DC Rainmaker

Their strategy always was "buy company" and "instantly lay off about everyone" to save costs and rapidly increase subscription pricing (1). So far they've been relatively soft (for their doing) on Komoot, which I too am most anxious off. Bikepacking.com has a good read about Komoot; it was probably unsustainable in the long run before bending spoons took over anyways (2), yet I much rather had they stayed a sort of indie company driven by their passion. I will cancel my long standing Komoot subscription the day enshittification news breaks. (1) https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-says-this-… (2) https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/

They claimed that the sale was because they wanted to scale it "to the next level" and "go from strength to strength for many years to come". I guess the best way of doing that is to fire the people building it. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-says-this-…

The aggressively closed & closed-minded behavior of Shimano, their active legal pursuit of anyone else using the abundant data here, turndd me off incredible from the company. One example: forcing Hammerhead Karoo to remove support. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/05/shimano-forces-hammerhead-to-remov… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31604152 (257 points, 2mo ago, 333 comments) Bikes are such a pure & free thing. Im also a computer lover, but computers are so easy to misuse for control & constraint, to obstruct involvement. It's so sad to see bicycles- a symbol of freedom & personal choice, one where standard(-ish) parts has long been a thing- fall sway to the darker corporatistic evils computing alas so often can encumber the planet with. Di2 is a defiler of spirit.

I'm also a fan of Garmin smartwatches, they have some amazing functionality and are serious tools for athletes and outdoorsmen. But they are handicapped by glitchy software. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-instability.ht…

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/ - DCRainmaker is THE run/bike/swim tech reviewer. Extremely in depth reviews with lots of pictures of any and every major tech device that hits the fitness world. https://weatherwest.com/ - In depth explanations of mostly California weather phenomena and medium term predictions.

Yes, there are so much incredible bike-software out there. TrainerRoad is fantastic (and check out their podcast!), Zwift is fun (races, group rides), also Sufferfest, Rouvy and others. However, since the resistance of the bike isn't readable or controllable by other software, the Peloton is just for all other usage than the Peloton app just a dumb spinning bike. Instead I'm using a Kickr Core and my normal bike, no lock in there, and much cheaper. Someone has also now made a physical device to adjust the resistance, so it can be used with other software [0]. I think Peloton really should use ANT+ and open up, would make the bikes usable for many more people. Of course, maybe it's the subscription Peloton wants to make money on, not the bikes? [0]: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/12/shift-smart-trainer-first-project-…

Timex makes a $120 GPS Ironman R300. It's apparently a Huami/Amazfit backend. I've been very pleased with it. Great battery life, even with GPS while running. I found it comparable to Garmins in that respect. The chunky looks could turn people off, but I prefer ugly retro-looking stuff :) Edit: here is DC rainmaker's review https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/06/timex-r300-gps-smartwatch-review.h…

To give context to nailer's succinct answer: some of fitness technology covered by DCRainmaker [1] works well with iOS/Android apps like Garmin Connect or Fitbit. This covers both continuous trackers that do not have GPS as well as the very large ecosystem of BLE sensors for runners/bikers/hikers. I also need/want a device capable of 911 emergency calls for both away-from-home and electricity/Internet-outage scenarios. I have a laptop and/or tablet and when I'm away from a WiFi hotspot I am almost always active or my hands are engaged. [1] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/

Seems like the Airdog has the functionality, by following a beacon worn on the subject. I just read a good and thorough review about it. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/airdog/introducing-the-adii-the-f… https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/07/airdog-adii-2nd-gen-sports-trackin…

I suspect the person who wrote posted this blog isn't into fitness on any serious level beyond 'how many steps did i get in today'. The first and second generation Apple Watches were average fitness companions at best. Even the weakest Garmin did the job far better. More specifically, the accelerometer was just awful unless you run at one pace, forever. For anyone who is actually interested in tracking real-time their peformance there are too many cheaper alternatives to justfiy this thing for fitness. Apparently, this is not just my opinion: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/02/apple-watch-review.html

A really good source of info on this is DC Rainmakers blog. His comments [1] on the lawsuit are worth reading if you're interested. In terms of heart rate accuracy, HR straps aren't always accurate either depending on placement, body and ambient temperature, moisture etc. Certain heart conditions can cause the strap (or maybe more accurately the software processing the data) to significantly underestimate heart rate too. [1] http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/01/fitbits-multiple-lawsuits.html

You know about the Garmin watches, right? They'll do navigation and (some) message notifications. Some reading: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/11/winter-gadget-recommendations.html http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2015/12/garmin-forerunner-630-depth-review.… Polar, TomTom etc have similar devices, but Garmin are probably the default choice.

