  It’s also in the same price point as we go into the November tech sales.

Again, remember you can make your own comparison charts here via the product comparison tool.

Summary:

Ultimately, the ProSense lineup (but really more specifically, the 307) is pretty interesting.  It’s cool to see Epson make a play here in the triathlon realm, as well as to push a second generation unit out.  As we watch TomTom’s fitness division ride off into the sunset, it’s good to know there will be another company out there introducing products into the marketplace, helping to keep up competition.  Plus, the ease of use of the waypoint features, as well as ability to set data fields from the phone, is equal or better than anyone else out there.

From an accuracy standpoint, the last two firmware versions (including what’s going out as final) seem to have resolved the quirks I saw in most of my HR accuracy concerns (save one segment), as well as some early beta GPS quirks.  Given that Epson really nailed both GPS and HR accuracy in their previous unit (it was the only selling point), it’s good to see they appear to be on the same track here, though, I’d like to get in a few more workouts on the final software to be sure.

Ultimately, I think Epson is onto something here with their hardware, and in the case of the ProSense 307 specifically, their pricing.  But, software is a super important part of the ecosystem these days, and I’m not convinced the ProSense delivers in that arena.

With that, thanks for reading!

Sometimes, I do sports that are actually not swim-bike-run.  Be it skiing, or…ok, I guess that’s it.  Actually, I scuba dive, which I suppose is still technically swimming.  Or swimming done rather poorly. So poorly that you’re never-endingly sinking to the bottom of the oceans.

In any case, like any other person, I do a wide assortment of things that I find interesting.  One of those things that’s long been on my list is going diving at Nemo 33.  It’s an indoor dive facility that’s 33 meters (108ft) deep in Brussels (Belgium).  It’s basically like someone filled up a cold-war era missile silo with water.  I had actually long planned to do waterproofing tests there for various watches, but ultimately I just bought a waterproofing test chamber instead.  It could go deeper than Nemo 33 could, and without the 3-hour drive each way.

And yesterday, I finally had an excuse to go there!  See, Garmin decided to take their Fenix 5X GPS watch and turn it into a dive watch, albeit, with some hardware and software tweaks that I’ll get into.

But, in case you don’t have the time for all this text, I give you this relatively short video – which is mostly just an excuse for me to buy the GoPro dive case for my Hero6 Black, and then a further excuse to shoot video in a cool place.  Also, I talk about a pretty interesting piece of sports gadgetry:

And obviously – if dive watches (or underwater videos) aren’t your thing, fear not, we’ve got more running watches coming in tomorrow (which I haven’t even discussed anywhere).  And then more yet the next day; partly why I was so quiet last week. So hang tight!

The Tech Details:

The first thing to know about the Descent MK1 is that’s it’s a Fenix 5X.  Except, it’s not.  See, it’s complicated.

Yes, the underlying software starts off as a Fenix 5X, as does the hardware, but there’s some core differences.  However, since I realize that many visiting this page don’t know anything about the Fenix series at all, let’s take a brief step back and talk about the core ‘things’ the outdoor-focused Fenix 5 does (since virtually all of these are unheard of in a dive watch):

– GPS with GLONASS enabled for other sports (cycling, running, gym, etc…)
– Smartwatch with smartphone notifications (I.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc…), calendar notices, phone and text notifications
– Connects to ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart accessories, can control Garmin action cams
– Downloads data automatically to your phone via Bluetooth Smart, as well as via WiFi & USB
– Optical heart rate (HR) sensor on back of unit
– Full color maps for navigation, with points of interest (depends on region though)
– App store: Connect IQ apps for watch faces, data fields and widgets
– Battery life of: 40 hours diving, 20 hours GPS, and 10 days in smartwatch

Ultimately though, if you want to understand the full breadth of the Fenix 5 series, check out my in-depth review here.

Now that the basics are out of the way, how’s it different than the Fenix 5X?  Let’s start with the hardware side:

– Depth Gauge added: To measure depth, obviously.
– Waterproofing standard differs: It’s waterproof to 100m, but in this case they’re specifically following EN 13319
– Added DLC bezel coating: The Fenix 5X doesn’t have this, and it hardens against scratches. On higher end model Titanium model.
– Charging port changed: In order to get the dive-focused 100m rating, they switched back to the Fenix 3 charging port
– Additional super-long strap included: It’ll fit around dry suits, or perhaps a very bulky wetsuit

The biggest change up above aside from the depth gauge is the adherence to EN13319.  That’s more than just bringing it to 100m, but actually doing overpressure testing at the 100m depth, as well as things like protection against banging the screen and body against rocks and hard surfaces while at that depth.  The obvious goal being that if you are cave diving it should be able to withstand a few whacks to the head.

