It’s tricky to say whether STRYD or Garmin Running Power (CIQ app) are the leading running power meter solution at the moment in terms of sales. Sure, the free Garmin Running Power app has more single downloads but how many people then really go on to use it in training? Sure, STRYD has more total downloads of all its apps and data fields but how many users use more than one? Also we don’t know what the sales of the Polar Vantage V are and what percentage of the owners use Polar’s own power calculations.

• Garmin Running Power: 29961
• STRYD Ciq: 22607 , 13325 , 6568.
• Runscribe: less than 1500
• Polar Vantage V: Unknown
• Others: Tiny

Current CIQ downloads shown @10Jan2019

These figures exclude other-platform usage (zero in Garmin’s case) and do not reflect inactive users nor serial downloads of updated versions of each app. So maybe STRYD is the market leader for ‘running with power’. I would have thought that is the case.

What next in our shared crystal ball of running futures?

Here are a few options

• RunScribe’s USP is their superior take on running gait. Their accurate power and running pace are almost of secondary important – which I think is unfair as those two features are pretty awesome and benefit from dual sided pod collection of data.
• STRYD have already produced STRYD Live (no power but it can be upgraded) but that now seems to have been withdrawn from sale. I have no doubt that STRYD will innovate further in 2019 but I do not know if this will be from new footpods, algorithmic changes or platform changes.
• Garmin Running Power – Garmin are due to produce new joint BLE/ANT accessories including a new footpod. Jan2019 has seen a FCC registration from Garmin of a new BLE HRM so…fingers crossed that this HRM is a sign of more accessories to come from Garmin in 2019. However, Garmin might be more interested in competing in the Zwift Run sphere than furthering their competition against STRYD for running power. So there may, or may not, be running power hardware from Garmin in 2019.
• Suunto – I can’t see them investing in a new footpod – power or otherwise. It’s possible a 3rd party might produce something power-related via Movesense but I doubt it (See Runteq) as that hardware seems best-suited for wearing as a chest strap. I would imagine Suunto would be keen to keep on integrating STRYD’s data.
• Polar now have the Vantage V and Polar’s native power suport there is pretty awesome. At least it has the potential to be once all the creases have been ironed out. That might take the best part of all of 2019 but by the end of that year we should see power zone alerts and the ability to schedule create complex structured workouts based on running power. This WILL be the best platform-solution BUT the issue(ette) for Polar is that it will also support STRYD power and I would imagine that a great number of people will keep using STRYD rather than Polar’s own calculations that are currently based on GPS. (FWIW It’s very likely I will switch to Polar Vantage as my main running watch once footpod handling is sorted out and even more ilkely once the power running platform offering is finished)
• Wahoo is a good contender and somewhat of a ‘dark horse’ when it comes to the future of running power.Whatever they deliver in 2019 you can be reasonably sure that it will be great hardware on a minimal and open platform that leverages what 3rd parties can support in terms of additional feature support)
• SHFT – there are at least two other gait tools that also produce some estimate of power, including SHFT. No doubt more of these will follow but I suspect they are all doomed to failure if they try to compete against the big boys/girls with a running power-only product
• Something else? … yep, there will certainly be something else that I haven’t directly mentioned here 😉 Those of you who have heard of the search abilities of Google will, no doubt, know more than me… 😉

CURRENT OPTIONS

V3 RunScribe Plus Pricing: USA $250, UK/EU GBP250

DISCOUNT CODE: SCtfk10 (UK, USA and EU)

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