I did some work on the best sports apps (run/walk/bike/tri) in mid-2015 for one of my non-the5krunner projects and decided to revisit and update some of the stats from 2015-2017 with figures to the end of 2018. The results make very interesting reading for me and some of the winners and losers might be surprising…
In January 2016 Valencell filed patent infringement lawsuits in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina against both Apple, Inc. and Fitbit, Inc. The patents in question were these 8,923,941 – Methods and apparatus for generating data output containing physiological and motion-related information 8,886,269 – Wearable light-guiding bands for…
Clever battery saving modes, great screen. Good map options. No oHR.
Suunto have today confirmed their plans for the MOVESCOUNT platform over the next year or so. As you can probably guess from the image to the right what we will see is a complete migration from MOVESCOUNT to the Suunto app. The ‘new’ Suunto app was effectively launched alongside the Suunto 3 Fitness in April…
I never expected a raft of new sports watches to be announced at CES 2019 but if I’d gone there I think I would have left disappointed with what was announced. Omron HeartGuide I’d already covered this last year. link to the5krunner.com It looks like an interesting medical-grade device for reading blood pressure on the…
This is a bit more than a ‘meh’ moment. The crux of the matter is shown here as you can now link your Suunto app account to your TrainingPeaks account. There’s an interesting bit too. I promise I will cover that further below. In all it’s glory here I link from movescount.com to TP (pre-existing…
Garmin have just announced the Garmin Vivoactive 3 Music Verizon. Better known as the snappily entitled “Vivoactive 3 MV”. The modified Vivoactive 3 Music is essentially the same as the one released 6 months ago but with a few new features. The big one is the LTE connectivity. LTE Connectivity means that your Vivoactive 3MV…
I recently had an email to check out the new Final Surge online coaching platform and their new CIQ app. I wasn’t that excited. However, it’s been quiet so I persevered. And it was worth persevering as I quickly had a ‘fall off the seat moment‘. It seems that Final Surge (FS) have looked at…
Final Surge (FS) is an online platform for triathletes, runners and cyclists to plan, record and analyze their efforts. It has some cool coach-specific functionality as well as being suitable for individual athletes who want to organise their own training or purchase and follow one of FS’s hosted online plans – for example Mark Allen’s…
The Garmin Explore app was released a while back as an off-line solution for mapping/navigation. With Garmin Explore you can follow your routes as well as sync’ing and sharing. Initially this was reserved to specialist Garmin handheld devices and, interestingly, also the newish Garmin Instinct (baby Fenix). Fine. All well and good. It seemed to…
Omron’s HeartGuide watch looks sweet. But it’s unusual. Frist up it’s got FDA approval and secondly, rather than heart rate, it measures BLOOD PRESSURE from the wrist. Wareable state that this is the first such device to get FDA approval. And that means that it’s another one of those pieces of tech that might actually…
Hey. You know who Zwift are. Well, they’ve now got US$120m to invest after an injection of funds from Highland Europe (of eGym fame); True (a Ribble backer); Novator; and Causeway Media, the latter of whom back eSports companies. And that is what the investment is for. A super-huge $120m push into eSports and Running.…
Fitbit will imminently release their updated OS3. ~This will apply to all Versa and Ionic models globally. There are a few new stats and about 10 new apps (eg TRX and Gold’s GYM), some of which are only available in the US. Although Fitbit themselves call this a ‘major upgrade’…I’m not so sure. TRX…
December’s v2.07 firmware has today been released for both Polar Vantage models; reviewed earlier here in detail (Polar Vantage Review) Changes made by Polar are stated to be these: Stopwatch, countdown timer and interval timer (image below) Button and touch lock Brighter backlight when looking at the display during training Speed sensitivity improved (faster reaction…
Starting at $490, power2max power meters feature dual-leg power measurement, left/right balance, Bluetooth SMART, ANT+ and auto-zero, among other features. power2max fits virtually every crankset, including SRAM, FSA, ROTOR, Cannondale, Specialized and more. Yep, even cyclo crossers, MTBers and track cyclists might have a smile on their face with these 😉 Claimed accuracy: 99% Format:…
It looks like Amer Sports is extremely close to being sold. This includes the Suunto brand, amongst other brands. The buyer is Mascot Bidco O, a consortium comprising: ANTA Sports, FV Fund, Anamered Investments and Tencent. An offer price for remaining shares of EUR 40.00/share looks to have been accepted by Amer Sports. This is…
It looks like a new Garmin smartwatch is imminent with the release of more information today in a FCC filing. What do we know? A: Not a lot. But the FCC filing for this “body worn transmitter” does state that the product is “a watch with a touch screen capability and one manual button…
Suunto have just updated the Suunto 9 model with the ability to enable/disable GLONASS on its new Sony GNSS chip. Firmware details: suunto.com The GLONASS enablement is squirreled away in the navigation menu, which is slightly unusual. Perhaps Suunto only see it being worth using in scenarios related to navigation rather than sports performance (ie…
Suunto have just announced the D5 It’s a dive computer and it looks to be built on the same hardware platform as the Suunto 9…unsurprisingly. Having said that the D5 has a bigger case, although the screen size and resolution appears to be the same as with the Suunto 9. The Suunto D5 has lots…
Perhaps once a week, I use Fit File Repair Tool, to fix or convert a workout or fix a route file. Perhaps STRAVA won’t accept a certain GPX file or perhaps I want to convert a TCX file to a FIT file for some bizarre reason. Rarely I may also have a file corruption problem…
