2020 Sportswatch Year In Review w/ DC Rainmaker By DesFit

How's it going folks I'm DES with DES fit and welcome to the second annual sports watch year. Interview with myself is alongside ray from dcrainmaker. com how's it going today ray it's going good you're, not here this year, but it's all right, we're making it work uh, virtually with uh what 40 watches between the two of us. I think so. Yeah, 40 watches a couple more devices as well. So, as everyone knows, 2020 has just been a weird year, but that's definitely not going to stop us from doing our annual sports watcher interview.

So I think ray has almost 20 watches. I have almost 20 watches in front of me as well, so these were all the major sports watch. Smartwatch releases of 2020. We both have in-depth reviews of all of these watches between ray's YouTube channel, and his website, as well as my YouTube channel, so go and check those out after you get done watching this video. So in terms of trends of what we saw this year.

So, first, I think we saw a lot of spo2 sensors come in. We saw a few new entries into the sports watch arena and then there's going to be always on displays, solar charging, and then one trend I saw this year was that maybe some watches came to the market, maybe a little earlier than they should have. So what are your kind of thoughts on that ray yeah? I think so. I think we also saw like a shift towards the back half of the year uh as well- and you know historically, we've seen watches more in the CES time frame and then the spring time frame everything else, but this year, given the pandemic, so many companies kind of slid their time frames so, like we were putting out this list in almost everything is like, from July onwards, minus a handful thing early in the year. Furthermore, I think from a tech side, though, it's definitely been more of a focus on, like you, said, the health and fitness side of things, as opposed to the sport side of the house, so sp02, but also breathing rate, and all these other things that people have been trying to use to diagnose and figure out how they might be able to improve their fitness, while they're still kind of stuck at home and maybe trying to ward off uh.

You know cover 19. With COVID-19. What was interesting is that I thought that maybe there we'd see a down tick in terms of people actually wanting to check out a lot of health and fitness devices, but actually that turned out to be the opposite, where a lot of people just because they were maybe stuck at home and needed more things to do well. That actually became a hot topic. Yeah.

Definitely I think as well. In some countries too, there's been allowances for fitness, particularly so, for example, in France. You're allowed right now, as well as back in the spring one-hour day, to go upwards of one kilometer from your house for fitness, and so in that particular case, that's driving people to get into fitness that might not have otherwise been in fitness, because they're not allowed to leave their house for really anything else, except for the essentials, and so I think that may be driving. You know there as well as many other places. People say you know what I've got this extra time when I'm not commuting anymore, I'm not doing the other things.

I can try to improve my health, a little sure yeah, absolutely all right, so um yeah, I guess without further ado, let's go ahead and get started, and we're going to get started with the beginning of the year. So the first major release of the year was going to be the Santos seven, so the sunto7 that was going to be sun tow's first smartwatch, that's going to be running, Wear OS. The interesting thing about the Shinto 7 is that it was definitely more smartwatch focused, probably than sport focused, and it allowed ts unto. To add a lot of smartwatch functionality to their lineup without necessarily having to like to create everything on their own, so they essentially use the backbone of Wear OS for their platform. So that way they can get music and maps and payments and a lot of other smartwatch functionality.

I actually didn't cover this device, but ray you did so um ray if you could go through that one for us yeah. So the syntho7 is one that I think if you had asked me, sort of at the beginning of the year uh. You know if you put the old on a sheet of paper and said which one is going to be the hot one for the year. I would have bet that this was the standalone. Standout stand everything winner for the year um, which is ironic, because if those that follow me uh, you know my reviews would know that.

I was not terribly pleased with how this watch turned out. I had so much potential, especially being aware of Wear OS device, and one that you knows unto has always done their own thing um and in this scenario, where us actually didn't let down this watch, it was really more the unto sports platform side of it that I felt like let it down it kind of for me just wasn't the whole what you'd expect from unto as this adventuring type watch, it was just sort of a like a poorly implemented Apple Watch, sort of thing um, and it just wasn't that great, which is too bad, because I still think even today, um like if you look at this, this home screen right here uh. This is showing the surrounding trails. The last time I synced in this case, which is down in Switzerland on this watch swatch, and it's just beautiful, like the clock face, is absolutely stunning. Uh in terms of this is a heat map right here that you're looking at uh over.

