On my wrist this month

I set my target for last month a little too high. The Fitbit Versa just took up WAY too much time because of various issues with connectivity and syncing. and that significantly curtailed my efforts elsewhere.

This is a bit silly on my part as it’s a mass-market watch and I suspect that most of you are athletes who would never even think about the Versa in a million years. So the Fitbit Versa Review is destined to languish on page 5 of Google forevermore. Although I knew that before I started; yet, secretly, quite enjoyed playing with Deezer and Fit Pay throughout the research process; although I would never publically admit to that.

I’m still using the Suunto 3 Fitness from time to time but can’t properly review its adaptive training as I train too often for the adaptive algorithms to work for me. I found a suitable guinea pig but the oHR didn’t work well on her so that, again, messes up how the adaptive part of the 3 Fitness would work. Instead, I might look some more at the audio prompts it has in the guided training.

I’ve finished the Amazfit STRATOS Review as well. The first triathlon watch with music, ahem. Actually, it’s really good and would probably win the entry-level category for the best triathlon watch. I was impressed by a lot of what it offered despite its more obvious flaws. And I also wondered how come Amazfit have managed to introduce VAST amounts of functionality (that mostly works), including integrating Firstbeat algorithms, when some of the premium sports watch vendors languish for way too long between new models. (The STRATOS review is a subscriber-only post until about 8th May)

I have to ‘test’ the accuracy of the new Favero ASSIOMA firmware. on ovals. I’ve been using the v2 firmware for several weeks now (in one-PM-on-a-bike mode) and it all looks ‘normal’. I just need to setup another bike with oval/circular chainrings on my kickr and get another PM on there as well. It just takes up sooooo much time. I should have done that this week but I am supposedly part-tapering for the Tour de Yorkshire this weekend, so that meant I held fire on the more intense sessions during the week.

I have an interesting and highly unusual wrist-based training aid already en route to me. It’s definitely not mainstream and should hopefully be arriving early next week. Apparently I will be able to link my activity or inactivity to IFTTT and do wonderful things.

Then I am hoping to get some top-end Jabra Elite Active 65t headphones to help me continue with my re-engagement of running with music but they are not quite released yet. Maybe next week. Over the last few years Jabra seemed to nail smartphone/watch-to-headphone connectivity and then lead with in-ear optical heart rate monitoring (via a Valencell unit). However now they seem to be moving a little away from new sport functionalities on their top-end device and their marketing is talking about Alex/Siri/GoogleNow integration, so that might be interesting. Even if it’s not interesting I will be looking at the older Jabra Elite Sport and what they have done with the Firstbeat adaptive training in their smartphone app – the only Firstbeat product integration that was made in an app rather than on a watch. I’ll probably be using that on the STRATOS, even better if I can do that with a Scosche RHYTHM 24 which went quietly through FCC approval last week I seem to remember. Now you know.

I’m also totally hacked off with my Huawei smartphone which now struggles to find my home wifi reliably – I have 4 wifi access points and it can’t find any of them; let alone pair with various sporty devices I have all around. Although, bizarrely, it maintained a connection with the STRATOS REALLY WELL. So I need to buy a phone. Out of principle, I can’t buy an iPhone even though it will work really well with the first releases of all new sports apps. Instead, I might try to re-live my youth and buy a Nokia before they strop trading again. I have some cycling friends who still work in Nokia and I was going to pump them for contacts within their health division to look at the Nokia SLEEP product. But the SLEEP looks like it is being handed back to Withings, so I’ll hold fire. On a passing but related note, sleep product EMFIT is introducing IFTTT.com integration which should finally introduce the alerting functionality I wanted on that a year or so ago. EMFIT sent out an email asking for suggestions on what they could link to, it’s not in the product yet and I don’t remember writing about it.

Which brings me nicely on to the new OTHER ring – it’s a HRV sleep/activity monitor. The old one did the sleep part really well but the activity part was not quite well enough for an athlete. The sleep side of it was suitable for athletes. The OTHER Ring should be here imminently as well, fresh off the production line.

Finally, on the sports watch front the most likely candidate looks to be the LG Watch which is supposedly the ‘best’ WearOS watch. I want to have a look at that just out of interest to see if it really is as good as some of the more mainstream sites say. Then again I imagine they get free ones to play with whereas I will have to buy it out of my ever-dwindling new kit budget and can now compare it to the STRATOS which will be hard to beat for the money.

Oh yes. I might finally get around to looking at the new firmware on the very old Polar V650. I might have to borrow one and profess to never having used the V650. But now it looks like a new V660 will be many, many months down the line.

There may be a few other things I can get my  hands on which are either hinted at in this post or stated outright.