Then there’s some software focused changes:

– Dive modes added: To record dives, obviously. More on this in a second.
– No Fly Watch Face: To tell you when it’s safe to fly
– HR Recording Works Underwater: Yup, they found that given diving is less about strokes, it records quite well
– No Connect IQ Apps allowed in Dive Mode: Simply for safety reasons.  Apps allowed in all other modes.
– Different software development QC process for the dive aspects of the unit

Of course, that first line item is a pretty big one (dive modes), so let’s break down what that actually means.  Within the Descent MK1 you’ve got six core diving modes/features, they are:

– Single Gas
– Multi-Gas
– Gauge
– Apnea
– Apnea Hunt
– Plan Dive

Most of these are fairly self-explanatory.  With ‘Gauge’ mode, that’s your standard no-gas dive.  And Apnea being the more official term for freediving, with Apnea hunt aimed at spear fishing.  Each of these modes has different settings, but I’ll walk through a typical ‘gauge’ dive in my test dive down below.  From a gas perspective, the unit supports five different gases plus air, including nitrox and trimix.

Before that though, you’ve got the ability to ‘Plan Dive’ dive, which is effectively a quick dive calculator.  It doesn’t appear to tie into any of the underlying dive modes themselves, but rather is used as a quick planner instead.

In ‘Plan Dive’, you’ve got the ability to Compute NDL or create a Decompression Plan.  For example, in Compute NDL you’d start by setting your oxygen percentage (21% default), and then you’d enter in your dive max depth or dive duration:

If I enter in my dive depth, it’ll give me my NDL back in time (which is the duration I can spend at that depth), as well as the MOD.

Note that you can add repeat dives here as well.  Meanwhile, with the ‘Deco Plans’ option, you can get far more complex and create plans based on different gases and customizing the percentage of those gases.  Also, for non-gauge dives you can specify conservatism settings as well as specify gradient factors.  And for the algorithm on decompression plans, they’re using Bühlmann ZHL-16c.

Now – one thing to note is that while there are systems for wireless air gauge integration, there’s nothing of the sort today in the MK1.  In talking with Garmin about this, they say it’s definitely something they’re looking at down the road, but won’t likely be a MK1 product feature.  Part of that is essentially deciding which horse (standard/company) to bet on.  Some of the offerings are still pretty new, and figuring out what makes the most sense isn’t something in the cards for this product cycle.

Got all that?  Good, time for a simple test dive.

Real-World Test Dive:

Since I don’t exactly live in a diving mecca (central Paris), my best bet for a fun test dive that was easily doable in a day trip was driving three hours to Brussels, Belgium.  It’s here that the NEMO33 facility is located.  At 25EUR for the dive, it’s not too bad (apparently it’s a boatload cheaper if you get a pass).  Plus, it includes 100% of the equipment you’d need, save a swimsuit (nude diving didn’t appear to be welcomed).  So after handing over my credit card we headed to the pool deck:

It’s here that we got a super quick safety chat.  More of a logistics chat than safety really.  You’re expected to be certified, which I am, so it’s just a case of knowing where to get all your parts and you’re on you’re way.  First up though on their well-structured plan is 10 minutes to do any free-diving you’d like.  So I started there playing around with the watch (beyond what I had done in my underwater test chamber):

Essentially in this mode it’ll track your depth and time, as well as still provide any alerts you’d have configured.  These could be for areas such as time or depth.

Soon though, we were gearing up and getting back in the water for the main dive.  It’s at this point that I selected ‘Gauge’ from the dive menu.  The first thing it’ll do now is to actually look for GPS satellites.  See, it’ll mark your starting point on the map with that.  Of course, GPS doesn’t work underwater, so it’s merely going to be start and stop points.

In the case of indoors, I brought it as close to the window as I could, though I wasn’t as lucky as I was for the free-dive I did, so I had no luck getting GPS signal.  Obviously, on a boat on openwater that’s not an issue.  Oh, in case you’re wondering about those bikes…they do water spin classes.  Also, you could do swim laps here, but it’d be miserably hot for any sort of legit workout, since the water temp is 32°C (90°F).

It’s at this juncture you can change your water-type as well as configure alerts.  In standard gauge mode those would just be depth and time alerts.

And, you can select to use wrist HR (optical HR) or a chest strap.  With a chest strap you won’t get real-time readings until you download afterwards (since neither ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart can pass through water).  Whereas with the wrist sensor you will get optical HR readings live the entire dive.  Of course, the optical HR sensor won’t work through a wetsuit or dry suit.

Note for those that are curious, the reason this (underwater HR) works here and not on the Fenix 5/FR935 is that Garmin found the HR is working fairly reliably in scuba/apnea because you’re not stroking against the surface of the water as with swimming.  It’s the whacking of the water (and the water/air bubbles going in and out every .75 seconds) that causes optical HR issues.  Those issues don’t generally exist in diving.

With all that setup and GPS found, you’ll press the upper right button to start.  And then…nothing will happen.

See, nothing will happen until the depth gauge activates, which won’t occur until you’re about 1ft underwater. At that point the activity automatically starts recording and the GPS is disabled.  In fact, much of the watch now goes into a very locked down software mode that doesn’t allow anything extra to run.  No widgets, nor settings access, nor apps or data fields, or anything.  The idea being to lock it down so it’s both more secure, but also so you don’t get yourself into a pickle pressing buttons.

