This review will come in two parts, today’s blog will concentrate on the aesthetics of the watch and compare it alongside the Garmin and Mobile phone apps. It will very loosely talk about how accurate it is as I will be reserving full judgment until Sunday when I will be doing a proper measured event. I have always assumed my Garmin watch to be pretty accurate but it seems unfair to compare the readings unless the distance is accurate…

My first impressions of the watch were that it certainly looks a lot nicer than my 405, time has obviously been spent trying to create a stylish watch perhaps people will wear casually. However, it is pretty chunky which is understandable considering what is in it. The box had limited instructions but that seems common now with tech – enough guidance to get you online and to read more.

Technically you could just go out for a run without syncing the watch – however, most of the watch settings are configured through the Nike connect app so it’s wise to be ‘online’ with this watch. It seems unlike the Garmin counterpart this watch has very little it can do without being online, to it’s defence the Garmin offline tool is pretty pants but i’m sure useful to some (and there are paid for offline tools too). Odd things are configured on the computer and not the watch, most peculiar was watch sounds. In my opinion that is something which belongs in a settings option on device?

I already have a Nike account so can’t run through that process, when I did it many years ago it was simple so I assume it still will be! After plugging the phone in (unhiding the USB connector in the strap) the watch talked with the Nike site and seemed happy to connect. Once fully charged it was time for a run…!

As I’m on the recovery stages following the marathon so far the distances run with it have been relatively short. The watch is pretty damn easy to use there is no denying that. With only 4 menu options; clock, run, history and records, it’s pretty difficult to get lost! Selecting ‘run’ presents you with more options determining whether you will be using the shoepod (which is supplied – one up on the Garmin), heart rate monitor or GPS – chose what you want and that’s it away you go!

As I mentioned earlier, when running there is very little displayed, given the size of the screen I would have expected a better use of display to at least give the option of more information. For me if running with a HRM, I like to see, at minimum, time elapsed, distance and heart rate. I would also like to see average pace just so I don’t have to do maths in my head as I run. From what I can tell on this device I have the option of 2 blocks of information, everything else I can get to via the buttons but requires fiddling whilst running, never good!

After finishing the run and connecting it to the computer via the USB device, which I found a bit odd and dated – I would have expected Bluetooth sync or something similar! I checked the online site. I hoped Nike had done a bit of work online since I last visited, the site used to be pretty cool, a visual masterpiece, clean and simple. All good apart from the last point, why have a complex device but only present information in a basic way? Fortunately, tucked away was a button that said Nike+ Beta, now this was better! Much more granular information displayed but still well designed. Nike have obviously spent a lot of time and money on this site and it has been worth it.

The whole process from start to finish was seamless and very easy. This watch is perfect for the casual runner due to it’s simple interface. However, there is one thing that let’s it down, the cost. If this device had come in at around the £100 mark I think I would have been happy to recommend it (as I do the Garmin 305′s) however at nearly £200 it seems a bit pricey. Especially considering the Nike+ app for the iPhone is about £2 and I would expect the target audience to be the same? As I don’t have a 4g iPhone I haven’t compared the watch and the app but I would expect the results to be very similar!

I’m still really surprised by the decision to make these, they are pretty much solely for runners so no good for cyclists or triathletes and by the time you have added £50 for a heart rate monitor it competes with the likes of Timex, Garmin and Polar of which I suspect all of the later are more useful especially for multi disciplines. I always expected a Nike+ watch would come but not with a GPS built in. I wanted and hoped for a simple and small device which could interface with the iPhone app providing readouts from that, I suspect if such a device could be created it would be cheaper too!

I will reserve final judgement until next week following the 10k. Ultimately if the watch is 100% accurate then regardless of my thoughts on it’s look or functionality, the watch does what it needs to do!

Initial verdict Garmin 405 (£182.08) vs Nike+ (£189), Garmin 405 wins, however for beginners and those on a budget the 305 (£116.12) trumps the lot of them hands down. Come back next week for a distance review!

Big news fell into my inbox and around the web yesterday – Nike are releasing a GPS watch powered by TomTom. The Nike+ SportWatch enters the market to compete alongside the Garmin, Polar and Timex range currently in production.

Nike already have a MASSIVE community of runners who used its devices on Apple products. They have had the benefit of creating very slick interfaces which work in perfect harmony with the Apple ethos.

The Nike+ SportWatch GPS is designed to be simple and intuitive with only three buttons and a Tap Screen for navigation. During the run, the new Nike+ SportWatch GPS captures location information while showing runners their time, distance, pace, and calories burned on an easy-to-read screen featuring a customizable layout. Throughout the run, the GPS receiver works in tandem with the shoe-based Nike+ Sensor to deliver highly accurate pace and distance data. This sounds much like the Garmin Footpod/GPS model but typically the other systems increase the price to have the extra footpod setup. The benefit of the footpod is that sometimes you have to run in a gym or out of satellite range – this way wherever you go you get readings!

