Looking for the best sports tech deals for the holidays? Then check out the massive list of everything, from $150 off the Garmin Fenix 6, plus big deals on Apple, GoPro, Suunto, Polar, Samsung, Withings, and many more! Updated constantly!
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:
Ok, not much left this week. Sorta a lull. But hey, if ya need a GoPro Hero 8 Black, it’s still on sale!
We've got a couple of these, both at home, and the office, and mostly just use it to play music for the kids. I don't have a specific need to pickup another one this year, but it's kinda incredible what kind of technology they can pack into that price.
⚡⚡ This is the lowest price AirPods have ever been - this is solid! I use AirPods primarily when I'm travelling just to listen in airports, planes, etc... I don't tend to use these for workouts due to them falling out. Also, with the wireless charging case for $50 off. Personally, I just use the basic model.
⚡ These are my daily driver headphones that I use for all my trainer rides, and anything else sport related. While they're not perfect (namely the charging case), it's what I keep going back to every day because of the seamless Apple ecosystem integration (iPad/Apple TV/iOS/Mac).
⚡ This is a very solid price for the DJI OSMO Action, and it's a very strong first contender from DJI to compete with the Hero 7 Black (realistically, except for the dual-screen, it simply doesn't compete with the Hero 8 or Hero 9). I really like a lot of elements on the OSMO Action, but especially the dual-screen. Check out my full review for comparative thoughts. While I would have said that maybe we'd see a new OSMO Action sometime this past spring (an annual refresh cycling), I'm pretty sure COVID19 has killed any chance of that happening for a while.
⚡ This is a pretty solid deal for this unit, especially since it's getting a number of the recently announced 1030 Plus features later this year. Note: This price keeps floating up/down hourly.
⚡ Sure, it's not the latest edition, but the FR935 is the staple of many triathletes and runners, and it still an incredible solid watch. We saw this a bit lower last month on Amazon Prime Day ($239). Also, I say $100-$200 off, because the 'base' price fluctuates a bit these days. Sometimes retail is $399 sometimes $499.
⚡⚡ This deal is back! This is a great deal that showed up last spring, and it also includes the newly launched Fenix 6/6S Solar units from this past summer
Both the Forerunner 245 Music is sale for $50 off. While not a huge sale, it's actually the lowest we've seen either product priced to date. The FR245 Music supports Spotify, Amazon Music, and other streaming platforms.
If you're looking for a runners focused watch, there's no better deal on the market than this. Period. The FR45 basically packs all the features of the previous generation FR235...just now in the FR45 series. Seriously, this is a solid deal.
This isn't a bad price per se, but for $20 more you'll get so much more watch out of the FR935 deal. However, that doesn't include music, whereas this FR645 Music Deal Does. Also, the 51% off is per list, but realistically we're talking about $70 off normal prices.
If you're looking for a solid budget GPS running watch, it's hard to go wrong here. Sure, it's a few years old now, but it'll track your race just fine and upload to Garmin Connect and all the other Strava-like sites as well.
⚡ Sure, the new Solar variants came out this summer with a few new features, but at their core the Instincts are mostly the same. Still, $149 is the lowest price the Instinct has ever been at.
This bundle includes both the dual ANT+/BLE Speed & Cadence sensors (V2), and is notable because the speed sensor not only transmits like any other, but also records your rides even when you don't have a bike computer/watch paired to it - making it perfect for commuter bikes. Both sensors are fully compatible with basically every app/watch/bike computer out there.
This is Garmin's latest ANT+/Bluetooth Smart speed sensor, but notably, it's also one that can record your rides without being connected to a bike computer, making it perfect for tracking mileage on a commuter bike. I'm super tempted to pickup a few of these and outfit all our commuter/cargo bikes for 2021 to see what the mileage/breakdown by trip/etc looks like at the end of the year. Yes, I'm a geek.
This is only the 2nd time we've seen the Garmin Swim 2 on sale. And as part of my in-depth review I found it easily the most accurate openwater swim watch GPS-wise I've ever tested. Which, is good, since most pools seem to be closed these days. :-/
⚡ Obviously this is the previous edition, but dang, it's still a good price for a great little GPS watch. This has mostly been on sale at this price range for a while now, however, I've included it in the list merely because if you're looking for a deal then this is probably one of the best deals out there.
This is Garmin's current offering to compete with the Apple Watch series (alongside the Garmin Venu), and this is a good price, though, not as low as we saw for Amazon Prime Day at $199.
⚡ This is a great deal on this unit which can send messages back and forth when there's no cellular service. It also connects to the Garmin Edge devices plus the Forerunner & Fenix devices for sending urgent messages sans-cell signals
⚡ The Hero 8 is still a great camera, so if you don't need the extra bits of the newer Hero 9, this saves you a $100 in comparison. Plus, this includes an extra battery, shorty stick/tripod, head mount, and 32GB MicroSD Card. Note: Price seems to fluctuate a bit between $279 and $299.
