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…
I swim, bike and run. Then, I come here and write about my adventures. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time. If you’re new around these parts, here’s the long version of my story.
You'll support the site, and get ad-free DCR! Plus, you'll be more awesome. Click above for all the details. Oh, and you can sign-up for the newsletter here!
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.Want to compare the features of each product, down to the nitty-gritty? No problem, the product comparison data is constantly updated with new products and new features added to old products!
Wanna create comparison chart graphs just like I do for GPS, heart rate, power meters and more? No problem, here's the platform I use - you can too!
Think my written reviews are deep? You should check out my videos. I take things to a whole new level of interactive depth!
Smart Trainers Buyers Guide: Looking at a smart trainer this winter? I cover all the units to buy (and avoid) for indoor training. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
-
Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
Get all your awesome DC Rainmaker gear here!
FAQ’s
I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Below are the most popular.
- Do you have a privacy policy posted?
- Why haven’t you yet released a review for XYZ product you mentioned months ago?
- Will you test our product before release?
- Are you willing to review or test beta products?
- Which trainer should I buy?
- Which GPS watch should I buy?
- I’m headed to Paris – what do you recommend for training or sightseeing?
- I’m headed to Washington DC – what do you recommend for training?
- I’m from out of the country and will be visiting the US, what’s the best triathlon shop in city XYZ?
- What kind of camera do you use?
-
5 Easy Steps To The Site
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
also worth mentioning (although maybe not for the people this post is aimed at) that the beta software versions are usually relatively stable and can sometimes include new cool features months ahead of the official production software.
But I haven’t been able to find a link to beta firmware for the 7 series..
Yeah, I don’t believe any public beta releases have been made for the Fenix 7 series yet.
I actually had a whole section I yanked out at the last second about how I’d love to see a public beta enrollment feature, akin to what Apple does for their developers, or such – so that people didn’t have to deal with sideloading firmware on Garmin beta’s. But, figured that was muddying the waters on something that was supposed to be simple.
Cool – for a second, thought I had missed a beat…
I don’t know. It’s easy enough to find the beta for a specific device just by going to the appropriate forum at forums.garmin.com. It’ll be right at the top if there is one. Even on a Mac, where you need to use the Android File Transfer app for newer devices, the procedure to install a beta isn’t that difficult. If you can’t do it, you probably shouldn’t be fooling with betas anyway. I usually don’t install them, but every now and then some bug gets fixed that’s been affecting me or some new feature is included that sounds promising and I go through the trouble to install the beta rather than just waiting for the full release.
While I would appreciate an easy way to enroll in betas and get those automatically updated (would probably flip me back to participating), I wonder whether not providing that option is Garmin’s way of applying at least one filter for basic tech literacy (those who can figure out how to sideload)
It looks like the beta for the F7 and Epix is just getting started. The early release for FW 7.35 and beta program announcement got posted in the Garmin Forums late this afternoon.
Actually, they just released one: https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor-recreation/outdoor-recreation/f/epix-2/288057/epix-2—software-version-7-35—public-release-candidate
It supposedly fixes music quality problems experienced by some.
Edit: odd, I replied to you Ray. Not sure why my reply is inserted higher up.
No doubt, I very much appreciate that Garmin does the betas as public now. I think it’s good for everyone. It’s good for consumers to get their word in (and, the beta teams have overwhelmingly demonstrated that they do actually listen). And inversely, it’s good for Garmin to generally work out most of the kinks. We’ve seen *MASSIVE* improvements in production software quality from Garmin over the last 3 years since they really ramped up the beat programs (Instinct 2 production release not withstanding).
That said, one of the challenges of the beta software is that Garmin sometimes iterates it very quickly. And then there’s a large slate of people that aren’t on the most current one, using older firmware (potentially for months). That’s why I think having some sort of enrollment program that makes it easy to knowingly enroll, reminders that you’re on beta software, and easy to send logs if something goes wrong.
Mind you, Garmin has been doing the bulk of this internally now for about 4-6 months, and it’s fantastically simple (especially the logging bits that get automatically transferred over). Obviously, I get it’s harder to shift that out to the ‘real world’, but I think there are huge benefits for Garmin, in doing so. This is virtually identical to how Wahoo handles their internal betas. Things get pushed, it’s clearly stated as a beta in the title of the firmware, and every log/ride/etc automatically gets transferred. They know of crashes within minutes of it happening on my device, and they get all the details about what I was doing at the time of a crash (e.g. courses, sensor pairings, structured workouts, etc…).
Of course, this is all maturity stuff. We’ve seen Garmin increase their software development maturity over the past few years, and this is merely one step of it.
Well, the 7.35 post did mention upcoming improvements to the beta system so hopefully we’ll see some this soon
Forcing updates at initial connection (or at the very least identifying and recommending them) not only improves the customer experience, it also reduces support requests later on, avoiding users raising bugs that have already been fixed. No wonder most connected device suppliers do it. The need is always there, since software is bound to have changed since the device was manufactured.
Yup!
The fact that I’ve got hundreds of questions/comments on it alone since launch, is probably a pretty good indicator that Garmin has boatloads more support cases on it, or simply just confused/frustrated customers.
If only you could get the damn F7 or Epix. Out of stock with Garmin uk/Ire 2 weeks ago and not due back in for 2 months!
It depends on what you want. Finding Sapphire units is trickier, though, it took me only a few seconds to find a 7S Sapphire Solar that I ordered yesterday, and arrives today. Base units are pretty easily available across the main Amazon EU sites, as well as major EU retailers.
Epix Sapphire is probably the toughest one to find, at least Epix Sapphire White Titanium.
