I have taken the decision to remove the recommendations I have for TomTom sports products.
The current tranche of Runner-based products (Adventurer, Runner 3, Spark 3) are fundamentally sound and, in many respects, market-leading in their functionalities. coupled with that there have been platform improvements this year.
However the longerterm future of your sports watch investment is not clear.
If you have one of their devices then TomTom have said they will continue to support the platform so stay with TomTom if you are happy.
TomTom: have not responded to recent requests for PR information to me (and others); they have made significant redundancies (link to: the5krunner.com); and previously issued statements about the future of the consumer wearables activities (link to: the5krunner.com).
So I can’t, in all conscience, recommend you buy a TomTom sports watch at this stage..
I will be updating other content in due course including their 2 class-winning recommendations in the Top Running Watches of 2017.
ESSENTIAL READING: Top Running Watches 2017
It’s a shame as their products mostly ‘work’, a rare accolade in itself these days. The on-board MUSIC included in the higher end Runner 3/SPARK 3 was genuinely innovative and market-leading. Although that feature has since been caught up with by Apple’s Watch, AndroidWear watches (link to: the5krunner.com) and may well find its way into the imminent Garmin Forerunner 645 (maybe 245 too)
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Well, if you’re moderately watching (pun intended?) keeping an eye on this side of the market you can see that Tom-Tom is on it’s way out of the sector. The only news about tom-tom in the last year since the above mentioned watches launched have been the initial reviews and the mention of downsizing “redundancies” (code for upper management restructuring while re-evaluating place in market). Even Fitbit, with the cavalcade of negative speculations on where the brand is and where it is going, still had eyes on the brand and still released new devices with a flagship launch (the surge 2…umm Ionic). The strength of a company can be measured in the press they get (personal opinion). Good, bad, doesn’t matter, people care, thus there is a reason to cover it.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I don’t expect Tom-Tom to even be at CES 2018, and if they are, I highly doubt they show up with any info about a spark/runner replacement. My personal opinion in regards to Tom-Tom is that their products always seemed like they were chasing Polar, but fell short of…everything. The image I always got was they were the “poor-man’s Polar,” whether that was true or not I’ll leave that to the user.
maybe the ‘populist Polar’ is better. they were often aiming for a lower level of runner…a bigger market.
they had some good innovations – music on watch
their product was generally more accurate than most
they were still after beta testers for a new ‘sports thing’ only a few months ago
they don’t respond to pr requests to head office. they do not have a uk PR agent AFAIK (I knew the previous one fairly well)