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:
We’ve got a handful of new deals this week, a pile from Garmin in the cycling realm, and then a pile from DJI in the everything realm. Garmin does often put cycling gear on sale this time of year, albeit it’s far more rare for DJI to do the same this time of year.
| Product | Sale Price | Amazon | Sale Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | AmazFit T-Rex 3 - $40 off | $240 | Amazon | |
 | Amazon Echo Dot Kids - 42% off | $34 | Amazon | Despite being a tech-focused dude, our kids don't actually get much tech in their lives. However, we got these two years ago for them in their rooms, to play music. They do lots of other things, but our kids mostly just use it to play music (from Spotify and Apple Music too), and occasionally they ask it questions. It has all the parental controls I want, so it locks it down from bedtime/etc...For $34? Solid deal (The coolest 'nice touch' feature is that if you whisper to it, it'll whisper back...in the owl kids voice it has.) |
 | Apple 11" iPad - (Wi-Fi, 128GB) - $70 off! | $279 | Amazon | ⚡ This is an awesome deal. I use my iPad primarily for TrainerRoad as well as Zwift when not with a larger display. I also occasionally use it for other apps, namely Indievelo, Kinomap, Rouvy, and Peloton. But I pretty much test every smart trainer app on it. For all these cycling apps, the graphics capabilities is really pretty irrelevant, so having the absolute top-end/latest model won't make any difference. I prefer the budget options. |
 | Apple AirPods 4 - $60 off! | $119 | Amazon | |
 | Apple Watch SE (2022/2nd gen) - $100 off $249/$299 (cellular) | $169 | Amazon | It's really hard to beat $169 for an Apple Watch. Again, like the other Apple units on this list, the SE3 was announce last month - which adds an Always-on Display, among other features. But at $169 with otherwise all the same software features as the higher-end Apple Watch units, this continues to be one of the best deals in smartwatches out there. |
 | Apple Watch Series 10 - $120 off $399/$499 (cellular) | $279 | Amazon | With the Series 11 out last month, you'll see sales on the Series 10. That said, there isn't a huge difference between Series 11 and Series 10. So if you were looking at the Apple Watch SE3, this might be worth grabbing instead for the added features. |
 | Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium - $150 off | $649 | Amazon | With the new Apple Watch Ultra 3 announced last month, it's time to clear some Ultra 2 inventory. This is pretty much the 'normal' sale price for the Ultra 2. |
 | DJI Mini 4K Drone - $60 off | $239 | Amazon | If you're looking to get into flying with a DJI drone, this is a solid place to start. Of course, moreso than that, the days are very limited for how much longer you can actually buy at DJI drone in the US. So, grab them while you can. |
 | DJI NEO - $30 off! | $159 | Amazon | This is the lowest price on this drone, and is a great option if you want a follow-me drone that's pretty hard to kill, at a price point that's still super reasonable. |
 | DJI OSMO 360 - $137 off | $412 | Amazon | NOTE: This is not sold by DJI directly via Amazon. DJI itself is NOT selling the OSMO 360 in the US, and WILL NOT support/repair it in the US. That said, it's a solid deal if you're ok with those risks. |
 | Garmin Edge 540 - $73 off | $267 | Amazon | ⚡At $267, it's pretty much impossible to beat this deal in terms of bike computers. There's no competitive option that beats it on features/battery/etc at this price, or frankly anywhere near it. Sure, it doesn't have a touchscreen, but it's not as bad as it used to be (I did a stint on it this winter for a week or so, and was fine). |
 | Garmin Epix Pro - $250 off! $899/$999 | $499 | Amazon | ⚡ This is avery solid deal! The Epix Pro has the latest optical HR sensor in it, and thus has full ECG support as well. Note, this is for a 'renewed' model. In Garmin lingo, it means it went back to the (same) factory in Taiwan, and went back to the assembly line and is effectively a new watch again. I wouldn't have any concerned with a renewed model, but some might. |
 | Garmin Varia Radar (RTL515) - $50 off | $149 | Amazon | This is Garmin's standalone radar+taillight option, and $149 is pretty much the standard sale-price. Even despite all the new radars out there, this remains the most accurate option on the market. Now, only if Garmin would just re-release it with USB-C. C'Mon Garmin... |
 | Garmin Venu X1 - $100 off! | $699 | Amazon | This is the first time we've seen the Venu X1 on sale, since it came out this past summer. This is a good deal, though, I do wonder if it indicates the original pricing wasn't quite right here. |