Basically, all the trails in my area- and I can change what type of sports this is showing as well, and you notice I'm having to keep pressing that button, because the always off display just keeps on turning it off there. But still I like where this is going, and I'm really excited to see what into can do with this over the next year or two down the road. Initially, the unto app that kind of lived on top of the warehouse platform. It didn't have a lot of tight integration with something like google fit so um has that changed at all throughout the year yeah they actually did implement a bunch of fixes and updates around that cohesion side of it back in June, and then back in September. They added a bunch of sport, features around the breadcrumb style, and they've been adding things throughout the year here and there uh.

But I think this is really the play for the next version of warehouse where the battery hopefully gets better, where they can really jump into that, and that's where I hope to see them transition more towards like a stunt, 5-ish sort of uh watch where they add a bunch more sport features that for someone that that wants a know, I want to say called true smartwatch, because all these are technically smartwatches, but some of the ones I watched that really looks pretty and looks beautiful, and this does look pretty look beautiful, but still wants that in-depth sports side of things. That's where I really hope they can take this, and if they can do that, then that, in my mind, becomes a huge competitor to Garmin and polar and others, whereas right now, they've been kind of struggling to sort of find their place in life. In this lineup, the two issues that were uh, first and foremost in my mind, were going to be the price as well as the battery life, and the battery life was definitely probably one of uh the biggest complaints. I think I saw from a lot of people but um. How was the uh GPS and heart rate performance out of sunto7 uh? I've had a rough go uh, primarily the heart rates.

The GPS has gotten better over the course of the year. The heart rate's been kind of rough for me um, and they used a different sensor than everyone else. They used a life cue sensor, which a company that used to do some work, I believe, with tom-tom years and years ago, and then they sort of disappeared off the sports, tech radar scene, and they're back again, and I've done a lot of good work there. So I think we could see those advancements like you said, though, the price was always a weird one. I think they took the approach of saying this is bars unto pricing, as opposed to saying this is our typical, where OS pricing not r but the market's typical warehouse pricing.

In this case it was double the price of a minimum. A typical Wear OS watches, but it didn't yet have all the pseudo features that you come to expect from soon to watch, which is where they found themselves. In my mind, they got themselves in a little of pickle there very cool all right. Thanks for your information on that one. So next up we have the Casio God dash h1000.

So basically, this watch is it's going to be Casio's. Basically, their first focus fitness g-shock watch, so the g-shock lineup they're kind of really they have a very, very loyal following because of their durability and their build quality, and I would definitely have to say I mean this thing is an absolute tank and when I say tank, I'm not exaggerating at all. This thing is um positively gigantic. It's its by far the biggest watch out of all of these on the table. Right now they have GPS on board.

There's going to be a heart rate sensor. The amazing thing about g-shock watches is that they're going to have phenomenal battery life. This thing is going to be exactly the same as that in terms of fitness performance, though they have a lot of fitness features on the surface, but as soon as you dove in a little, it was again kind of their first try at this. It was a bit of a shaky foundation. They built a palace of sports features in the app and everything like that, but the underlying the underpinnings of that entire foundation once you started digging into it like.

If you just shook the house a little, the whole thing fell down like in the first few features they used. They added these. These great first beat features that they paid for the license and all that. But if you went for a single bike ride with it, it broke everything because they only added running as a sport or hiking technically, but that's it. They basically have one activity profile and that's run, and you can actually see that.

I mean they actually imprinted that, like as a hard graphic on the watch itself, so I mean it basically only has that one run profile and in this sort of marketplace. That's not really going to compete, so I mean you definitely need a lot more than that. I mean, if you're only going to be running with this and only running with it outside it's actually going to be a pretty good watch for you, probably maybe other than its size, but just because the metrics that it actually did deliver using that one run profile if you were only running outside, were actually pretty good. The vo2 max was actually lining up with a lot of other devices that I used the training status recovery. All that stuff was actually perfect, but yeah.

