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Scosche Rhythm+ 2.0 | Beats OH1+ ? Where are Garmin?

Scosche Rhythm+ 2.0

Scosche’s first foray into optical HR tech was with their Scosche Rhythm/Rhythm+ armband followed by the Rhythm 24 in 2018. I have an original Rhythm and it is a sound product that delivers decent HR and it had a very good reputation for accuracy which wore off on Valencell who provide the sensor. That probably helped Valencell becomes Suunto’s first supplier.

It took everyone a little while to realise that it wasn’t the Valencell sensor that was great per see but rather it was that wearing any old optical HR strap on your upper arm is generally a good approach both for comfort and accuracy.

Now we have Rhythm+ 2.0 which I discuss below and I expect to have good accuracy.

Polar OH1+ and Garmin

The elephant in the room is Garmin. Why haven’t they repackaged their ELEVATE Gen 3 sensor and made an armband product like Scosche and Polar? Answer?… I don’t know.

The baby elephant in the room is the Polar OH1+. It’s a great optical armband product and I can see few reasons for using something else except price, strap width; better battery life, better low battery indication and more advanced features like ANT+ caching.

Which brings us on to the Scosche.

 

Scosche Rhythm+ 2.0  | What’s new?

Not a lot is new, at least not much that seems important.

The battery life is unchanged at 24 hours and both BLE and ANT+ broadcasting are still supported. Does this mean that Scosche dropped all intention for caching to support swimming and the high-end Garmin sports watches? Maybe, but if they were planning to do that you would have thought that better waterproofing than IP68 would have been introduced.

Then we come to the strap. Technophiles love the specs but the success of this product will likely come down to the strap. And this strap looks good. A wider strap is more comfortable and more importantly, it’s less likely to flip. I still regularly use my Polar OH1+ however, if I’m not careful, it will flip when I put clothes over it. It was fine when new but as the strap has weakened slightly over many months of use, flipping is more notable both in swimming and other usages.

I’ve not really mentioned the Wahoo TICKR Fit which I also have. Everyone loves a good Wahoo product but this one is not as accurate as the Polar OH1+, so I don’t use it. Let’s also not forget the mioPOD which is accurate. I would also class the Polar as ‘ACCURATE’.

I’m not sure I’ll review the Rhythm+ 2.0 unless it can cache to a Garmin, I’m happy enough with the OH1+.

At $79.99 it’s sensibly priced but there are unbranded alternatives on Amazon for half the price.

Sources: dcrainmaker, Scosche

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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30 thoughts on “Scosche Rhythm+ 2.0 | Beats OH1+ ? Where are Garmin?”

      2. there will be a jan announcement imo
        could be 945lte
        could be 955 / 955lte
        could be 655

      3. If it’s January and since they are at CES, it seems like a missed opportunity if they don’t announce anything over there 🙁 I hope it’s a 955 since it doesn’t seem like Garmin have anything in place for LTE in Europe ?

      7. its taken a while, nice find! the images in it effectively say SOLAR and it looks like the rear case layout of a fenix. It has NFC therefore probably Garmin PAY. so its not a low end model. guess it could be the fenix 7 maybe MARQ v2

        i think this listing was already on the fcc site but has had info in it changed eg I think it was earlier set for a release last week and that it did not have NFC until now.

      14. Which documents specifically ? It seems the actual pictures are embargoed until 2021-04-08?

      20. 945 has a battery issue. maybe 945 solar is the fix (I don’t think this is 945)

  2. I know 2 reasons for Garmin’s absence:

    • they lack an immense amount of feeling with end users
    • all personel is busy taking care of it’s own terrritory, no one is taking the trouble of doing something extra/having some kind of vision etc. Already an aspect of the organisation for many years….. No creativity. No innovation. Now & then they buy a company that has produced something interesting. Often that seems not so interesting after all.

    1. Interesting opinion, even more interesting why there is no leaks at all at launch this month

      3. there some kids band/vivo thing due. i’m not so interested in that but it could be the one in the link you refer to perhaps?

  4. Hard pass unless they fix the core issue I had with both the Rhythm and the Wahoo – plastic mounting hardware. Both of them busted on me because the plastic that holds on the strap eventually broke. It took maybe a year.

    Pretty sure any such design will inherently break. OH1 is good because you could just buy a new strap since it snaps-in to strap, but even their strap seems unlikely to break because it’s not a typical pin-in-plastic type design.

    Between sunlight, heat, cold, and especially sunblock any small piece of plastic that is in the critical path of mounting will likely break.

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