The features seem vary similar to all other devices, heart rate monitor, backlight, history. What I’m hopeful is that some time has been spent on the user experience which is something that I often think that my garmin struggles with. The touch screen feature will be interesting to see when my hands become sweaty or are in gloves!

If I’m totally honest I wasn’t expecting Nike to release a fully fledged GPS watch, I have had a few conversations in the past how I had expected them to create a simple watch that hooks into Smart Phones (iphones/androids etc) hence using the phones GPS receiver and processing power but giving the runner the extended information in an easy to read fashion. I would have thought this would be relatively cheap to create vs what they have outputted.

It will be interesting to see how well this does in the market. Nike/Tom Tom are entering a very competitive arena and from the press info I have I’m not sure its going to be suitable for tri-athletes, no mention of waterproof,  so really is a tool for the runners of which how many will give up there £1.99 Nike+ GPS app for something that is likely to be over £100 (realistically nearer £200 I’d have expected).

Regardless of the negatives I’m very interested to see what Nike/TomTom bring to the field!

On Friday night I finally managed it out on a run I could test this app out on. I had already been informed of possibly poor results due to poor GPS on the 3G however the app seemed to do well.

As with the micoach the app was pretty intuitive to set up, the interface feels very similar and merely an extension to the old Nike+ footpod app. It seemed to hook into the satellite pretty quickly and before long I had queued up some music and was running.

To be honest, I don’t like playing or even touching my phone whilst running, I tend to try avoid taking it out as I don’t want to damage it as it’s an expensive bit of kit. With that in mind I shoved it in my pocket and let it be. I got updates through my earphones informing me I hit mile markers. These also informed me of my average pace, a nice touch meaning I didn’t have to play with buttons!

One thing that did annoy me was that when a text came through it seemed to pause the app. This is probably resolved with the newer iPhones that allow multi-tasking but for me I was left puzzled as to what was going on. If it doesn’t pause things on the new phones maybe its worth suggesting going to airplane mode but I guess that would stop the app working, will have to try that next time.

The app turned out to be respectably accurate. I think it came in at under half a mile difference to my Garmin or 10%. Didn’t pay attention to the battery indicator but I’m pretty certain it would have drained it. However, my phones life is already tiny with or without apps running! On completing the run I stopped the workout and it instantly transferred the data to nikeplus.

The nikeplus site is sleek but possibly lacking exact data. It could possibly do with some tables of splits etc as the graph is a bit clunky and basic? Whilst I think the graphs on the Garmin could do with being a little smoother using averages the nikeplus seems a little too smooth!

Anyway in conclusion a nice little app, sadly lacking heart rate functionality and also it still fails to store track listings as they are playing (please Nike just add this feature, I want to see what tracks I run faster too!). It’s a nice alternative to the MiCoach App but does not include voice coaching the main differential between the two.

Let’s see how the battle of running gps phone apps progress as I’m already aware of others in preparation!

N

Rather unsurprisingly and just over one month after the release of the adidas MiCoach GPS app Nike have released an alternative. This morning I got an email from nike informing me as a nike+ member I should be the first to know about the nike+ iphone gps app and like a sucker to technology I went off to read all about it and check it out.

I was hoping that this would be the first of the two to join Heart Rate Monitor and GPS as I assumed the newer iphonescould interact with the device but alas, this still seems to be lacking from the build. Although it has led me to question whether the iphone 3gs/4 has Heart Rate facility? Answer in the comments below if you know! Anyway, over to the app itself – oddly they have charged £1.19, peculiar considering the Adidas one is free, I also would have expected some hype and fanfare over the app maybe free for ‘x’ days to get people aware of it, maybe that campaign is still to come however if you had paid and then they made it free I guess you’d be a bit annoyed!

Following a foolish stumble out of the office door last night I am not able to get out and test this app with a run today as I may have liked to have done. Apparently the GPS on the iphone 3 is nowhere near as good as on the newer phones, however I guess it should be as accurate as the micoach review from before. I guess in order to get to the real detail with these reviews I need to get a play with the iPhone 4 but in order to do that the cost somewhat outweighs that of buying a new Garmin!

The install of the app was pretty easy, the user interface felt much like that I was used to from my Nike+ of old. Nike+ saw me through many miles and up until March time I used it almost religiously racking up over 1000miles on the system, however I stopped using it finding my Garmin a lot more usable and accurate – the GPS version *should* rectify this! Fortunately for Nike its website in my mind is spot on, funky and very neat. The graphs presented are clever, albeit a bit difficult to understand, they could show the results in a slightly more obvious manner. I always disliked the fact that it didn’t store information about what track was being played but other than that it did everything that could be expected from an accelerometer.