They definitely needed to expand. On the. I guess you could say the overall fitness experience a lot more yeah. I think ultimately like a watch as a baseline. In my mind, anyways from a sport profile standpoint should have at a minimum run bike gym like it has to have in those three things which, from a sport, capturing exercise and capturing high intensity sort of stuff has to have at least those three like I'm not asking for swimming I'm not asking for like paddleboarding, just those three things, even if it's just a casual bike ride or going to the gym casually, and when, if you know, I think, as you showed it, those results get skewed.

If you do one of those sports uh outside that. So I will say, though, as you mentioned earlier, battery life is bonkers on this, and solar charging also super impressive uh. The ability for to charge off the sun, which I know sounds obvious to the g-shock crowd, but then going to like what Garmin has on their solar side. And you know here, you can see that solar ring all around its gigantic right. It's its like a huge chunk.

It's like a bezel, a secondary, bezel, effectively um, which is saying a lot for a watch, this big that that's that big uh compared to something like you know, the phoenix 6 the bezel there that solar ring is virtually invisible on this little edge right in the outside there. So it's super tiny uh, but with that massive solar ring you're, getting just incredible solar power off of that, and it lasts forever. It's its really, really impressive. This is uh kind of their first try at it. So I definitely would like to I'd love to see more updates.

This watch itself. This is one of those devices that I'm you know kind of referred to earlier, where maybe it was a little early to come to the market, or maybe it doesn't necessarily have all the features that people are looking for, but it's you know kind of their first try into the market all right. So that's everything with the Casio g-shock move, God h-1000, which is a long name by the way. So next up is going to be the Fitbit charge, 4. So um with the Fitbit charge, 4 they updated the Fitbit charge 3 with GPS and then the charge 4 is also going to have a spo2 sensor, and then I think the other thing was that it had a Spotify app ray, go ahead and talk us through what you found out with the Fitbit charge for yeah.

So in addition, it also made the contactless payments baked in as well on this model. So in the past the U. S. version anyways, it was not a stock default option, whereas here it is the stock default for contactless payments outside the US, it varied by country whether with stock. You know, I think it's funny when you talk about fit bits in particular this level, the Fitbit uh, as opposed to smartwatches, we'll talk about later on here, Lauren good at the verge said years ago.

She said yep, it's just another Fitbit um and I think to some degrees. That's the case with the uh charge. Four, it's its! You know, as the name implies the fourth iteration of the charge, and it's actually more than that, because there was the charge, the charge hr, and you know different things like that, and it's its. What you would expect is a Fitbit like if you ask someone what a Fitbit was on the street. This is it, except with the minor new features that we mentioned there, um versus when we talk about something like the sense and the versa 3 there.

In my mind, those are dramatically different. Uh watches the rest of the Fitbit series, the inclusion of the onboard GPS. Well, that was probably I think, it's probably the biggest feature for my testing. The GPS was pretty lackluster um yeah. It dropped out a bit so uh.

So for that one highlight feature, I didn't necessarily think it was worth it. The heart rate performance was basically the same as the charge three where it was crayfish, but there were absolutely some points where I just was not necessarily getting consistent results. No, I think it's its good to have those options in the marketplace that are not super high in or just great things, I'm sure you know in Black Friday and over the next little while in sales, we'll see that continue to be one. That's you know made super affordable, probably 99 bucks or whatever the case is, so it's great to have those options and the Fitbit ecosystem is what makes the Fitbit so good. I mean, I think, that's something that's often overlooked uh is that their social platforms, their ecosystem, their app everything is incredibly well polished, even though, when I say it's just a Fitbit, I don't mean that necessarily it's a derogatory thing, but more just the fact that it's they've they've reached maturity level that you kind of know what to expect there, and those features become more incremental each year.

So next in the lineup is going to be the polar grit x, um. So with the polar grit x. This is basically an original vantage v. All the features of that kind of put into a more ruggedized case. It's going to be stainless steel on the outside.

