Garmin 935: First Run With STRYD

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My Polar V800 has been having too much fun recently now that is able to natively pair with STRYD

Today it was the turn of the Garmin 935 to partner with the STRYD power footpod. Will it be a gadget match made in heaven or an acrimonious split up?

The setup was a tortuous process. After 2 minutes I was ready to go. 2 whole minutes. eesh (joking…it’s really that quick) 😉

1. Just pair it to the Garmin as normal for any sensor (optionally and sensibly set STRYD ALWAYS as the source of speed & leave auto calibration enabled)
2. Make sure you have already downloaded the STRYD data field (not the app)
3. Stick the data field onto one of your screens (as shown above)
4. That’s it.

Press Start. Run A Bit. Press Stop.

Go to Garmin connect to admire your data. As shown below in a very interesting steady state run chart 😉

A more interesting run would have yielded more interesting data. You can look at other views of your data on the STRYD app/dashboard, sporttracks, Golden Cheetah or training peaks. If you decide to run or bike with power there are LOTS of data analyses to keep you entertained in the evening.

Review: STRYD is looked at in a **lot** more detail (here).

Getting a little more serious. The point of today’s run was many fold.

Firstly there seems to be a bit of an issue with some of the other new Fenix 5 models (the 935 *is* a Fenix 5). Not all of them are connecting to some third party sensors including connecting to STRYD & STAGES. However as you can see all was Hunky-Dory with STRYD for me; Mr Bowie himself would have been impressed. No dropouts. Just good data. All the time.

STRYD+Garmin 935 looks good to me.

I’d only previously used the Fenix 5X with STRYD and that was OK too…apparently it’s the 5s and 5 models that can be an issue. I’ll be trying those later this week hopefully.

Secondly I had a bit of a debacle with the 5X in general. The review of that is linked to next but, basically, the 5X is REALLY not all it’s cracked up to be. I was disappointed with the accuracy of many of its onboard sensors (oHR, GPS, elevation). So I wanted also to make sure if the 935 was good/bad in those respects (I’m still working on that).

Review: Garmin Fenix 5X and the 5 collection (including 935) looked at in more detail (here).

Thirdly – assessing the 935’s GPS Accuracy again: The 935 scored better than the 5X in terms of GPS accuracy but still really only in the ‘meh‘ category. Ie perfectly fine for normal-Jo-average usage, but I just expected better from the most expensive tri-watch ever. Its GPS is not as good as the SPARTAN SPORT and neither is it as good as the V800’s GPS…in fact it scored the same as the GPS on the Garmin 305…sigh.

For those of you that run by pace I again draw your attention to STRYD. The instant pace that is shown on the watch via STRYD is VERY GOOD. I would use some superlative but then someone will have a go at me so I won’t.

IT’S AWESOME

Sorry couldn’t resist 😉 It’s WAY better than just relying on GPS. WAY WAY WAY better. With the 935 I was glancing at the pace figures periodically and generally it looked very stable, although there may have been a few fluctuations but certainly nothing anywhere like those experienced with GPS+TREE/BUILDING COVER . NB many other footpods will give a significant improvement in instant pace accuracy when compared to GPS eg a Garmin footpod or the super cheap milestone footpod (see below).

In other news: I’ve almost decided to promote the 935 to my “Ironman watch” in a few weeks time. It’s been a very good boy so far. We’ll see if it continues to behave itself. I’ll be wearing a HRM-TRI and using an EDGE as well though…just in case. 😉 Oh yes, STRYD too, that’s doing the full 26.2 miles.

Bad news for you/us 920XT fans, maybe? You might have to upgrade after all #expensive.

STRYD Info

I partner directly with STRYD in the USA and their distributor New Running Gear in the EU.