The iPhone app seems to mimic the colour scheme and feel of the website creating a simple to use experience. Within minutes I had logged onto my online profile and was ready to start the app going. I decided to “go for a run”, which actually meant walking back from lunch which apparently took me 0.2 miles just to see if it worked. The interface was good, allowing the phone to be locked whilst showing useful information, it also appeared that you can get information to be spoken to you in different intervals. Once i clicked stop on the app it seemed to upload it automatically and it appeared on my nikeplus.com profile.

Obviously have been playing with social media for quite some while feeding into twitter and facebook neatly and cleverly, something that adidas micoach to work on and also having a quick squint at the webpage I can get the information and build my own interface for it – Perfect!! Should be a good test when I next get out for a run. I’m sure it will kill my battery so its only going to get a 4miler or so and as mentioned already I’m not expecting too much from its accuracy due to the phone not the app. Update to feature soon when I have actually gone for a run!

Also when I get a few mins free time I think im going to dig out my API attempt last time to facilitate a wordpress plugin or sorts for it. If there is demand for this out there please comment and I’ll get it going sooner rather than later!

Till next time.

Competition for MiCoach…

The ultimate selling point of the MiCoach up until now has been the fact that it’s not just a foot pod it also harnesses Heart Rate technology to provide a much more rounded report. Whilst the review highlighted its cost the device still could offer more than the Nike+, until now that is.

If you have a recent ipod the likelihood is you have heard of Nike+ but you may not be familiar with what it is. In January I blogged about the handy little device but since I bought one many years ago not much has changed with it and in the light of more competition Nike have obviously decided to introduce some new features.

I haven’t seen much on this yet – looks like they are being sold on the Nike Store website for £40 which would bring the kit up to about £50, assuming you have an iPod of course.  They haven’t released audio coaching with HRM but suspect given time this will come too. All in all this must be a bit of a concern to Adidas but I think this will take a while to catch on and possibly Nike have entered the market too late.

Quite why the Nike+ software hasn’t been extended to harness the power of the iPhone 4 puzzles me. It has GPS technology built in yet they still chose to ignore it. When nike+ creates a gps, HRM application for the iphone the likes of Garmin et al will start to worry as people will switch. Nike+ can extend to cycling too offering the user the ability to have a multisport tool all under one shell. A Garmin Edge will set you back £200 to attach to your bike, an iphone holder for your frame as little as £10 from ebay, a forerunner is £200+ whilst a arm strap for your phone again, £10. Sure you need to have bought an iPhone which isn’t cheap but more and more people are moving to this device so come on Nike catch up and create the ultimate sports app!

Having promised a review of all of the technology I run with for some time I have finally decided to pull my finger out and actually do it. It seems fairly obvious to review my Nike+ device first as it is one of the first gadgets I really purchased to use whilst running and I am still using it. At a later point I will create a subsequent review of my Garmin Forerunner watch should anyone want to know about that!

In about Feb ’08 I started running, I’m sure most thought it was a whim, a passing fad. However, for my birthday I asked for an Ipod Nano and whilst in the States I picked up one of the nike+ widgets. Darren,  a colleague from work already had one of these so I’d half seen it in action and was eager to get out with it (judging by my archive I went out 3 days after getting it!)

Before you begin (hidden not so obvious extras!)

So you have purchased the nike+ kit
and are eager to get out and run, well hold your horses. Unless you have special nike+ trainers which have a little hole cut into the sole to house the dongle you are going to have to either make or buy a ‘holster’ to attach to your laces. You can pick one of these up from ebay pretty cheaply – I have only used this one so can’t really review it but there are certainly others on the market. The dongle slides into the holder and then the holder is attached firmly to the laces. The device I have has a pivot hinge which allows the holder to be easily removed from the trainers unlike some which are weaved into the laces, this mechanism has its obvious pro’s and cons the later being the device can come lose/break off which has happened to me once so far resulting in needed to purchase a new kit.

Lets Run…

Ok so once you have got the little dongle in place and you have placed the widget into your ipod (if you have an old school ipod) you should see an option on the menu screen that says ‘Nike+ Ipod’ from this point the submenu’s should all be fairly self explanatory. Chose the run type you want to do, chose your playlist and away you go, once you have finished tap a button on your ipod and plug it into your computer.

Itunes will now do the rest of the work for you – syncing your data with the nikeplus servers which has a nice little portal to track your runs, see how others are doing etc. As the system has no concept of gps don’t expect masses of data but its a nice little automated online diary.

The Results

As the nike+ is just a glorified pedometer the distances and speeds mentioned should not be taken as completely accurate. Once calibrated they suggest to take a 10% margin of error, if you want almost 100% accuracy you will need to look at one of the gps devices out there which tend to be more expensive. If you want a relatively inexpensive first device i’d suggest looking into these. The Nike+ website is really nice and clearly a lot of thought has been put into its design and usability.

Verdict

I tend to recommend this device to all new runners, however, with iPhones apps and nokia phones starting to offer gps mapping perhaps the end is insight for the current Nike+ so who knows! If you have an ipod/iphone already goto the apple store and get the dongle for like £10 and your pretty much good to go…