Sports Tech Summer Deals Still Live! A huge number of the Amazon deals are still going! This includes the Garmin Epix for just $459, and the Fenix 8 for $150 off. The Apple Watch Series 10 for $279, the GoPro Hero 13 Black for $329, smart trainers, drones, action cams, and plenty more! Go check out the full list here!
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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.
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You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
1
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.
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.
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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.
Just curious thoughts about what might happen first, Garmin releases an Enduro for smaller wrists, or Suunto releases a new Vertical with their updated on wrist heart rate sensor? I’ve narrowed down my search to these wishlist items. 😀
Thanks!
That’s a tricky question. Frankly, I have no idea. I feel like Garmin thinks/believes there isn’t a market for smaller sized MIP based displays in the ultra segment (beyond Instinct series). I think there’s probably some truth to that, in terms of the market size Garmin now needs to justify making a product.
If we look at UTMB finishers (for the full-length one, the one that would justify the battery needs), only 12% were women in 2023 (first stat I found). And of course, some portion of those will be fine with medium sized MIP units (and inversely, some portion of men will prefer smaller units).
Whereas Suunto has a bit more flexibility on what it takes to ‘make it worth it’ for them (even moreso applied to COROS too). Of course, as always, Garmin *hates* the idea of someone stealing their lunch. So eventually, if the demand is there, Garmin will make a smaller unit with those features. But it make take an iteration or two. I’d say it’d be interesting to see in a Fenix 9 (or whatever it’s called), if they bring back the smaller Fenix S sized MIP unit or not, which they ditched for Fenix 8. If not, then I’d argue that fate is sealed.
Where can you see breathing variations? My Forerunner was updated to include them a while ago but for the life of me I can’t figure out where is this data located.
It’ll show up in two places:
1) In Garmin Connect , under the same page as sleep stats (look at left side).
2) On the watch, within the sleep stats section for last night, akin to things like sleep phases/stages
Note that it does require PulseOx be enabled (during sleep), otherwise it won’t show up.
Is it rolling out in stages? I have it now on my 265S and I got the email noting it is also rolling to the 255 and Venu3.
My husband hasn’t gotten the notices I did (has pulse ox on already) and neither of use sees a way to display the info in connect. Don’t want to bother my Dad about it if it’s not 100% up and running.
Looking at Garmin Forums (and my own 955 Solar) it seems that, despite the Breathing Variations being present in beta changelogs and in press materials on the update, they actually weren’t rolled out to 955.
Thanks for acknowledging my Escape Collective story documenting Matthew Lefthand’s record-breaking 24-hour virtual ride. He is an amazing athlete who’s primed and ready to rewrite the ultra-cycling record books.
Hey Ray, do you have any plans to drill down into Gamin’s May 7, 2025 sunsetting of cycling maps on their Edge devices? My first reaction is that this is another Garmin shift to subscription revenue. As typical with Garmin, the details are confusing and the impacts probably won’t be clear for a while. They have something similar going on with watch mapping as well.
Their previous service approach really made travel navigation easy. Now it may mean going back to openstreetmap and similar. This is a PITA and probably kills off a lot of the newer Edge mapping associated options, such as POI, visible segments, etc.
While I think their communications are confusing AF (kinda the norm), on this particular item, best I can tell, this is a non-issue. Or at least a non-issue for anyone with the last two generations of Edge devices.
Essentially, the “Garmin Cycle Map” was a specific branded product name, that for a long-long time, you had to buy (or download the free OSM maps). Then, starting with the Edge 530/830/1030 series in 2019, Garmin started including those maps free of charge.
Following that in the Edge x40 series, the maps are still free, but now transitioned to Garmin’s “TopoActive” series, that includes basically more data in them (namely, topographic details). Still, naming and extra bits side, it was still free to Edge users. These maps were also made available to the x30 series.
Roughly speaking, this same transitioned happened on the wearables, though I’d have to dig back further to see exactly when they transitioend to the TopoActive maps. I feel like that was a long-long time ago.
At the end of the day, nobody has lost maps. They’re all still there, free as they were before. Just now fully consolidated under TopoActive that you’d have likely been using anyways for many years.
TLDR: This is just crappily worded statement from Garmin, introducing confusion, and then a bit of internet clickbait out there made it worse.