Garmin CIQ App of the Year – 2022

Every year Garmin announces winners for a select number of CIQ app categories and this year we have winners announced for the categories of: Best New App; Best New Watchface; and the Innovation award.

Best New Garmin App

A personal favourite of mine, parkrun barcode (Gasteropod) wins the best new app. Handily I wrote about it in quite some detail a few months ago. It’s mostly useful for UK-based runners who complete their free, weekly 5k parkruns.

In a nutshell, Gasteropod’s parkrun barcode displays the runner’s personal barcode on the Garmin watch. This is then used by volunteer scanners to assign the runner the correct run time.

If you would like more detail try this: Link

[2024] Add parkrun barcode to Apple Watch or Garmin Forerunner/Fenix

Best New Watchface

In my opinion, Garmin watch faces have typically been visually awful. Normally not at the fault of the developer but more from the limitations of poor screen resolution and dull colours.

That’s all changed with the advent of Garmin’s AMOLED screens which offer fantastic colours, brightness and a good resolution. Finally, watch face developers have no excuses!

The ASAP watch face aims to keep things As Simple As Possible but also with great options for customising the colours. This kind of watch face probably wouldn’t have looked too good in the past but on AMOLED it rocks, hence its nomination.

A second nomination came for Quatro Watchface, another favourite of mine which I thought might win. It looks good in a visually innovative kinda way.

But the Winner is the Glance Watch Face by MobileDriveway. I’ve not used this one but over half a million of you have and many have given it a 5-star review. I’m not entirely sure why it won though, maybe because it looks good and crams lots of info onto the face?…all of which you can see with a quick Glance.

Innovation Award

The innovation award is awarded for obvious reasons…or is it?

I’m not sure why Wikiloc won considering it won the Best Fitness App award in 2018. Hmm. Don’t get me wrong it looks like a nice app but syncing a trail course to a Garmin is kinda old hat. Maybe I’m missing something here? Perhaps it’s the community-sourced element of the Wikiloc app that provides a free way to get courses to your Garmin that’s a good idea?

Other nominees were SurfLine and HyperIce.

HyperIce cleverly determines a recovery protocol based on your recent workout history. eg it ‘knows’ that a VO2max cycling workout would probably need you to perform some intensive recovery on your quads, so it recommends how you can use its recovery products accordingly. Again it’s a nice idea but one which PowerDot did early last year and which I’ve used quite often! Anyway, I couldn’t even find the Hyperice app on the CIQ Store, very strange.

The final nominee was Surfline. Again this is one that I downloaded a few months ago by coincidence. I’m not a surfer and having tried a few times on Bondi Beach have to say it must be one of the hardest sports out there, Golf being another. My use for Surfline was more mundane. I live near a tidal part of the River Thames which exposes gravel beaches at low tide and I wanted to time my dog walks around low tide so that Ruffy The Squirrel Slayer and me could get in some decent sessions of ‘Fetch’. But Surfline does not display high/low tides and, even with my limited knowledge of surfing, Tides are pretty important for surf conditions, right? Anyway, as I say, I’m not a surfer so what do I know?

A: The same as these people. (The app seems to be developed by Garmin and so can’t have high/low tides as this would then negate the marine-specific features of Quatix which people may then not buy)