⚡ This is actually the first time we've seen the Hero 9 on sale. Note that if you're a GoPro Plus Subscriber, then it's a bit cheaper at $349 from GoPro directly, but otherwise, it's $449.
The entire lineup of Insta360 One R action cams are 15% off, including the 1" and 360 variants. Overall it's a good cam with good picture clarity (I've mainly used the 1" 5.3K variant), but I find the software really lets it down.
This is my main tripod I use day in and day out, and during all my travelling. It's probably got 500,000-800,000 miles of travel on it, and it still looks like new - despite the fact that I treat it like crap. It's out in the salt spray waves often, in the mud and rain, etc... It just rocks. I just bought another one to have one permanently setup in the studio (+ one for traveling).
We have more Nest cam's than I can count. No really, we have half a dozen at the DCR Cave alone, plus more at home. We love them. Nest Cam's really only go on sale about once per year.
This is my main shooting cameras for video (they make great stills too, but I mainly got this for video), and I've bought two of them. $700 off is an awesome deal. In my case I got the kit. And in case it's even more of an endorsement, both GPLAMA & DesFit also use this camera too!
⚡ I love this little sensor, and you'll see it in almost every one of my watch/HR sensor reviews as a comparison/reference strap. It's just so darn accurate and so easy to use. Every optical HR sensor (and app with it) should aspire to be what this thing is.
Samsung Galaxy Buds True Wireless Earbuds - 39% off
This is the high speed drive I use to store the footage I'm actively video editing, so that I can edit it on both my iMac at the office, and then my MacBook when travelling or at home.
I use this card in both 128GB and 256GB variety, and it's perfect for all my drones and action cams, easily recording 4K/60 and 5K/30, as well as 5.7K without trouble. I often pickup these cards when on sale like this, so I have them for later in the year when not on sale.
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):
1) GCN announces annual Race Pass, live race coverage: I think this is pretty substantial, and finally something I might actually pay for (if the TdF ends up happening). My challenge has always been that I mostly want to watch an English feed of a race, yet reside in non-English speaking countries (France and now Netherlands). So this is potentially perfect for me. I’m hoping they get out an Apple TV app quickly, since I find AirPlay a bit cumbersome for watching something like sports long-term in the background. Also not super clear to me is what happens if I travel (to other countries), do I lose any access? Is it based on country of credit card used, or current locale of my phone? Of course, travel isn’t really an issue right now…
2) Zwift to do Super League Triathlon Live In-Person Event in August: This could be pretty interesting. Basically the swim occurs in an Olympic swimming pool, then the bike on trainers, and run on a treadmill. They’ve got some pretty big names signed up. It’s happening in Rotterdam, so perhaps I’ll jump on a quick train ride and check it out. We’ll see, depending on if the situation remains the same here in the Netherlands or not. (via Eric Min Twitter)
3) Huge list of US bike businesses who received PPP loans: Obviously, this isn’t every business – but, it is interesting insights into things. Sports tech companies included Saris, Lezyne, Niterider, and Specialized. Keep in mind that the point of these loans is to keep people employed. So while some aspects of a company like Saris would be booming (trainers), other aspects wouldn’t be (their bike rack business).
4) Skydio gets $100M in new funding round: Holy balls, that’s a lot. Obviously, expansion of their enterprise space is driving quite a bit of that. But it’s good to see them explicitly noting that they have no plans to leave the consumer space, and in fact expand production there.
6) How Paris is shifting the cycling landscape: It was cool seeing this when we lived in Paris, but even our own street we lived on looks dramatically different now than it did the day we left. Despite having been one of the two main river streets that pulsed with traffic day and night, it’s now got bidirectional bike lanes and more. Oh, and way less vehicle lanes.
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.
Stages Bike (SB20) Firmware Update: This adds back dual Bluetooth connectivity (ideal for monitoring shifting). This was technically the week prior, but I missed it.
There’s another update (version 2.4.0) for the Stages Dash M50/L50 headunits. Major new feature: “Add graphs to data pages for five key metrics: power, heart rate, speed, elevation, and cadence.”
Such a missed opportunity by Eurosport Player. I love the Kirkby/Kelly commentary, but cannot access it when travelling. Despite subscribing in the UK. I am sure they could sort the issue if its technical, Or sort themselves out if it is procedural.
In Australia – no Eurosport Player access. Eurosport have onsold access to an obscure pay TV coy called Fetch. And you need to purchase a Fetch box for $449 AUD to access it. Previously it was on Foxtel, the biggest pay TV provider in Australia but they decided not to renew with Eurosport. Very disappointing and a lot of people not happy. Would sign up for the Player in a heartbeat.