You are right, the EPIX Sapphire White Titanium was hard to find, but I got mine “instantly” from Garmin UK. Go figure why!
Does Garmin fulfill orders at suppliers before their own?
I ordered a Sapphire Epix 3 weeks ago from Garmin direct, in the US, and they are currently quoting another 8 weeks before it ships.
I get a partner company discount with Garmin, so happy to be patient to wait for it, like similar previous popular releases.
Just curious why their own store is generally longer delayed than other sources.
Historically speaking, Garmin has largely fulfilled retailer/distributor orders ahead of Garmin.com orders. Or, at least heavily skewed inventory that way – in an effort to keep retailers happy. This is true whether using a company discount or not. All the same.
In DE it’s the black sapphire version that’s hardest to come by – white ones were available for some time, but I wasn’t able to order a black one after launch.
The one I ordered on launch day is now due in May…
Bit off topic, but any idea on the non event Garmin announcement today?
No idea. The tweet was the first I’d heard of anything and didn’t hear anything from the PR or product teams ahead of it (or since). Seemed like just some random commercials or new branding effort or something.
I think the information’about updates of software is very important but what about the program: Garmin Webupdater ?
Isn’t it more easy? You even can reinstall software ?
Is that still around? It got superseded by Garmin Express a long time ago.
I still have it on my laptop for old times’ sake, can’t remember the last time I actually used it!
Oh, I love Garmin Webupdater and use it constantly. That said, I figured for this case, the main one was useful in case wanted folks to update maps and such too.
A
B?
You, guys, are lucky. At least you have updates, not like the forerruner 945LTE owners. What a joke of support for this watch :( Maybe is time to test Coros seriously
While the last update was a few months ago now on the FR945 LTE, that’s largely because another one is cooking in the background. As noted in the Fenix 7 post, it’s Garmin’s intention to bring a number of the Fenix 7 features to the FR945 LTE in the Q2/Q3 timeframe, including Stamina and Phone-based configuration of data fields/etc… I also don’t expect that to be the last update or such either.
I know, I know, but the wait is eternal. There is many bugs to fix, battery related in particular. If Garmin update the FR954LTE with stamina or another tricky software it’s ok, I don’t care about it, but battery management and strange drains must be corrected urgently :(
Thank you, Ray.
Hey Ray,
Slightly off-topic, I recall you reviewed (and perhaps linked) that desk stand you’re using. Do you perhaps have the links for that?
Edit: found it here – link to dcrainmaker.com
Is there a quick way to tell what is the latest version of the software for a given unit?
I random seen notifications that my software was updated, but don’t know what is the latest always. I usually do a search for “garmin forums” and find my way from there.
Also, I had a 245M from a different region which was 2-3 iterations of the software behind the other version.
No quick way that I’m aware of, sadly. I just do the same – usually look at the top of the forum, and then if that fails (rarely these days, but occasionally), I’ll do a quick Google check for it – e.g. “Garmin Fenix 7 Firmware Update” – which almost always takes one to the release notes pages, which usually shows the latest version (also, emphasis on usually).
I’ve been told this site is the place to go to see the most recent updates.
link to gpsinformation.net
Please subscribe me. Great Job
Sure wish the F7 had the option to turn off widget glances… frustrating!
I’d like to – ordered my Epix sapphire on Jan 18 – dealer informed me yesterday “May (maybe)”.
Other sellers (in Germany) the same – no black sapphire model available since launch…
Hi Ray –
Wondering if others are experiencing my same issue… I am unable to setup Watch faces from Garmin Connect
For my Epix 2. I reached out to Garmin support but they were no help other than telling me they were aware of the issue. I purchased mine at launch and the software is up to date. All other features appear to be working fine.
Hmm, that’s odd. That is definitely a sign that the unit is out of date (I assume when are you saying “Up to date”, that it definitely shows 7.24 or higher)?
The way GC/GCM works with units, is the Connecft IQ App needs to have the proper information about your watch/version. So if for some reason that’s worked up, the watch faces might not be coming through.
You might consider deleting the watch from Garmin Connect Mobile (after a sync), and then re-adding it. That might flush through things.
Just noticed, that the running power widget, though available and showing data, it doesn’t show up in Garmin Connect. Does Garmin not write data anymore into the .fit file?
Hi
Is anyone having issues connecting to sensors from a Fenix 7. Extended display mode won’t work on my Edge 1030+ or old 520 and certain sensors will not connect like my 4iii power meter. They did connect to my F6 and connect to the Edge. Frustrating😡
Let me know.
Which firmware version?
Hi
Version 7.35
Thanks
I am curious about the Solar component. 2 things particularly.
1. Why only meaasure up to 50k lux (even though it charges and absorbs more, lets say strong sun=100k lux)
2. Why not show a cool feature such as % battery earned, today/last week/last month
That would add so much to that little widget. Not that it really matters that much, but stats are what Garmin users are all about.
Has this been something that Garmin has discussed with you Ray? Thanks, as always!
It actually does show lux above 50K on the Fenix series, but the little sun icon fills up once at 50K. Because that aligns to their spec claims (50K). So you do get credit, both in terms of raw power as well as what’s shown in the solar widget, above that (just not the icon, but the text shows it).
But I agree, having a “Here’s how many days you added today” on the widget would be awesome. I know it’s been brought up before.
I can also imagine another reason, is Garmin test fixtures may put a given release on the device either for testing, or at the end of testing. And it’s extra effort to maintain that version, so they may just assume that end user will update on receipt.
It is odd that they don’t prod user to check for updates during setup.
You are such a rockstar thank you! I could not find this anywhere else.