It's really attractive. Looking, it's still got the exact same touch screen the exact same display the five button configuration so it actually, it did come with a few new features, and then it actually did not include. I think, just two features from the original van of advantage of these, so the two features that it didn't include were recovery pro and the orthostatic test. Some people may use those some people don't, so they just chose to remove that from the grit x. However, the features that they added to it, they're going to be till splitter, so hill splitter is a feature that it works well for doing intervals while you're doing intervals, and it's interesting to see that data after the fact, but it doesn't necessarily give that much information and for in regard to like navigation.

So what were your thoughts on hills bitter when you first started testing it? I was excited when I read the marketing slide and then, when I went out and did it I was like hmm, so it's different from what like climb pro was on the Garmin side or something like that. It serves a different purpose and not a bad purpose like to me. It's a good stepping stone, uh hill splitter is great for, if you're just doing hill repeats in your neighborhood, like somewhere nearby that you don't need to know anything about that hill, because you've done it a million times like that's great for training purposes, but it's totally useless for going out into the mountains where you don't know the actual climbs um and want to know how far to the top, it doesn't simply don't tell you that it just tells you how far you've gone, not how much pain you have left so um, and I mean this watch is designed to compete in a way with the instinct in the way, with the phoenix like sort of a halfway in between uh it's their offering in the outdoor realm and uh. But I, like the look of it. I think it's a great looking watch.

I think they just nailed. The bezel design in particular is really nice and the buttons, like you said, are spot on so um. To me, this was a good like standout option for polar that's kind of shifted things a little from where they've been in the past, so yeah talking about hardware. So this is the precision prime. I think what they call precision, prime 2.0 optical heart rate sensor. Now it's pretty much exactly the same as the original advantage v.

However, they changed the colors as well as the firing pattern on this, which is supposed to which was supposed to get more accurate heart rate results for my testing that wasn't necessarily the case for how much technology that the heart rate sensor has. I was expecting quite a bit more yeah, I was. I was a bit bummed as well. Um. Furthermore, I've historically had great results with polar precision.

Prime sensors, I think they've among some of the best in the industry and in this case- and it continues to be to this day- I used this watch just a couple of days ago. I use it frequently comparison testings for things just to kind of keep things mixed up, and I'm continuing to see. I'm disappointing optical heart rate sensor results. It's not like it's horribly off. It's just always had those little bumps and jitters that just aren't correct yeah.

Now and that's- and that was definitely the bummer from my standpoint too, because pullers chest heart rate straps and then also the polar oh1. The polar oh1 is probably the most consistent and accurate um arm heart rate sensor that I've uh used, and it's its optical as well. I would have just hoped to see some more of that precision come to their wrist based heart rate sensor, yep. No, I agree with you all right, so that is the grit x and then coming right after that is going to be the polar unite. So this is not to ignite.

This is to unite so with to unite. What they essentially did was they took GPS out of the device, and they made it a little smaller. It's super light. I think it's only 32 grams. It's going to be a really simple one-button configuration along with a touchscreen, it's incredibly comfortable to wear just because it's its only 32 grams, but this one is um.

You know with taking GPS out of the device. They're definitely aiming for a little different market with this one. So this one, I think, is going to be more for that fitness focus person that wants to spend a little more time in the gym, not necessarily outside. But it's going to be a good entry point. I guess you could say into the polar ecosystem.

It's going to have fit spark the training guidance, which I think is probably one of the one of the features. That probably is a little different from a lot of other watches around here, where it gives you perfect insight based on your past training, as well as your recovery yeah. I think it's one that they've done a perfect job of just it's for someone that doesn't want to go out and try to race an iron man or have a set. You know goal, but just wants to keep uh healthy and fit throughout the years keeps on offering you think. It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet of what you should do each day when you wake up to go ahead and keep yourself fit uh, and it's something that um I'm impressed with this watch.

In general, I would say, like the features in this watch and all that are awesome, everything's great everything's, good until I got to the price, and it was 229 in the U. S. , I think now it's been dropped down to 199 but 229 in the US and without GPS. To me, that was a really tough sell because, again, like Apple Watch Series, 3 has been 169 and certainly 179 most a year and there's a lot of options in this realm. Here, the versa- let's see 2, I think, was also like 169 is, as well with GPS and so it's tough to have something that doesn't have GPS at this price point at 229, especially um, which is too bad because it's got so many great features that for someone who you know, isn't trying to go out and do an iron man or something.

