Heads up! The big Garmin annual spring sale has started, with $200 off the Fenix 8 (first sale to date!), $100 off the Edge 1050, Forerunner 965 at $499, the Forerunner 265, the new Instinct 3, and countless other Garmin products including inReach Mini 2. Plus the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium is on sale, and some Suunto & Wahoo product deals too. 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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My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
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The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
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Wahoo what nationality I thought it was USA :), Canada ?
Wahoo is based in Atlanta (US), but their products are made in Asia.
KICKR RUN price increase is crazy. 40% increase is huge.
I had the same reaction. Might as well stop selling it at that point. The Time of Flight sensor is cool but at $7000 most are going to opt for a Woodway
the madness of King Trump eh ? Not sure many of you reading this comment voted for him (I am from the UK) but policies like tariffs have deep consequences for my friends in the US.
Tariffs completely funded the United States government for the first 120 ish years of existence, up until these devils invented income tax. But yeah, madness, right?
And we live in a completely different world than existed in the 17-1800s.
Yes, it is complete insanity. The world is a far more complex place than it was before 1900, in case you can’t see it. All of the sudden cultists aren’t so concerned about inflation.
are you actually being serious or just a troll with a comment like that ?
the romans invented income tax BTW life existed outside of the US
You really need to read some history. One of these things is not like the other.
Agreed, tariffs were in place to help establish a shared infrastructure (such as utilities, roads, and railroads) between differing jurisdictions. Until the point when tax law had a chance to catch up, and tariffs were removed as a way not to apply an additional tax to consumers. Now the King has implemented this additional tax, fee, tariff, or whatever you want to call it that consumers/citizens are forced to pay. Under the guise of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US where the quality of product is either inferior or in line with other countries where cost of labor is far lower. Any way politicians or propaganda try to spin it, it’s an arbitrary additional tax paid for by the consumer – not the country of origin’s government, nor the manufacturer or brand selling to the consumer.
This comment brought to you by a middle aged higher education graduate US voter who has been working in the field of cross-border commerce, trade compliance, manufacturing and logistics for the last couple decades and unfortunately as with GDPR and Brexit in the last 10 years, now this insanity has me and my team on the tip of the king’s sword as he ineptly swings it back and forth trying to make sense of nonsense. For any Magats out there that think they’re ready to discuss facts like HTS Codes, harmonization, de minimus, MID 9801 etc in depth, I’m up to the challenge.
Thank you for bringing actual expertise on the topic to the table. You just be exhausted.
@Shawn DaB: Thanks for the offer, I’d like to discuss HTS codes. How often do they check if paletized stuff labeled 4016.99.05.00 actually is that and not any commercial goods? How lucky is someone who had it work >10 times without any issue?
Customers will be saying Boohoo!
Of note on the treadmill is that the price now includes the special shipping and handling and setup as opposed to it being a separate fee. Softens the blow just a smidge.
Good to know! What was that previously (exactly)?
It was $300 for the white glove delivery when I bought mine. Glad I got mine before the price increase.
It was definitely $300 initially, but I do not know if that changed at any point since then. I feel like I saw somewhere in a comment online that it was $500 but this could be crossing some wires with European prices or just bad memory.
Hi Ray,
Do you have comprehensive reviews of the Roam and Bolt 3 coming soon. Like the look of the Roam 3 but getting very mixed opinions of the screen on the various Youtube reviews.
Keen to get your take, along with the overall stability of the product as things stand.
Thanks!
I’m also surprised we haven’t see the new Roam review yet.
They are coming soon. Lots of miles on both. As always, I like to get lots of miles on things, especially when things have a history of not working well. In the case of the BOLT3/ROAM3, they share the new Wahoo ACE operating system, and that OS has been…troubling…to say the least. Especially for things like power dropouts and sensor dropouts.
In the case of ACE, I was seeing those anywhere from once/week to once every 2-3 weeks. So, my goal here was to see if those were solved (Wahoo says they were solved, but they’ve been saying that for like 6 months, this might, it seems it might actually finally be true). Among other quirks. Some of those just take longer.
Ultimately, I generally don’t release a review (good or bad), until I’m pretty confident that I’ve got a solid grasp of the product and where it works well or not. If I feel like there’s area where I need a big more digging (e.g. the FR970 battery burn rates, or the Wahoo stability bits, or Whoop MG’s blood pressure bits), I tend to error on the side of waiting till I’m 100% sure of my results (good or bad).
