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!
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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.
Did I miss the Garmin Vivoactive 3 review at some point? It has been out for a month so I vthought for sure you would have reviewed it. Did I miss it or is it forthcoming?
Tomorrow morning. It was going to come out Friday, but I ran into some snags with Garmin Pay I’m trying to sort out.
I noticed that the app says that “Garmin Pay is coming soon”. Any idea when it will be rolled out to the public?
Next few weeks by the sound of it.
DC. Have you seen the stickon wearable blood glucose tech? Doesn’t need a blood sample and uses a handheld device that you wave over the stickon to get the data. Have you come across or heard of an integration of that with a smart watch that records the BG levels??
Thanks
Peter, are you talking about the Freestyle Libre? I believe it still uses an under the skin sensor. I haven’t used it but have the Dexcom, which is similar.
ANT does have CGMS protocol, although I don’t know of any devices using it. The Dexcom can be connected to an Apple watch via Bluetooth.
It’s all very expensive, unless your insurance pays for it. Which mine does not.
Actually there are at least two devices I’ve read about that are needleless. One is just in trial phase and uses microwaves to measure blood glucose levels. The other uses a small electric current to do the same.:
link to engadget.com
link to healthtechinsider.com
Thanks for links Robin. I was referencing ones that were on the market, but these look interesting too.
Personally, I don’t care about a needle or sensor (but I can empathize with people that do). I just want it to be accurate and cheap :)
I could see a Bluetooth CGMS patch being useful in the broader sports community, not just diabetics. Maybe help prevent bonking??
Diabetics needs for accuracy and willingness to pay for it is much higher (ok, they have no choice) then sports community needs. (ok, accuracy may not be the best term, but athletes don’t need perfect devices as their life isn’t depending on it so bugs while annoying aren’t so bad) link to ww2.kqed.org
<a href=“https://forums.garmin.com/forum/into-sports/cycling/edge-1030-aa/1261690-firmware-version-3-40-now-available-incremental-rollout”
Edge 1030 firmware 3.40 is getting some sort of incremental rollout. If the update doesn’t show up on your 1030, check via Garmin Express.
Edge 1030 firmware 3.40 incremental rollout
Interesting about the ski power meter. I am pretty sure it’s supposed to be for nordic skiing, not alpine. Other options in this space are proskida (poles only) and skiiot (not a power meter, but seemingly provides some data that would be interesting like hard data on which of your pairs of skis are actually sliding faster on which parts of the course). Neither is available to consumers yet, as far as I can tell.
It would be interesting to see if anyone can actually come up with something usable, since both arms and both legs generate power independently depending on what ski technique you are using.
It’s definitely supposed to be for nordic skiing. I’d forgotten about proskida, but I know a guy who wrote his undergrad thesis about building a similar thing (link to schevalier.com).
It doesn’t seem like it’s much more complicated than combining a pole power meter with a stryde/skiiot type thing. I’d love to see it come to market, but I’m not sure how it’s patent-able as that seems like the only obvious way you’d calculate skiing power.
Ultimately, I’m not actually sure of the utility. I know people said that about bike power meters, but I can’t see myself using this thing in anything other than a loppet or a tempo training ski, and I’d rather use HR to measure physiological exertion instead. I guess it’d be good for interval work, and it’d be invaluable for any coaching.
This will definitely start with nordic, since that’s where the national Olympic committees will spend their money, but it will also get used for ski mountaineering races, I am sure. I think you could gather raw data from ski poles and bindings with the proper use of strain gauges, but turning that raw data into valid power data will be the trick. I wonder if measuring power is too broad of a patent, or if they have to define a method in order to make the patent stick…
Still waiting on the pomocup:
http://www.pomocup.com
After it didn’t get Kickstarter funding almost 2 years ago..
Even just the force data itself could be useful, though. For me currently, my main sports are nordic skiing in the winter and cycling in the summer. My left/right power balance cycling is way out (like 55-60% right, typically) and I’ve never been injured in any way. I suspect that’s due to my skiing (historically my main sport growing up) where I think I use my right side a lot more during the different asymmetrical techniques. Like 2/3rds of the time kicking with my right leg during single kick double poling, or 2/3rds of the time leading with my right when doing offset/V1 skating. Having hard data to back this up, and/or metrics to try to improve on equalizing things out, even if it wasn’t strictly translated to “power”, might be useful.
I’m rather late to the party, but thought I’d weigh in in case you guys are still following this thread.
Power in nordic skiing would be an awesome number to get as it would help remove a number of variables. However, as Paul mentions, it’s getting all that data into a valid/accurate power number is the hard part. Skiing is so much more complicated than cycling, in a variety of ways.
I think there is a big opportunity in nordic skiing around instrumented gear (full disclosure – I’m one of those behind Proskida)/instrumented self to help people improve efficiency. Force, cycle rate, angles (of gear, bodyparts, pompoms, you name it) and how they relate to terrain, fatigue, speed, etc all can be of value to a skier. The key will be how to present the data in a format that is usable rather than overwhelming.
Clamour, Clamour for a new podcast!!!!
I rode the Stelvio this summer and unfortunately there were many, many convoys of powerful motorbikes. Somewhat tarnished what is a truly beautiful climb.
Hey Ray! Any news on the DC Rainmaker podcast? RIP?
Modified wifi access points that can indeed measure your heart beat:
link to youtube.com
Appears as if they were investigating the little “jitters” in the breathing wave forms and noticed that they correlated to the heart beat.
Hagen
Will you try the dynamic home point feature for the Mavic and Spark that was added in the last update for DJI GO? It seems like that might be useful for sports tracking purposes. I see the Mavic also gets the quickshot mode of the Spark now.
I have a Mavic and found your reviews really useful when deciding to buy it.
In the interest of users always having access to the activities they record any chance Garmin will allow bulk export of activities from the connect web site? You can do one at a time but that is very slow