Heads up – Massive Black Friday Deals List is Live!!! The Garmin Fenix 8 is $250 off (even the Fenix 8 Pro is $100 off!), the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is on sale, the Garmin inReach Mini 2 is $249, the GoPro Hero 13 Black, DJI NEO, and a ton of other brands/deals, including Wahoo, Oura, Whoop, Polar, Samsung, Google, and more than 100 sports tech deals here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
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.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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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.
I recently escaped the Garmin ecosystem, now have a Suunto Race S – it does it all for me, and looks way, way better. Very happy with that decision. Contrary to what you say, I don’t want everything on the watch – I am happy to add what I want as an app/widget, and I am happy the s/w is less bloated. In fact Suunto – please let me delete the activity types I will never use (there are so many).
Assuming one has no loyalty to any particular platform, if you could get a Forerunner 955 or a Suunto Race S for the same price, which would be the best option for someone who primarily runs and swims?
I’m leaning Race S if only to have more recent hardware, knowing that I might be leaving some stability on the table.
My husband & I frequently do multi-day backpacking or ski trips where we’re out of cell service for the entire trip. I have an older watch (Garmin Vivoactive 4S), & my husband recently upgraded to a Garmin Fenix 7 Sapphire Solar.
We’ve both been frustrated over the inability to synch our daily activities with the app on our phone when we have no access to the internet, & we haven’t been able to find any information online about whether there’s a smartwatch that can synch without using cell service/internet access. I understand that synching for Garmin requires internet access to transfer via a background process to the app.
Is there a smartwatch that will synch with the app via Bluetooth without requiring internet access?
Have you heard anything about Garmin no longer honoring widely utilized discount codes distributed through their business partners (BCBS, Optimity, etc.) for the 570 and 970? From what I can tell, without fail, once a product has been released for 60 days, they become eligible for these discounts (This is even stated in the T&C’s of the discounts). It has been over 60 days since the 570/970 release and yet they are still showing as ineligible for these discount. Multiple people have reached out to Garmin and the general response so far from customer support is that they are not currently eligible and don’t know if/when they will be despite all information clearly stating it should be at the 60 day mark. Would love if you knew any more information or could follow up with your contacts at Garmin to see why they are not abiding by their terms and conditions.
Garmin has always (for more than 15 years) very strictly controlled discount codes on US retailers for products under MSRP (which, is basically all Garmin products). They would actively go after retailers that did discounting or had discount codes.
In recent years, they’ve done some corporate wellness program type discounts, allowing discounts that way, as sort of an employee benefit type thing.
Then, a few years back, for those entities they instituted the 60 day delay thing, mostly as a mechanism to ensure early stock was accessible to retail partners first. That said, I don’t know of any specific change there, but I don’t have any sort of access to the discount codes myself (I buy everything at full retail prices), so it’s honestly not something I follow too closely.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Garmin went back to the ‘no discounting’ model, because honestly, they’re kinda throwing away pretty substantial sums of money, given how big some of these programs have gotten.