Excellent hands-on review with photos and video: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/07/hands-on-backtracker-radar.html

I think sports chest straps get overlooked even talking about this space. DCraimaker is a very active and does deep statistical analysis and recording for comparing many types of chest straps and wrist straps. Worth checking out. [3] The polar H10 has been compared to medical grade heart rate monitors and has is as good if not better. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219/ shows an evaluation for EKG. Polar also has sdk to develop apps. It's the "gold standard" but there have been more and more advances in the space. But the polar h10 has stood the test of time. If you're into fitness, and happen to have a polar H10 you can get tons of data from just wearing the strap overnight. Via this recommended android app. It supports mqtt as well. You can see live or you can record to file. There's no cloud involved and you can export directly from app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.j_ware.polarsensorlo… [1] My tried and true app I have been using for workouts that's also gives me a Pulseometer RR. It doesn't do EKG but I have recording of over 18 hours no problem. Its a little out of date, in terms of not getting updates. But it is solid. It also does hrv and again local exports to csv. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beetlesoft.pulsomete… [2] Chest strap = EKG, wrist! = ekg as it's optical *excluding the apple watch, however chest/electrodes will always be accurate than wrist/optical sensory not to mention battery life. [1]…

I was really tempted by Whoop but then I saw this: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/05/whoop-3-platform-review.html There are also some good points raised in the comments. In particular, I like this comment: > I’m probably biased because I’ve used Polar for 20 years and Whoop for over 4 years now. I like where Polar has got to on their new Vantage products in terms of activity load, sleep, recovery etc. I started using Whoop because I was frustrated with how far behind the curve that Polar were on the V800 and I liked what Whoop were trying to do. > Fast forward 4 years and Polar results correlate the closest with how I feel and perform and also with other recovery measurements I use e.g. HRV4Training and Elite HRV. I find Whoop the least reliable in terms of accuracy of data and also correlation with how I actually feel. I like the way Whoop presents data but I have little faith in it due to the accuracy of the sensor etc. YMMV. That said, I like wearing a mechanical watch, and I'm not a huge fan of wearing a smartwatch, so I'd much rather wear something like the Whoop than a Polar Vantage watch or an Apple Watch. So if someone here wants to defend the Whoop and convince me the data is decent enough, I'd love that :)

Yes, Strava's main mistake IMO was not differentiating enough between free and premium versions. I am a long time subscriber because I like the social aspects of Strava but I almost never use the premium features. The basic free plan does almost all of what I need. The most annoying part of Strava's changes this year was removing access to segment leaderboards from their API (https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2020/05/strava-cuts-off-leaderboard-for-fr… This broke a bunch of 3rd party apps, including some that seem completely innocuous. For instance, I used an app that displayed a list of segments for mountain passes in the Alps and the number of times each had been crossed so far this year. The goal of this was to help people figure out when it was possible to cross a pass (which might be well before the road is officially open), but now that's broken.

I'd also take the results of that study with a pinch of salt - even if it is "the best" among the very small number of watches tested, most athlete focused reviews of the Apple Watch's HR performance show it being noticeably worse than a dedicated Bluetooth or ANT+ chest strap monitor, like the kind many cyclists and runners use. Speaking from my own experiences, the collection of ANT+ HR straps I've amassed over the years all work better than my Apple Watch's optical system does - way less odd outlier values etc. This seems to be true of most wrist worn optical heart rate measurement systems. If you are really keen to use heart rate as a training tool, the Apple Watch arguably shouldn't be your first choice. "What’s notable to start with is that it took almost 2 minutes after pressing the start button for the Apple Watch to decide on a heart rate. At which point that heart rate was incorrect by 40 beats. It wasn’t until 7 minutes into the run that it agreed with everyone else." https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/02/apple-watch-series2-nike-edition-r…

