Heads up!!! Here’s your massive holiday sports tech deals list! This includes the Garmin Epix for just $419, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just $699, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $249, (or the brand new Hero 13 or $299!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list of 100+ deals here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
2
Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
3
Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
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My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
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The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Not a bad idea to use the space in the middle of the road. But I doubt if it is healthy to bike in such unhealthy air.
I think I wouldn’t like it.
Snow might not be so crazy when you wipe out – imagine gravel rash at 223 klicks!
Hey Ray – Love the website. A bit surprised you didn’t comment on the price drop on powermeters this week.
I’ve got a big post on it, slated for this week. As usual, I started down a bit of a rabbit hole of looking at power meter pricing…
That makes sense. Looking forward to reading your thoughts. I have an older Quarq S975 that works great, but am considering a second powermeter for a different bike and was excited to see the price drops.
The Garmin workout creator has the same bug as the old one by the look of it. If you select workout with a duration HR of, say 100bpm then a rest until 80bpm they both end up with and a < which makes the workout finish immediately. This was reported to Garmin quite some time ago, and really should have been caught in unit testing before release. Kind of makes it obvious that no structured testing actually takes place on Garmin products. Also seems to suggest that none of the people buying Garmin HRs actually use this feature which is surprising given how standard HR training is.
Congrats to the CupCakery!!!!
Just read your interview in the Bicycle Retailer. Great work, thank you so much for your time and effort. I come to this blog almost everyday!
Thanks on both fronts!
egad! don’t draw a knife toward any body part, good way to loose a finger.
It’s funny, I thought of that about 1-second into pulling the knife that way. The way the camera was, it blocked my arm naturally going the other way. And of course, once I started to cut…I can’t uncut for another video take!
It should have said, LOOK MA, NO HANDS!
The speed record video screenshot shows a dessert (I have a white dress with gold stripes visual cortex)
1) “desert”
2) link to en.m.wikipedia.org
3) link to xkcd.com (if you haven’t heard about “the dress”)
Great interview Ray. Their story illustrates perfectly why many of us avid readers of your site recommend it so highly to everyone else we come across in this area of interest. Keep up the great work.
Hi Ray! Thank you so much for putting the trailer of our film! It was so, so, so great to film in Bobbie’s cupcakery! Thank you again so much!
It’s so nice seeing the difficulties of wrist based activity monitoring mentioned in the consumer realm!
One of my old projects was referenced in the Ferguson et al. study, so I didn’t mind that either. Those BodyMedia devices are astoundingly accurate (and mostly unchanged for the last 5+ years), but somehow have never really found a consumer foothold. A 3d accelerometer and skin sensor don’t cost 1.5k, so that could be part of it. There’s not much more tech in them than any other device, but they nailed the location and how all of the sensors fit into the picture of their algorithm(s).
The new super watches and activity monitoring bands have gotten much better, but I think the paper suggests they are expensive pedometers and fashion statements more than ‘activity’ trackers. The eyeball tests looks like pretty high error rate in step counts, but it looks better than what wrist based devices were doing a few years ago.
It’s seems unrealistic to really expect a watch or band to estimate distance without gps (treadmill or non-gps device) at this point. Running watches keep getting better and better, but the customer service crew at places like Garmin have got to be ready to strangle the marketing team for the promises of treadmill modes and the like. Maybe accelerometer data from the HRM-Run strap could be leveraged to estimate that data instead? Isn’t the Tickr doing something not too far off from that? The running power meter featured a few weeks back is taking the same measurements as a HRM-Run or TickrX, but outputting different information. We can’t be more than a Garmin update or two from running “power” and more reliable non-gps information coming from an accelerometer worn closer to the center of gravity of a runner.
As always, awesome update Ray! Looking forward to the Vivoactive review tomorrow!
FYI. major firmware updates for the garmin fenix 3.
Those ones came in the week prior. I don’t believe there has been any firmware updates this week.
My 620 pulled down a firmware update last night. I was updating my mac, plugged in my 620 & went to bed, got up this morning to go run & the 620 said “Do you want to install?” So I went for it…not sure what it did for me