 | Garmin inReach 2 Mini Satellite Communicator (2-way) - $40 off | $360 | Amazon | This is a pretty small deal for this product. This is my defacto satellite communicator when out of coverage area, and I've used it on a number of major treks over the past two years when well outside of cellular service, both in a 24x7 tracking mode for friends and family, but also there in case of emergency. Would strongly recommend for anyone doing anything in the wilderness. |
 | Garmin inReach Messenger Plus - $100 off! | $399 | Amazon | This came out last fall, and is the second time this has been discounted. The key difference with the new Plus model is that it adds the ability to send photos and voice messenges via satellite. I've used it a bit, and it's pretty cool because it makes it a lot faster to just say something rather than type it out, but the $499 price seemed excessive. $399 makes it slightly more palatable. |
 | GoPro Hero 13 Black - $50 off | $349 | Amazon | |
 | GoPro Hero 13 Black Bundle (extra battery/SD card/floaty) - $100 off! | $379 | Amazon | ⚡ This is a very solid deal. It's a Hero 13 Black on discount, but then an extra battery tossed in, then an SD card, and then a floaty. |
 | GoPro Hero 4K - $20 off | $199 | Amazon | While the new Hero Lit was announced a few weeks back, which includes a front LED light, for the most part it's the same camera inside. Note I'll have a full comparison shortly though between the GoPro Hero Lit, DJI OSMO Nano, and Insta360 Go Ultra. |
 | Google Pixel Watch 3 (45mm) - $70 OFF | $229 | Amazon | The newer Pixel Watch 4 came out last month, and will start shipping this week. I see the Pixel Watch 4 as a pretty substantial hardware upgrade over the Pixel Watch 3, notably due to satellite SOS, as well as a user-replaceable battery. Still, this is a solid deal. |
 | Insta360 X5 360* Action Cam - $50 off! | $499 | Amazon | |
 | Polar H10 Chest Strap (Dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart) - $15 off $89 | $84 | Amazon | |
 | Polar Verity Sense - 15% off $99 | $82 | Amazon | I use this as one of my reference devices for heart rate accuracy testing. |
 | Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra (2025) - $100 off! | $549 | Amazon | |
 | Samsung Galaxy Watch8 - $35 off | $314 | Amazon | |
 | Sony Alpha 7 IV Full-frame Mirrorless Camera w/ 28-70mm Zoom - $400 off | $2,398 | Amazon | This is the main camera I use for still photography and video b-roll. I recently wrote about all the photography gear I use, linked at side here. |
 | Suunto Run - $50 off! $249 | $199 | Amazon | This is a very solid deal. It's got virtually all the software features of Suunto's higher-end watches (minus the app store), and just came out this past May. |
 | Suunto Vertical - $120 off! | $379 | Amazon | While the new Suunto Vertical 2 just came out last week, if you wanted to stock-up on MIP-based display watches before they disappear, here's your chance. |
 | Suunto Wing headphones - $30 off | $119 | Amazon | |
 | Wahoo ACE Cycling GPS - $90 off! $599 | $531 | Amazon | |
 | Wahoo BOLT V2 - $30 off $279 | $237 | Amazon | |
 | Wahoo KICKR 2022/V6 - $155 off! $1,299 | $894 | Amazon | ⚡This is actually the lowest price we've ever seen on the KICKR V6. Wahoo says we won't see a new top-end KICKR this fall, with them instead focusing on the new KICKR Bike Pro, KICKR CORE 2, and all their new bike computers/radar/etc... |
 | Wahoo KICKR Core Smart Trainer - $75 off! $499 | $427 | Amazon | This is basically the lowest price we've ever seen for this trainer as far as I know. It's still a very solid trainer, and the cornerstone to the new Zwift Ride bike as well (it uses the KICKR CORE as the base). It works with the Wahoo KICKR CLIMB too. |
 | Wahoo KICKR Desk - $30 off | $199 | Amazon | |
 | Wahoo KICKR ROLLR - $130 off $599 | $569 | Amazon | |
 | Wahoo ROAM V3 - $70 off! | $395 | Amazon | This is the first time we've seen the ROAM V3 on sale (notably the BOLT V3 is not on sale, though the larger ACE is). |
 | Wahoo TRACKR Heart Rate Sensor - $15 off $89 | $84 | Amazon |
DCR Posts in the Past Week:
Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page this past week:
Monday: Suunto Announces SuuntoPlus Guides: An App Platform for 3rd Party Apps
Monday: Suunto Rolls Out TrainingPeaks Structured Workout Integration: How-To Guide
Tuesday: Wahoo Adds New Gradient Coloring with Wahoo Summit Feature
Tuesday: Zwift Rolls Out Wahoo Direct Connect Ethernet Adapter Support
Thursday: GoPro Volta Battery & Remote Grip Review
Friday: Sports Tech: The Best April 1st Tidbits
YouTube Video This Past Week:
Here’s what hit the tubes over on the You of Tube, definitely don’t forget to subscribe there to get notified of videos the second they hit!
