Gadgets & Wearables News

adidas quits GPS Watches: Leaving TomTom Runner 3/Spark 3 as one of a kind…for now

22 September 2016
tfk, the5krunner
4 Comments

FTC: Affiliate Disclosure: All links pay commission

adidas just announced that it will not be following up the optical HR enabled miCoach SMART Run GPS watch (2013). Essentially it has pulled out of that part of the hardware market.

Note: adidas bought Runtastic and its 70million users for about GBP200m last year!

It was/is a nice enough watch with music, colour screen and a good online coaching platform. In VERY many ways it was ahead of its time.

Being good clearly doesn’t always help.

adidas had a good PR push last year on this product but I guess that wasn’t enough.

Anyway. It’s good news for TomTom with the Runner 3 / Spark 3. That’s one less competitor offering a ‘proper’ sports watch that stores music. Whilst the adidas did have good optical HR and music, it certainly didn’t have the navigation on the Runner 3 / Spark 3. Now, at least for TomTom, there is the pesky question of the Polar M600 Android Wear watch – that’s available just about now and chomping at their GPS heels.

miCoach exit info via: Wareable

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Herve Cai (@HerveCai)

What a pity ! This tool is still, as per my market analysis, the best “coaching” one for any runner who need a simple way to build a customized training plan and follow it easily based on either the HR zones or pace zones. I hope Adidas will continue the miCoach website at least.

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tfk, the5krunner

there are other, maybe better, sites. but it is/was a good one. what is your interest in that area? reply: info@the5krunner.com

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tfk, the5krunner

Hi Bruce. Yes I think tomTom would be the first to say that their online site does not do the kind of things that the Adidas one does. If you are training for a marathon it is relatively ‘easy’. Easy in the sense that there are many tried and tested generic plans on the internet. just follow those. you are running fairly basic sessions of extended aerobic periods rather than complex intervals. in terms of uploading a PLAN to your tomtom that will be tricky 🙂 ie you cant do it.

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Bruce Colombet

Hello,

I fully agree with @HerveCai comment. So you are suggesting to go to Tomtom as an alternative and I looked at your other article about it. OK, it looks totally fine and the battery last even longer. So, I can follow your advice. But, it is obviously not compatible with Adidas miCoach website, isn’t it?

So what do you suggest as a training site alternative compatible with the Tomtom device? The miCoach website functionnality fits totally “my way of life of not being a super runner but I run a fair amount of km/miles anyway”. So, to summarize, I like to set up a future objective: a marathon at this date for example, with a race time objective. I setup the number of training I can do per week and when. Then some details like my age, my weight, etc. Et voilà! I just have to upload the training program on the device and I can run.

Very convenient and efficient. With quality of training choice by the way.
Thanks for your answer,
Bruce

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