I don’t understand why Garmin can’t produce a change log page for each device that tells what the current firmware is and the history of changes. Most other companies (including Wahoo in the cycling device space) seem to have figured that out.
Yeah, they have a page for each product, but god help you finding that page from a centralized resource. Impossible.
And atop that, I don’t really understand why they make it so difficult to quickly determine the current/latest version. For example, each one of those pages linked to above can be variable, sometimes they’ll show more current updates, and sometimes it’s just a snapshot in time for a given product’s firmware version (e.g. 8.60). I don’t understand the pattern of why some pages are dynamic and others totally static snapshots in time.
I’d say that the general gist of what Suunto has is easiest to jump off to firmware update pages: link to suunto.com
Though, I wish they just put a little date/FW version below each header image. Would save me/anyone a click.
Agreed getting the information isn’t very smooth. Using the update summary’s navigation breadcrumbs to back out a level takes the user from the land of science into the land of marketing.
Within GC web you can create a Dashboard with a “Device” widget for each of your registered devices. The widget will paint an “Update Available” icon if there is an unapplied firmware update for the device. A little less cluttered than Garmin Express which includes all the TrueUp chatter in the device update counts.
Hmmm…in the US, GCN says ’24 live events plus highlights of the three grand tours’. Highlights, not live grand tours. I’m sure that this is due to existing agreements for the tours in the US, but certainly makes this far less compelling for me.
Agreed that it’s not as good as it could be but for $20 you get a bunch of live races that we wouldn’t otherwise get or could only get from cobbling together different services.
Yeah, it’s really too bad the grand tours aren’t available in the US here. Which, sorta gets to my question of whether the toggle is via billing address or physical locale.
Regarding bike racks – just like everything else bike related out there, they’re sold out. My wife has been bugging me to get a 5 bike rack for our mini-van, and I can’t find one in stock anywhere. So I think bike racks have been selling just fine during COVID.
Yeah, Saris actually does two core types of bike racks:
A) Racks for cars
B) Bike parking racks for businesses (and as far as I understand, most of their biz is in the US right now)
It’s that second lot, primarily in the US, that I imagine is challenging right now. And actually, that second half is more of so-called ‘Bike Infrastructure’ that is both business and government/city focused: link to sarisinfrastructure.com
Re: race pass. They’ve confirmed (in Twitter comments) that the pass works moving regions. You’ll just have access to whatever that region has access to, so the occasional event not available to some regions, most likely RCS events)
Given they are a discovery / Eurosport company, you’ll have the same as the player would show, just with the addition of pre and post race analysis sometimes, and no ad breaks.
This has clearly been the plan for Eurosport / GCN for some time, and its great to see it come to life.
Easily worth the $20 or so.
Regarding the PPP loans, I suspect that even bike racks are selling well right now. My N=1 is that I was recently in a bike store and the only kuat rack in my mid-size city was at that bike store – sold out everywhere else.
Hey there! I am in the market for a bike computer and thinking about sticking with the Wahoo brand for it. I am mostly leaning towards the Bolt rather than the Roam (based on your awesome reviews, thanks!).
I wanted to know if you thought that the Bolt was too old at this point, and if I should wait to see if Wahoo has any newer options coming out in the Bolt price point, or if there are updates to the Roam that would make it more worth it?
I am not in a rush to purchase something, as my phone has been working okay for my recent rides. But I am looking forward to having a dedicated bike computer.
..maybe the hackers are also sportsmen.
They had enough of crappy Connect and for years they collected suggestions and complaints from the Garmin forum and the time has come to implement those…
GCN app and Race Pass (iOS in the UK) is very buggy and poor at the moment. Eurosport much better option at the moment, and Eurosport is pretty terrible itself.
Yeah, internet broadcasting with numerous players is hard. I suspect it’s going to take a bit before things stabilize. Which, honestly, is fine – no better time than now to figure it out…
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There’s another update (version 2.4.0) for the Stages Dash M50/L50 headunits. Major new feature: “Add graphs to data pages for five key metrics: power, heart rate, speed, elevation, and cadence.”
Such a missed opportunity by Eurosport Player. I love the Kirkby/Kelly commentary, but cannot access it when travelling. Despite subscribing in the UK. I am sure they could sort the issue if its technical, Or sort themselves out if it is procedural.
Strange. I was able to use the Eurosport player for English cycling commentary during 2019 in the UK and Sweden.
In Australia – no Eurosport Player access. Eurosport have onsold access to an obscure pay TV coy called Fetch. And you need to purchase a Fetch box for $449 AUD to access it. Previously it was on Foxtel, the biggest pay TV provider in Australia but they decided not to renew with Eurosport. Very disappointing and a lot of people not happy. Would sign up for the Player in a heartbeat.
Garry, if you use Optus Broadband in Oz you can get Eurosport for $8.99 per month.