Stuff I Found Interesting Around The Interwebs:
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. Also, there’s a few things this week that were actually from a week or two ago – I’m just catching up on this list:
1) Going off the rails…err….route, in Zwift: I’ve accidentally done this once or twice before. For those that want to take-flight in Zwift for an aerial tour, here ya go.
2) Photographer Picks Up Pogačar’s Bike Computer After Crash: Here’s a quick story from the intersection of cycling GPS units and photography.
3) A Massive Pile of Garmin Beta Updates: This week was notable for a huge swath of Garmin wearables getting beta updates, largely driven by both Connect IQ updates, but also a bunch of devices getting the newish strength training muscle map that shows which muscles a structured workout benefits. Notably, the Fenix 6 series is getting this (along with the FR945 & FR745, among others). It’s good to see new features still coming to the Fenix 6, after the Fenix 7 has launched. Hopefully that continues. Oh, and also Endurance Horseback Riding activity profile was added. Regrettably, I won’t be testing that one. Any such testing would likely just result in a viral video (of failures).
4) Upcoming Peloton Guide rumored to cost substantially less: The new CEO continues to make numerous tweaks around hardware pricing, and I suspect this one is the right call. The Peloton Guide was set to launch any week now, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes of it in terms of the overall product, and the price-point Peloton tries to hit.
5) Strava adding Tour de France Hub for 2022: This didn’t quite make it for a standalone post this week, namely because Strava didn’t have any actual imagery or concrete details to share about it when I dug deeper. But, it is interesting nonetheless. Basically, Strava is going to be doing a hub in the app during both the men’s and women’s TdF this year, which will be a consolidated view of Pro riders during the race, including things like stage details and segments on those stages (and how those athletes perform against those segments). This could be pretty interesting, looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Note that Strava did confirm there’s nothing being added to try and entice/require the remaining 20-30% of the pro peloton that doesn’t publish to Strava, to do so this year. It’s more of a hope that they will, though, it does continue to increase each year.
6) SRM X-Power Flats: This has been sitting on an open tab for a while now, been meaning to mention it somewhere. In short, SRM announced a few weeks back that they’re selling a flat-pedal version of their X-Power pedal-based power meter. In other words, they’ve taken the spindle from their existing SRM X-Power SPD units, and stuck it in a pair of flats. Thus, I can finally equip my Urban Arrow Cargo Bike with a power meter unnecessarily. Plus, these new units should have far better battery burn than the earlier SRM X-Power units that I initially tested (these have upgraded hardware).
7) Super League Triathlon Sponsorship by Garmin/Tacx: You’ll remember that Garmin/Tacx has previously sponsored the SLT (I went to one here to check it out), and it’s a cool concept. However, I caught in the press release the notion that athletes will use the Garmin Index S2 smart scale to measure their weight prior to their race, as required by Zwift’s esports rules. However, what is carefully skirted around in the next sentence is that they say the “data is given to Zwift”. Note, the data is not sent to Zwift, it’s manually entered. That’s because, despite the most obvious pairing that could exist for Zwift, they don’t actually support Garmin WiFi scales (even though it’s trivially easy for Zwift to receive weight data from Garmin, upon authorization by a user). Thus, I’m just here making an obvious nudge for Zwift to implement this). If countless other companies can do so, so can Zwift.
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With that, thanks for reading!
Edge 530/830 Plus ok the cards?
Any idea if this is a clearance of Edges to make way for new models, or just a spring sale?
can;’t wait for the *40 edge
“If countless other companies can do so, so can Zwift.”
I tend to disagree. There are so many small things that you would think Zwift could easily do, but they haven’t done it for years. So, at this point I’m fairly certain that they simply lack the skills. It can’t be a lack of money.
Yeah, I know they have talented people. And they have plenty of money. But I get the impression there’s a gap in the technical direction side. Meaning, I don’t get the feeling there’s a deeply technical CTO or CTO minus one.
