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.
4
My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
5
The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Liquid nitrogen is really easy to get. Just look for companies offering Services in mechanical fields like power stations, raffineries or just any other area where bushings Need to be replaced.
Or get one of these: link to elan2.com
Just tried the indoor cycling gymnastics in my garage. Had a hell of a time to get my bike to go backwards and crashed, putting a dent in our clothes dryer.:)
Harder than it looks. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to all. Nick
Liquid N:
– Medical supply. At least in the US, GPs can use it to remove warts…
– If you remember the company Airgas, welding supplies, etc, it is a US subsidiary for Air Liquide. Air Liquide’s HQ is in Quai d’Orsay, less than 4km from Norte Dame ;)
BTW. LN2 is really cool (ha ha). Works well for making ice cream too, so maybe a summer addition The Girls shop??
link to youtube.com
Hmm…cool indeed. Though, certainly looks like it’d be pricey. But, I can’t find a price. Any ballpark cost?
Cost of lN2 here in the Czech Republic varies from 0.4 Euro (direct purchase from producer, here Linde ) to 8.4 Euro (from distributor oriented on “molecular gastronomy” :-) ).
link to translate.google.cz
Speaking of Bluetooth versions… I’ve been wondering if the Edge 520 has a better version of BLE than the fenix 3?
I ask because I know version… 4.2? Increased the max packet size quite a bit for BLE and it seems as if the 520 syncs rides wildly faster than my fenix.
Using both with an iPhone 6s if it matters.
Hmm, not aware of anything either way.
The F3 hardware is no doubt older by a fair bit though (underlying hardware). Though the two products also come from different teams. Entirely possible different code.
And finally, the Edge 520 actually pairs over Bluetooth (full) for the app,and then has a secondary BLE connection for smartphone notifications. My bet is that the full BT connections gives more bandwidth (well, I know it does).
Good point for full BT, that’s likely the difference. It seems to complete nearly instantly while the F3 can take forever (and now and then fail repeatedly until a cabled or wifi sync is done)
Hi Ray, I am not sure if you covered this before. I tried to find in in your blog but I couldn’t.
Do you have a noise comparison chart for smart trainers? What is the most silent smart trainer in the market? I live in Manhattan, and I have a very sensitive neighbor. I currently have the 1st version of the Kickr.
Thanks for your help!
Juan.
The quietest is the Tacx NEO, followed reasonably closely by the Elite Drivo and KICKR2.
Thanks a lot, Ray! I guess I’ll have to do the upgrade :-)
If you really want it to be quiet — go for the NEO and setup a dedicated trainer bike with a belt drive. Same trick works for the others, particularly if you run them in ERG mode and run a smallish front ring and largish rear ring.
Not going to lie the BT and ANT+ issue is stupid to say the least. Literally the only company who uses Ant+ is Garmin and one of the few if not only things that use Ant+ are power meters. I just dont get why everyone doesnt move to BT. Its used in PCs, Mobile devices, watches, pretty much anything you can think of. There is no reason why I shouldnt beable to connect to my said sensor with my phone or watch. I shouldnt have to worry about if its ant+ or BT. As you said Ray, 4.1 introduced multi sensor connectivity and nobody introduced it. Its just mind boggling.
To be fair, everyone else in the cycling industry uses ANT+ as well, especially for power meters – but also for other devices. As you noted, the biggest oddity is why others didn’t adopt multi-master sensor in 4.1 two years ago. Especially Polar. In doing so, they left open one of the biggest excuses for not using BLE.
This article from a month ago also covers a lot of other good reasons why it hasn’t happened: link to keithhack.blogspot.com
Sure, eventually BT may finally win but all I seem to see are compatibility issues (different firmware versions have different issues with different sensors). Until it can be as clean as ANT connections it can’t fully take over.
It would be nice if Garmin at least started to support both protocols in their units… at least if ANT ever did lose favor they wouldn’t be “up a creek” due to lack of implementation and experience :)
So I don’t know where else to put this, but an interesting thing happened today along these lines. I was pairing a BT HR monitor to my android tablet, and my Fenix3HR came up on the list of available HR monitors. Does this mean that the latest firmware release has made my Fenix able to broadcast the optical HR on BT? I don’t have Ant in my tablet, so I don’t know why else this would happen. Maybe it’s just seeing it as a BT device, but it’s never happened before. Anybody know anything?
It just indicates that the software is not checking the type of BTLE device before presenting you with this list of devices. It’s not that uncommon as there are a good number of bugs in the Android driver stack if you try and filter the devices by there type. If you selected the Fenrix3 you would not get very far. The same is if I select my TV which shows up on these lists I don’t get very far.
Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.
There was also an update for the Polar V800:
link to support.polar.com
‘Was’ being the operative word. It was recalled, so I didn’t include it.
Oh – right. I guess I was lucky enough that the problems didn’t affect me :P
The new version of the update is out since today :D
forget to post the link my bad :)
link to support.polar.com
How’s the Cycleops Hammer looking so far??
Thanks.
Any idea what the 520’s “Improvements to Workout Data Screen” update is? Seems the same.
Good to see the “bike-powered house” myth debunked again. I think pops up pretty regularly on social media propgated by the charlatan-in-chief David “Avocado” Wolf…
Is there an accelerometer in the Edge 520? Wondering how they could implement incident detection without that…
The Garmin 920xt received a firmware update as well. Added in automatic live tracking and connectIQ 1.4.1
I really like that Garmin continue to bring new features to the Edge 520. However it’s a bit irritating that every time they release an update it resets your FTP or power zone calculation type.
Any idea why every update seem to cause this? Obviously it’s easily fixed, just annoying.