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:
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You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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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.
The one thing I like about the Nokia app is that the UI for the blood pressure cuff is a little bit better. They seem to have separated off readings from the Thermo entirely into the Thermo app. And activities from Runkeeper no longer show up; I guess that means I can finally drop Runkeeper. The only reason I used it was to get cycling into my Withings feed.
I hope Nokia takes into considerations changing back the design of the UI of the app and website. I have a watch withings Steel and I’m very happy with it and I was very happy with the app and website. But NOKIA arrives and destroyed the UI and I’m stuck with a horrendous app and health website!!! I already gave them a 1 star in the android store and send 2 emails asking to revert or change the current app and website.
The withings UI design/display of the data was logical and gave you a nice overview of your progress or lack of progress. The new Nokia design is more simple but super ugly and the white background hurt the eyes, all the data has the same color, so your sleep/step tracks/activities etc… they all look the same! when before you had a color scheme for each data.
Anyway, the worst is the data display, it is horrendous, ugly as hell and useless the way they display it now.
I didn’t have problems from the first update with the app working, everything is working fine, but the new UI is a piece of crap!
Totally agree.
I don’t usually moan about changes, but the new Nokia Health Web UI is such a massive step backwards.
The Dashboard has been stripped of all information except this ridiculous “Journal” that just shows me a new tiny chart every day of my latest 6 weigh-ins; when you try to view your historical weight data, the charts are so stretched out and non-customisable that it makes it difficult to discern anything useful; the data in the List View of measurements has been stripped back from 2 decimal points to 1; and finally the none of the fonts display properly in Chrome!
Extremely disappointing. The only saving grace is that it’s still pushing my data to TrainingPeaks, where you can actually use a decent interface.
Yes I agree with you so much and much better explained than me. I hope Nokia fix things sooner than later.
Agree completely. What is even more annoying is that on FB Nokia are replying to critical comments with patronising – “We know change is difficult for some people” and “We hope you learn to love the new app as much as we do” type comments.
The treadmill calibration feature sounds interesting.
Any idea if this is also coming to the 935? Also, how does this work when using a footpod?
I always wondered why watches didn’t have this as an option when finishing a treadmill run.
Im 99% sure (its been a while) but my TomTom multisport used to do this.
It “shouldn’t” be that hard (but clearly is behind the scenes)
Ok. That seals it. Was on the fence but I guess I’m going with the Garmin scale after all.
The Nokia app is a mess. Putting aside the various design aspects which are a topic of their own, the new app completely broke my Apple Health integration. When I contacted their support they made me go through a series of steps such as removing the app and reinstalling etc, which didn’t fix the problem but erased all the weight history in Apple Health going back months. Since then they have “escalated” my query but provided no fix. The data is still there in the Nokia app so I hope one day to get it back into Apple Health. Then they release version 3.0.2 which claimed to fix the Apple Health syncing. Great…. except it doesn’t at all. At this stage all I want is to reinstall the old Withings app, but I can’t even do that because Nokia “took over” that app in the appstore rather than creating a new one. Was really hoping Nokia taking it over would lead to improvements and new features but it’s been the exact opposite.
For what it’s worth, the bike lock is designed to prevent people (mainly younger people) that pay more attention to their whatsapp and other stuff on the mobile phone than they do to their surroundings / traffic. In the Netherlands it’s becoming an increasingly bigger problem. Though it’s not useful for sport app users. Nor do I think that it is a solid solution, but at least it’s a start.
The Withings/Nokia situation is a good illustration of the dark side on today’s dependency on cloud (or provider-hosted) data. In the old world when I bought my first GPS watch I downloaded all data from the watch locally and processed it in any software I wanted (or stored locally).
Today I can still do that with runs/rides…. but not with daily activity, calorie, sleep, resting HR, weight and other data. If anything happens to Garmin (less likely) or Fitbit (more likely) my investment into hardware can become crippled in an instant.
Orange Goop is my favorite waterless hand cleaner, it does a wonderful job on bike grease. I always keep the container in the garage. As an added bonus, it’s not affiliated in any way with Gwyneth Paltrow :-)
Ray,
On the updates sides, Lezyne rolled out bunch of new features for the enhanced super GPS
among which the rotating track for navigation which actually makes it usable !
link to lezyne.com
Also different bike profiles.
Yup, it’s cool stuff. I included it in last week’s Week in Review, since it technically fell the week before.
Ho I have missed that, sorry :)
Also if I may, last week’s one and an other one are not correctly tagged I guess :
link to dcrainmaker.com
instead of link to dcrainmaker.com
cheers!
Now that cyclist have taken it upon themselves to be judge and jury who is watching them when they ride recklessly, fail to obey traffic signals, and generally act like spoiled jerks, etc.
“Goop.” (Guh-oop). Verb. Pronounced with a soft “G.”
Definition – An ancient guttural Latin word for “Selling useless crap at inflated prices and pretending it actually does something quantifiable that it does not, and absolving itself of all liability for people actually buying or using said aforementioned crap.”