As you start to descend, you’ll get live data from one of the three data pages.  Those data pages on a standard gauge dive include:

Page 1: Dive Time, Depth, Water Temp, Ascent/Descent Rate, Max Depth, Average Depth
Page 2: Compass Heading, Compass direction (I.e. south), Depth, Water Temp, Dive Time
Page 3: Heart Rate, Heart Rate Zone (Color), Time of Day, Water Temp, Depth, Battery Level, Dive Time

Now, if you’re diving with gas you’ll get other information as well including the gas mix, PO2, and N2 loading.  In my case this was a non-gas dive, so I didn’t get to toy with those.

Alerts will trigger mid-dive for things you’ve configured.  For example, a max depth, or a time duration.  Additionally, if you ascend or descend too fast, it’ll trigger alerts there too (vibration + tone).  Note that alerts automatically clear from the screen, it was either 3 seconds or 5 seconds – I didn’t mentally time it.  But it was quick enough that the first time it occurred it disappeared faster than I could move my camera to take a photo.

Of note is that unlike other Garmin watches, once you’re in a dive – the watch is totally locked down.  As I mentioned above things like Connect IQ apps aren’t available. But neither is settings or anything else.  The idea being that you don’t accidentally get yourself on some weird screen you can’t figure out how to undo while underwater.  Also, at present the dive screens don’t appear to be customizable either.  They are what they are.

In unrelated news, you can eat Thai food while watching divers  That’s what those windows are there, and behind it is an Asian restaurant.  Inversely, you’ll know what it’s like to be a fish inside an aquarium.

Finally, after you surface the unit will reacquire GPS and then mark the exit location.  These will show on the maps on Garmin Connect/Garmin Connect Mobile.  All that syncs automatically as soon as within range of your phone.  Here’s some of what you get online (some data fields aren’t quite showing up fully on the beta app):  

You’ll also get HR charts as well as depth and temperature charts.

From a dive log perspective, everything is basically in three places: Watch, your phone, and Garmin Connect (web) automatically.  The only downside is that there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to import all your existing dive history (or to recreate dives quickly).  Of course, most other dive watches don’t support that either, but still, it’s always a sad-panda moment when any dive/training log shows zero.

Oh – and lastly, on the watch face it’ll show your time remaining till it’s safe to fly (essentially 24 hours since last dive).

Wrap-up:

Now, for those wondering if I’m getting into the dive watch computer realm with in-depth reviews, the answer is simple: Nope, unlikely.  First off, I just don’t live in a place that’s terribly conducive to doing that topic justice.  It’d be like writing reviews of running GPS watches and only using a treadmill.  So until I move to/buy/whatever a tropical island to dive from every day, you’re stuck with me out of breath running the streets of Paris.

But ultimately, I like discussing things that are interesting, even if not the core of what I do day to day.  It keeps it interesting to me.  And in the of the Garmin Descent MK1, it’s notable because there’s so little competition to this type of device in the marketplace.  Obviously, there are tons of dive computers.  Both high end and low-end.

The funny thing is though, there are really none that have the feature-set that Garmin arrives with beyond the diving pieces.  In the diving world, most dive watches are large and clunky (albeit sometimes for valid reasons), and those that are slimmer tend to be pricey, and even then super minimalist when it comes to being able to be worn on land.  All of which Garmin knows.  They can arrive with a unit that’s far more connected than any other offering in the market, and at a price that’s actually quite comparable ($999USD for base model) to other high-end dive computers.

Said differently: Garmin isn’t doing anything significantly unique compared to other dive computers in terms of the diving-specific feature set.  What they are doing though is doing that though coupled with a complete GPS smartwatch.  That’s unique.

Of course, the question is whether the diving market trusts Garmin.  Certainly in the sports realm, the overwhelming bulk of runners and cyclists do (as the numbers clearly show), but we also have become accustomed to Garmin’s occasional software snafu’s.  If your GPS watch stumbles on a run, it’s one thing.  But if it has an error in a highly technical dive – that’s an entirely different situation.

Obviously, as I noted above, Garmin says they’ve done a lot in this area to address the safety concerns.  Which are ultimately no different than the ways Garmin addresses them in other safety-critical businesses like aviation and marine.  And in the case of those markets, it’s really a case of consumers over time trusting the products they’re using.  They noted that while the Descent will largely get the same software/firmware updates the Fenix 5X gets, that due to the extra safety checks, there will probably be a slight lag there to the Descent.

Which ultimately brings us back to the Descent MK1.  Garmin will have to prove over time that the unit they’ve made is dependable, no matter how much bottom time beta testing divers have had.  And if they do that?  They’ll likely take the dive computer market by storm.  Especially since it’s almost inevitable they’ll apply the same logic they did in the running and cycling realm: Start with prices comparatively high, and iterate down to offering compelling budget options that blanket the market.

In the meantime, I need to find a tropical island.

With that – thanks for reading!

—

Update: You can now pre-order the Garmin Descent MK1 via Clever Training.  Doing so via Clever Training helps support the site.  Plus, if you use the DCR/CT VIP program you’ll get 10% back in points that you can use immediately, along with free US shipping.  Further, it’ll basically make you awesome.