Many thanks for the reply Ray, that all makes sense.
Looking forward to your reviews when they are ready!
Right after I closed this article and reopened Facebook, I was fed an ad for 30% off the Kickr Run. When I clicked the add there was no discount and just the 40% price increase.
US’ play time…huh? Not all of us voted for the orange idiot or anything he is doing.
It does not help Wahoo that many of their products are new and so had to be recently shipped. Meanwhile I’m sure are tons of Garmin items are already here. I was interested in Wahoos new rear light to go with my Garmin 840 but not at those prices.
Wow. I was a week or so away from buying the treadmill, but a $1700 increase is unpalatable (adjusting for delivery). Any idea of the price will lower if the tariff situation changes?
The timing of their new products with the tariffs on the horizon coupled with the now decision to raise the prices is unfortunate timing. Hopefully things will eventually tide over. I’ve been on the fence between the Wahoo and Garmin radar. Since Wahoo’s unit has performed well enough to go up against the Garmin, I’ve been really tempted to go the Wahoo route (also in part bias having lived in Atlanta) just to be different in the sea of Varias (and that sweet USB-C lol). When the Varia isn’t on sale, the price difference isn’t too terrible though it’s still on sale now which is rough for Wahoo. I wonder how the increases will affect Wahoo as a whole and if they’ll be able to recoup ground. If the other competitors were in a similar situation and weren’t big enough to eat the cost, then maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, but I wonder if Wahoo might just be unlucky for now relative to their competitors.
Also fun unfortunate anecdote on hestitating, I did have the opportunity to snag the Wahoo radar for the original MSRP from an Atlanta store (to be shipped) and I almost pulled the trigger, but I hesitated because I wanted to see if the local bike shop was going to get them and considered purchasing from them. Of course I ended up missing out now on the original MSRP pricing, lol.
The effects of the tariffs extend beyond the USA. I live in Australia. Pre tariffs I bought a Garmin radar on Amazon, on the strength of Ray’s review. It was sent from the USA. The price was the same as the Australian online bike shops. Next purchase was some Assioma power pedals. Price was several hundred dollars more than the Australian shops. Sorry Ray.
No doubt, definitely impacting everyone (especially if subcomponents come from the US, and are counter-tariff’d).
That said, in your case, the issue is mainly because you bought it from a US shop. They’ve already paid the import duties, and thus, they don’t really care that you’re in Australia, since they need to recoup those costs. Whereas if you had bought from AUS directly, then you’d have skipped the tariff charges (but of course, often times you get dinged with your own surcharges).
Thanks for being a supporter!
I was wondering how a $5000 treadmill (however innovative) would perform in the current market.
Now it’s $7000, I kind of have an idea…
I work in Manufacturing+Logistics in a business which has been severely impacted by tariffs and our working weeks looks like:
-monday : we meet to decide to move the manufacturing of item XYZ from China to somewhere else because of tariffs and in the mean time to increase prices to consumers
– tuesday: orange guy send out a tweet changing his mind about China… so we meet again to stop the move out of china. But in the evening there is another tweet increasing tariffs on something else and somewhere else.
and by the way, we stop the price increase, even if we already send our the new pricing list to customers
– wednesday: we receive a rush of orders because all customers want to snap our stuff before Orange guy changes his mind about china
– thursday : after working on a plan about what do to on the product made in Europe, another 4 hours meeting with action plan … in the mean time, more orders coming for all the stuff made in China
– friday : another tweet, another change of mind, more tariff on China, less vs Europe… customers cancel the orders… total chaos. We meet again and we decide that everything we did during the past 5 days was unnecessary…. time to go home and start again on monday
@Alex, getting fancy giving HTS out to 12 digits ;)
And yea that’s (not) a fun one, happy you’ve been able to get it through successfully like that for such a generic catch-all. There’s some special agreements with these countries so maybe you’re importing from one of these that gets special customs treatment?
(AU, BH, CL, CO, D, IL, JO, KR, MA, OM, PA, PE, SG)
Likely other success factors could be who you have listed as the EoR, IoR, how you’re consolidating packages on pallets and if you’ve got a good broker working with customs on your behalf.
And yes @Dave, it is exhausting, thankfully I take the undue stress out on my pedals at the end of the day!