Sunday, June 26, 2011

Week 1 With Nike+ SportWatch GPS

I’ll get a more granular in posts to come, but the general outlook for the Nike+ SportWatch GPS is very good. So far it has delivered on what it is billed as and I would say a great value for a recreational+ runner.

I had 2 issues this week on my runs, but they were user errors:

1. My first run was intended to use all sensors(GPS, Heart Monitor and Pod). I did not wait for the watch to say ready and instead hit the “Quick Start” option thinking they would all sync. The manual specifically says if you use Quick Start, only the pod will be used on your run.

2. Ran out of battery. Again the manual specifically says good for about 4 runs. Not being used to having a GPS watch I did not even think about charging it. This will not happen again Smile.

Beside those to hiccups, it’s nice to have a watch again and in this case, a watch with a very easy to read and navigate screen. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve run with a timing device. It’s even better to have a heart rate monitor back. Heart rate is my second favorite running partner (second to a human). It is really great to have GPS, I can now do up and backs in completely unknown areas and not worry about how far I’m going out. An added bonus is the Pod, the original Nike+ “pedometer” pod that goes in your shoe to count steps, distance and pace. It calibrates on all your runs to your GPS and if the GPS drops in the middle of a run because of tree or building cover, the pod picks up and continues marking distance, nice feature.

If you want to know something specific about the device, please comment, and I’ll try to address it.

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