Heads up! The big Garmin spring sale has started, with $200 off the Fenix 8, $100 off the Edge 1050, Forerunner 965, Forerunner 265, and countless other Garmin products. Full list & thoughts here.
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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.
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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!
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Have some fun in the travel section.
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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 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.
Are you doing a Core 2 review soon?
I’ve got one, and started using it…so it’s vaguely in the pipeline now.
My impression is the only difference is really in the attachment mechanism. The CORE 1 got a firmware update and they are otherwise now functionally the same. Is there actually any internal sensor hardware difference?
I saw you featured in a video by a Spanish reviewer discussing the Suunto Zonesense, and the results weren’t very positive. Are you planning to publish anything about it?
It’s also on my to-do list somewhere. But yeah, basically, I agree with everything there.
Not really sure what more there is to say that wasn’t covered there already, but certainly want to draw attention to it.
Where can we view this video?
Here ya go (in Spanish): link to youtube.com
As someone who has been riding fat bikes since long before e-bikes were a common thing, I think we need a different name for those things. You will basically never see something with 27×4 or 26×5 tires with a motor on it, and those are the common tire sizes for real fat bikes. In my area, I’ve seen a lot of what I refer to as “motorcycles that happen to have bike pedals” going 25+ mph down recreational bike paths, and sadly, our police don’t GAF. It’s really obnoxious.
Yeah, I agree. It’s sorta a sucky situation where proper fat bikes (like your profile) got overtaken by this hybrid beach cruiser with big tires and a big motor.
> but then again, muscular load has never been accounted for in Garmin’s training status related metrics.
And therein is one of several reasons why the Garmin metrics training status metric is worse than useless.
It also doesn’t take into account multiple workouts in a day or segments of a brick workout. They are also based on fractional VO2 estimate which itself is not accurate to more than +- several % in the best case where you have a chest strap, max HR, and weight all set correctly. These metrics are really a relic of a different time.
Which watch manufacturer correctly accounts for muscular load?
I am curious. Would you rather have no wearable derived parameters or something more accurate? But if so, how do you want something more accurate without valid baseline parameters (accurate heart rate/weight)?See, that’s one of the things we teach our residents when we teach them invasive hemodynamics or any other physiological test. You have to put in the correct parameters like weight/ height/ hemoglobin etc. into the equations, otherwise you need not bother with the rest… but maybe you have a solution and it is much simpler… until then, I am quite happy with my wearable and take the measurements with a pinch of salt. Cheers!.
I would be satisfied with getting rid of the productive, unproductive, detraining, peaking judgment labels based on excessively simplistic algorithms. Also load within a multisport workout or even a day should be cumulative not treated when evaluated rather than as multiple independent events. Running after a hard “productive” bike shouldn’t say “unproductive” because it didn’t understand you were in a multi-stage workout. Or doing doubles is generally messed up. Doing zone 2 work doesn’t go with the algorithm that is designed around threshold and above for VO2max detection.
These are serious flaws.
I have actually put my Garmin account into “paused” mode for years to make those cards go away because they are just so bad and frustrating.
@Brian Reiter Then just switch off/hide the elements that you do not like. I ignore/de-activate training status and just look at the raw metrics like load (I am ok with the decay – still somewhat arbitrary but close enough) etc.
Not sure what your point is on multi-sport activities. The total load clearly is cumulative. What other implementation/presentation have you seen/do you have in mind?
Polar seems to, but I don’t have one. At least, they have a leg readiness test. If their hardware was better, I’d buy one to try. Or, if it had a proper flashlight, I swear that’s the only saving grace for Garmin nowadays (for me).
Re the tweaked fat bike video, here’s an article set in Marin County, home of mountain bikes, about rich high school students modding throttle/Class2 ebikes to go 40+ mph.
link to sfchronicle.com
Probably not the best place to ask this, but I’m hoping for some help.
What’s the best smart bike/app combination that simulates outdoor riding?
The catch: We want nothing that hints of competition or structured workout or a training plan.
Use case: My wife has MS. She used to run all the time. As things progressed, we got a treadmill. Now there is a risk of falling on that, so we gave it away.
A smart bike eliminates the risk of falling – and we don’t want a bike on a trainer, as we want to easily adjust it to fit both of us.
We’ve looked into Peloton, but that seems to be aimed at “workouts” – including instructors that try to “encourage” riders. That doesn’t work with MS patients. They can’t just push harder.
I haven’t tried Zwift, but watching everyone ride past you and see others perform better than you is not helpful to someone with MS whose signals from brain to legs just don’t make it there sometimes.
We just want something that changes resistance naturally from time to time like going up and down hills outside – and bonus points if we can throw a scenic video to the TV that is on the wall.
Our old treadmill could do this (via a terrible tiny little android screen) and our elliptical can do this without the scenic video – hence the TV on the wall. While the risk of falling on the elliptical is very small, it aggravates an old stress fracture from 6 years ago that the orthopedist warned would never heal 100%.
Any advice? Monthly subscription for the app is OK – preferably one that allows two users for one price.
Thanks for the input.
Tim: You might check out Rouvy. One can adjust the difficulty and there are thousands of routes with video from around the world. I have ridden some of the courses in real life and the resistance/scenery are very realistic. You can get different accounts: link to support.rouvy.com
Jim
Maybe something like Kinomap? Where you “simply” reride a video recording of an outdoor ride?
The platform does more, but if your only use this one feature?
There are other similar services available, if I recall correctly the Tacx app has a similiar ability for example (but I might be mistaken).
Yeah, I’d say Rouvy, or also FulGaz (now bought by Rouvy, but operating mostly separately).
Seems like Amsterdam has a lot of these electric motorcycles riding on bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure. No wonder they have a whole police crew just managing enforcement for that topic. Where I live in Ohio, the problem that grinds police gears is unlicensed off-road motorcycles and four-wheelers taking over intersections, doing wheelies and other reckless driving. Police here are absolutely not worried about overpowered ebikes and I’ve even seen a few where someone has jerryrigged a gasoline engine onto a bicycle.
In bigger cities, like Amsterdam, there’s a restrictions on some bike paths for mopeds. I believe within Amsteram it’s roughly the ring road (I’ve never had a moped, so don’t pay super-close attention to exactly where the lines are).
The signpost graphic is missing a couple of days, “Funday,” and “Raceday.” I think you should add them
This is probably the oldest graphic on the DCR site…from I’m guessing a decade ago. 😂