I don’t understand why Garmin can’t produce a change log page for each device that tells what the current firmware is and the history of changes. Most other companies (including Wahoo in the cycling device space) seem to have figured that out.
Doing an internet search for “Garmin DEVICENAME updates” returns results for many current devices.
EX;
link to www8.garmin.com
Yeah, they have a page for each product, but god help you finding that page from a centralized resource. Impossible.
And atop that, I don’t really understand why they make it so difficult to quickly determine the current/latest version. For example, each one of those pages linked to above can be variable, sometimes they’ll show more current updates, and sometimes it’s just a snapshot in time for a given product’s firmware version (e.g. 8.60). I don’t understand the pattern of why some pages are dynamic and others totally static snapshots in time.
I’d say that the general gist of what Suunto has is easiest to jump off to firmware update pages: link to suunto.com
Though, I wish they just put a little date/FW version below each header image. Would save me/anyone a click.
Agreed getting the information isn’t very smooth. Using the update summary’s navigation breadcrumbs to back out a level takes the user from the land of science into the land of marketing.
Within GC web you can create a Dashboard with a “Device” widget for each of your registered devices. The widget will paint an “Update Available” icon if there is an unapplied firmware update for the device. A little less cluttered than Garmin Express which includes all the TrueUp chatter in the device update counts.
Hmmm…in the US, GCN says ’24 live events plus highlights of the three grand tours’. Highlights, not live grand tours. I’m sure that this is due to existing agreements for the tours in the US, but certainly makes this far less compelling for me.
Agreed that it’s not as good as it could be but for $20 you get a bunch of live races that we wouldn’t otherwise get or could only get from cobbling together different services.
Yeah, it’s really too bad the grand tours aren’t available in the US here. Which, sorta gets to my question of whether the toggle is via billing address or physical locale.
Also for Deals, DJI Osmo Action for $249 (Amazon) showed up in my feed.
Regarding bike racks – just like everything else bike related out there, they’re sold out. My wife has been bugging me to get a 5 bike rack for our mini-van, and I can’t find one in stock anywhere. So I think bike racks have been selling just fine during COVID.
Yeah, Saris actually does two core types of bike racks:
A) Racks for cars
B) Bike parking racks for businesses (and as far as I understand, most of their biz is in the US right now)
It’s that second lot, primarily in the US, that I imagine is challenging right now. And actually, that second half is more of so-called ‘Bike Infrastructure’ that is both business and government/city focused: link to sarisinfrastructure.com
Re: race pass. They’ve confirmed (in Twitter comments) that the pass works moving regions. You’ll just have access to whatever that region has access to, so the occasional event not available to some regions, most likely RCS events)
Given they are a discovery / Eurosport company, you’ll have the same as the player would show, just with the addition of pre and post race analysis sometimes, and no ad breaks.
This has clearly been the plan for Eurosport / GCN for some time, and its great to see it come to life.
Easily worth the $20 or so.
Ahh – cool, I think that’ll mostly work out for me. Good deal!
Unfortunately gpsinformation.net is down for a week or so now :/ Starting to fear it’s not coming back.
Yup, been talking to them. Optimistic we’ll see it come back. Hope so!
Hi there,
the link to gpsinformation.net is not working any more
same for gawisp.com, seems both are dead and you will be redirected to:
link to p3nlhclust404.shr.prod.phx3.secureserver.net
today the site is back!
Amsterdam – Rotterdam is just 75 km by bike. Just saying..
Wahoo ELEMNT/BOLT/ROAM Stability enhancements – well, on my Bolt it crushed Live Tracking and iPhone-Bolt connectivity. Again. Bleh.
Hammerhead finally released the first part of their interface overhaul to the public this week.
Regarding the PPP loans, I suspect that even bike racks are selling well right now. My N=1 is that I was recently in a bike store and the only kuat rack in my mid-size city was at that bike store – sold out everywhere else.
Hey there! I am in the market for a bike computer and thinking about sticking with the Wahoo brand for it. I am mostly leaning towards the Bolt rather than the Roam (based on your awesome reviews, thanks!).
I wanted to know if you thought that the Bolt was too old at this point, and if I should wait to see if Wahoo has any newer options coming out in the Bolt price point, or if there are updates to the Roam that would make it more worth it?
I am not in a rush to purchase something, as my phone has been working okay for my recent rides. But I am looking forward to having a dedicated bike computer.
..maybe the hackers are also sportsmen.
They had enough of crappy Connect and for years they collected suggestions and complaints from the Garmin forum and the time has come to implement those…
GCN app and Race Pass (iOS in the UK) is very buggy and poor at the moment. Eurosport much better option at the moment, and Eurosport is pretty terrible itself.
Yeah, internet broadcasting with numerous players is hard. I suspect it’s going to take a bit before things stabilize. Which, honestly, is fine – no better time than now to figure it out…