The Band isn't "useless", but it's more of an activity/lifestyle level fitness tracker. I don't know why anything would have convinced you otherwise. Of the continuous HR tracking general-purpose devices, Band v1 was better than the competition at the time [1], but things have progressed significantly in the past year (everyone's building their own PPG stacks w/ multi-wavelength LEDs now). If you need ANT+ and more advanced tracking of course you'll need a more specialized device. You won't get powermeter support on a Garmin watch until you get into their triathalon range, like the $450 Forerunner 920XT. The tradeoff there is that there's no optical HR/continuous HR support. For Garmin, optical HR is only on the newest FR235, which doesn't have powermeter support either - that doesn't make it "a fun gadget for a teenager" - power meters are specialized, expensive (is there any <$800?) devices for a single activity. If you know that you need support for it, you should know what you need to look for, but don't expect the majority of people to care about it, especially since it's obviously not the Band's target market. I will say the thing that's a real shame is that there's no of the "pro" fitness device manufacturers (Polar, Garmin, Suunto, TomTom) that has 1) built anywhere near a decent API/platform for consolidating fitness data (something that MS, Fitbit, Jawbone, etc have done a much better job at) or 2) at the very least, allow multiple of their own devices to work…

http://dcrainmaker.com comes to mind

DC Rainmaker has done his own test: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2026/08/google-pixel-watch-5-gps-accuracy-…

I truly hate to suggest this, but the meta vanguard nails this to a tee. https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/10/oakley-meta-vanguard-review-finall…

Yeah I totally agree with this list. In contrast, Coros had a pretty nonchalant response to their security issues last year. Attackers could: > Hijacking the vicitim’s COROS account and accessing all data > – Eavesdropping sensitive data, e.g. notifications > – Manipulating the device configuration > – Factory resetting the device > – Crashing the device > – Interrupting a running activity and forcing the recorded data to be lost [0] The security firm disclosed the vulnerability to Coros in Mar 2025. They planned to fix it by the end of 2025, and didn’t address it until the security firm publicly released the finding. [0]:https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/06/coros-confirms-substantial-watch-s…

Owned by Bending Spoons: https://canion.blog/2025/05/31/komoot-enshittification-incoming.html https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-says-this-… Hard pass.

You can just strap the watch to the handlebars, no? There’s also a mode where you can extend the display from your watch to a bike computer, for instances where you’re doing a multisport activity (or just want to record on a single device). https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/garmins-triathlon-extended.html

The in-ear HR is interesting. I wonder if Apple can make it accurate, e.g., Sennheiser Momentum are not very accurate[0]: > Look, I’m not gonna waste your time – this thing is dumpster-fire inaccurate level in almost every realm of heart rate accuracy except for indoor cycling. [0]: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/05/sennheiser-momentum-temperature.ht…

See also: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/03/komoot-acquired-history-says-this-…

Calls? Or just emergency texts? The closest thing to what you probably want is the Garmin Forerunner 945 LTE: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/698632 Discontinued, but young for Garmin devices and still available if you're willing to pay irrational amounts of money. It doesn't make audio calls out, but can receive audio messages (to Bluetooth headphones) and send/receive "emergency" text messages either to the Garmin emergency response center (sends a helicopter to your location, if required) or by SMS with a few canned messages or tediously entered custom messages to to a predefined, pre-approved set of emergency contacts, as described here: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/06/garmin-forerunner-945-depth-review…

Update: it was. See https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/01/garmin-watches-are-crashing-when-t…

So it begins - CES 2025 started and Garmin released the HRM 200 which operates by default in open mode, but one can switch to a secured pair mode over Bluetooth. see https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/01/garmin-hrm-depth-review.html Another tweak to the Garmin HRM design is conforming to laws in Australia and USA for requiring a tool to access coin cell battery compartments. But the required tool is built into the HRM strap.

No reference is ever made to a positioning system, whether GPS, Galileo, GNSS or Glosnav. DC Rainmaker confirms in its test that this watch is not equipped with a GPS chip. "Notably, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn't include dual-frequency/multiband GPS/GNSS. " https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2024/08/google-pixel-watch-3-hands-on.html It's not clear whether the watch has a single-band GPS or no GPS at all. The fact that they don't communicate one it is not encouraging.