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!
Sports Tech Deals of Note:
Here’s a smattering of current sports tech deals. The Apple Watch Series 5 one is probably one of the most solid ones.
⚡ Both myself and my wife have been using these since last fall, after years of using the Beats Studio Buds...man, these things rock. Sure, they're good for sports, but frankly, I use them on planes, editing, and such more than anything else. In fact, I've been listening to them now for 8 hours as I type away on my flight across the ocean. Only briefly putting them in the case to top-up.
⚡The Fenix 8 is now down to $799 for the 42/47mm AMOLED editions, and from $899 for the Solar/MIP editions. This is the first big sale, outside of a short $70 discount back in January by Uncle Amazon.
This is the lowest price to date on this watch, bringing it down to a very strong $499. This unit includes maps and is more or less a plastic Fenix 7 Pro. The FR970 just came out this week, adding ECG functionality and a few other software features...but at $250 more!
This has become one of my favorite drones, given it's tiny size (fits in my running shorts pockets) and ease of use. While there's the new Pro drones, those are nearly 2x the price (and more for Pro-Max), and honestly, the video quality isn't really achieving that price point. Also note the checkbox to get yet an extra free battery (thus 3 batteries in total, based on the way it's currently coded in Amazon).
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 (and in this case, some of these are from the past few weeks to clear out the backlog):
In this case, the study focused heavily on respiratory rate: “Using the training dataset, a model was developed to estimate the probability of SARS-CoV-2 infection based on changes in respiratory rate during night-time sleep.” – That’s notable, because respiratory rate is hardly unique to Whoop. You’ll find it in Garmin, Polar, and other devices. Certainly after the study/golfer tweet I went back and looked at my respiratory rate over the last 5 months out of curiosity. No spikes (which, doesn’t mean anything other than satisfying a curiosity). Also, I’d point out that in this scenario Whoop does a *FAR* better job of making it clear what your baseline respiratory rate is by having the shading seen in that tweet.
2) And, a great COVID19 & Wearables Round-Up: This piece really puts it all together into one cohesive well-written story, points out the pros and cons of the different solutions companies are using for some extra PR.
6) New York City Council *FINALLY* allows e-bikes: Good lord that took a long time. Though, it’s funny, having a top speed of 25MPH seems so fast in comparison to the top speed of 25KPH (15.5MPH) allowed here in the EU (without additional requirements).
7) A Swift Zwift Companion Events Tip: Yup, I’ll add myself to those that never knew this existed. Holy cow. So much faster! Don’t worry, the video is only 87 seconds long.
Sports Tech Device 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 and a few other firmware updates.
Wahoo KICKR 18 & KICKR CORE: This came out two weeks ago but I missed it, but it adds cadence over ANT+ power profile. While cadence was added to ANT+ FE-C and Bluetooth Smart nearly a year ago, if you paired your KICKR as an ANT+ power meter to your watch or such, you didn’t get cadence. Now you do. Go forth and update!
Why do you scroll the articles at the top of the page? Most people who come to your site do so regularly and want to see the latest post. By the time they (me) start to open that post, the page has scrolled to the next post and you have to go back to the newest post. I say, stop the scrolling.
That’s been bugging me for ages as well. It would be less annoying if the smaller photos below the main one were always clickable, because then you could use those to deterministically go to a specific article, but the selected one isn’t clickable!
At any moment, 4 of the 5 mini pics are clickable. The mini pic of the featured post is not clickable. Not a massive issue, but annoying when the featured post changes every few seconds, as the clickability of the icons below is also constantly changing.
I can’t test on macOS this second, but I believe the issue exists on Chrome there as well.
Different thing for me on Chrome in Windows – they’re all clickable, but they disappear if I shrink the window horizontally too much. (I lose the little pictures and the rest of the page, although it does cycle.)
Yeah, I have this exact problem as well. Mac Chrome/Safari. Nothing happens if you click on the mini-pic of the highlighted post. As it cycles through them, each mini-pic can’t be clicked on. When it moves to the next story, then you can click on it.
Here are some screenshots. My cursor is over the “Week in Review” mini-pic and the Apple Watch story is shown. You can see the hyperlink to “Week in Review”.
But when “Week in Review” appears above, the hyperlink goes away.
Hmmm, I’d never noticed this either, but on closer examination, I found that even though the thumbnail with the orange triangle is indeed not clickable…that triangle is indicating that the thumbnail is also promoted to the larger preview window above the thumbnails…and that is definitely clickable there. So the orange triangle thingy is merely showing which thumbnail is in the preview window, where you can click/select it. Otherwise all the other thumbnails are quick links to those posts.
Any thoughts on the Wattbike Atom (next gen)? If I recall you have an Atom X in the pain cave and, from what I can tell, they look like similarly spec’d machines.
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FAQ’s
I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Below are the most popular.
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.
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.
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!
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 2024 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.
Why do you scroll the articles at the top of the page? Most people who come to your site do so regularly and want to see the latest post. By the time they (me) start to open that post, the page has scrolled to the next post and you have to go back to the newest post. I say, stop the scrolling.
That’s been bugging me for ages as well. It would be less annoying if the smaller photos below the main one were always clickable, because then you could use those to deterministically go to a specific article, but the selected one isn’t clickable!
Hmm, that’s odd – what browsers are you on?
Those little pictures below the main picture are clickable for me on Chrome?
I just tried on Chrome + Win10 and Edge + Win10:
At any moment, 4 of the 5 mini pics are clickable. The mini pic of the featured post is not clickable. Not a massive issue, but annoying when the featured post changes every few seconds, as the clickability of the icons below is also constantly changing.
I can’t test on macOS this second, but I believe the issue exists on Chrome there as well.
Same problem on Chrome Mac Version 83.0.4103.106 — the thumbnail with the orange triangle is not clickable.
Safari too. Think the “modern” site has always had that glitch. Far from a big deal though.
Hadn’t noticed that quirk before but I bookmarked the blog not home page so I always go here first:
link to dcrainmaker.com
Different thing for me on Chrome in Windows – they’re all clickable, but they disappear if I shrink the window horizontally too much. (I lose the little pictures and the rest of the page, although it does cycle.)
Yeah, I have this exact problem as well. Mac Chrome/Safari. Nothing happens if you click on the mini-pic of the highlighted post. As it cycles through them, each mini-pic can’t be clicked on. When it moves to the next story, then you can click on it.
Here are some screenshots. My cursor is over the “Week in Review” mini-pic and the Apple Watch story is shown. You can see the hyperlink to “Week in Review”.
But when “Week in Review” appears above, the hyperlink goes away.
Hmmm, I’d never noticed this either, but on closer examination, I found that even though the thumbnail with the orange triangle is indeed not clickable…that triangle is indicating that the thumbnail is also promoted to the larger preview window above the thumbnails…and that is definitely clickable there. So the orange triangle thingy is merely showing which thumbnail is in the preview window, where you can click/select it. Otherwise all the other thumbnails are quick links to those posts.
Ray –
This is now fixed! Thank you!
Bruce
Great, glad to hear!
Any idea when Garmin is going to Launch the Fenix 7?
I am thinking you already have one that you are testing and playing with by now ( :
Hi Ray.
Any thoughts on the Wattbike Atom (next gen)? If I recall you have an Atom X in the pain cave and, from what I can tell, they look like similarly spec’d machines.
Thanks.
Looks like Android Wear might get better
link to anandtech.com