Meaning, most companies have at least a person or team or persons that’s singular job in life isn’t day to day programming/etc, but is ‘Futures tech’. Basically, they look at all the shiny objects, and figure out what’s worth doing or focusing on (sometimes for 3-6 months down the road, and sometimes for 3-6yrs down the road). They’re supposed to be uber-geeks and basically get to have fun with things and figure out what’s good or what’s half-baked.
Usually, these people drive at least one of a few different channels into a company implementing new things (alongside customer requests and other business priorities). They don’t override business priorities, but rather, typically look at the future far enough out to say “Hey, this will solve a problem for us, or a business goal down the road”.
In the case of Zwift, this makes ground on people not updating their Zwift weight frequently (or even seasonally). It doesn’t solve purposeful cheaters, but it does solve accidental cheaters.
The point is, while Zwift has people like Wes that do look at futures (he’s on Zwift’s podcasts and such occasionally), his role is still day to day making things happen for the next day. They need people that look at longer-range things and figure out how it fits into the greater picture (even if the answer is ‘Nah, that’s not worth it.’).
Just two cents from following the ins and outs of this company for a long while…
That role in a lot of tech product companies has always been fulfilled by either a Chief Architect or a Fellow. Unfortunately my current company (a legacy SaaS company) doesn’t yet recognize the need for that type of role and instead can’t figure out why our products and platform don’t fit together.
As far as I know, Garmin also doesn’t sync weight to Strava too, which I think is also pretty annoying.
It’s not a Garmin problem, it’s a Strava problem.
The Garmin API basically allows any authorized developer to request access to that data, be sent to them. It’s been silly simple for about three years now (actually, three years from next week). And then was further simplified in 2020 with a single API key.
So basically, any company that’s authorized as a recipient for Garmin data (which is relatively easy to get, it’s far harder/impossible to get the ability to push data into Garmin), can get this data.
Some details here: link to dcrainmaker.com
Thank you, Ray, for the clarification. I googled the problem again and found workarounds. I will try FitnessSyncer now.
Smart Scale Sync is able to send to Garmin as a Destination with all metrics of a Withings scale
Yeah, it’s basically just using the account credentials (username/password) that you provide to it though to manually create a weight entry. Versus a proper API solution.Obviously, that’s Garmin’s fault – but, worthwhile noting the differences.
I wonder about the general quietness about the Garmin Vivosmart 5. The confidentiality of the FCC filing has run out, pictures and specs are open, yet Garmin and Ray, even t5k said nothing about it. Maybe because it is not exciting (the specs are definitely not).
The exciting part might be that obviously Garmin does not even bother to release it, confirming the suspicion that they have given up on fitness bands altogether?
There are a few different items in their existing catalog that had their shipping availability forecasts change in recent months. Best guess is that the pandemic supply chain issues are still causing companies to be very selective about what goes into mass production.
Garmin forerunner 935 – $230 off at best buy.
link to bestbuy.com
That’s pretty much the norm for pricing these days on the FR935.
In fact, it often floats down to $230-$240 or so.
Although it seems strange to put a power metre on flat pedals it does make some sense. I use flat pedals on my mountain bikes and sometimes my gravel bikes. So if i was more serious about racing and training it might be an option. Note i don’t do MTB trails just forest tracks which can be rough and sandy at times.
So if it was cheap for them to implement they have the field to themselves so it may be worth experimenting to see if there is a market for a flat pedal.
Did Garmin killed running power? I used to have power with my 945 & Tri HR but after the update, two consecutive runs, have 0 power.
Hey,
I love your site and blog. I have found it very useful when looking to upgrade my wearable. I currently have the Garmin Venu 2 but it doesn’t support race prediction. I saw your blog from 2016 which talked about a third party app called Race Screen on Garmin Connect. I downloaded the app but I can’t get it to work. It just shows the Connect logo (see photo). I have sent two emails to the developer via the Connect store portal but haven’t heard anything. It says it is supposed to be compatible with the Venu 2. Wondered if you had any suggestions.
Well the SRM X-Power Flats finally solves my loaded, self-supported, cross country touring use case. My touring bike has a triple front crank and a 36-spoke rear hub… neither of which are supported by today’s power meters. I’ve been known to travel in hiking boots and stop often for excursions or ice cream, so flats are ideal.
But $1,500 for flat pedals? Are you freakin’ kidding me?!
I tried updating my FR945 to the beta software.
It broke my running suggested workout. Showed funny symbols on the screen.
Rolled back. Going to have to wait till the official release.