This is an awesome watch that goes ahead and has all those right features to keep you kind of moving along the next step there from a sport fitness standpoint. No, I definitely have to agree with you on the price um. I think. That's, that's! Probably, what we'll see with the trend, and I'll probably have my wrap-up thoughts on that with the vantage v2? Is that um polar? They definitely put a lot more into the software end of things, and they do a lot of things under the surface I mean such as like they have. I, I think they actually have perfect sleep tracking as well.

So a lot of things, those things work really well together with the polar flow app but yeah. In terms of like a big bulleted point of features, it's its a little harder to stomach than some other offerings out there so yep. So that's the polar unite, all right. So next up we have the phoenix 6 pro solar and the garment instinct solar, so the phoenix 6 pro solar, at least what they essentially did with this, is that they brought down the solar charging capability that originally came out on the 6x pro solar down to the smaller size variant. So basically, you're going to have the six pro solar and the six s pro solar in terms of the gains that you're going to get out of the solar charging their going to be negligible.

To be honest with you, I mean it's going to get you maybe an extra day or two at the most, but it was a nice little update that that came along yeah. No, I think it was something that to me, it was just extending the model SKUs of the phoenix- and you know phoenix- has always had this growing reputation of how many SKUs unique models can they have from each edition um? And it's crazy like if you look at the phoenix 6 lineups, except for like 21 or 24 skis before this. Even I think, like you know, you have the phoenix 6, the 6x, the 6x, the phoenix 6s pro, and then you've got like all the titanium like there's so many units out there uh, and this was just sort of rounding that out because people always have said since you know the solos introduced last year, saying why can't I have solar on smaller units. As you said from a phoenix standpoint, the battery life is so negligible there, it's its borderline, silly, um and, and it takes so long to use solar charges, it's more about just sort of topping off a little. However, if we switch topics to the instinct solar, then things in my mind, step up a bit uh and for a number of reasons, one, the instinct solar is not the same as the original instinct.

It is a dramatically different watch under the covers. There's a ton of changes there. It may look the same, but it's way different. The sensors are different on the bottom um. The battery management technology is different.

The battery capacity is different, like everything is different about this. Besides the external case and the solar is much better here than on the uh, the phoenix six, which doesn't mean they're different technologies, it's the same technology, but they're just way more solar paneling, and you can see that you put them side by side here, um the solar ring, if you put just like that that little reddish ring around the outside edge there. That's the solar here at 100, photovoltaic lever level and then below it. It's a 10 below the entire screen there versus on the instinct, this entire section right there, where those little things are where it says, light and down, and back that's all solar panel at 100, plus the solar panel below it at that 10, and so it charges way faster than the solar, and you can legitimately get away with like forever power in the summer, using just the uh instinct solar's built-in battery, if you're not doing GPS every single day. Oh, absolutely! No! I completely agree with you like the phoenix 6 solar yeah that was basically just adding solar to the existing phoenix lineup, but yeah I mean the instinct solar.

Your very well could call this an instinct too, just because it was quite a bit different from the original one, but uh just like ray said. The battery life is phenomenal on this thing, even without the solar charging I mean they just did so many improvements on that it is going to be the same exact kind of case. I guess you could say I mean the heart rate sensor is going to be different on the back, where this one is going to include the spo2 sensor, where the original instinct did not have the spo2 sensor yep. In fact, if you look side by side here, you can see, in my left hand, side. I've got the original uh instinct, which is the esports one, we'll talk about the end of this video, but you can see the older optical sensor design there versus the newer one in the instinct, solar in the middle just totally different.

Looking just like the original instinct, it really took me. It took me by surprise at how popular it was um. The instinct solar, the biggest thing for me was just the battery life was just so good that I was. I was pretty impressed with it as well, that is the instinct solar and next up we have uh in terms of releases. We have the Fitbit sense and the Fitbit versa.

Three so um, I guess I'll start with the Fitbit versa or the Fitbit sense. Pardon me so the fitment sense. I have been testing it initially, there were some issues in terms of the cohesiveness. I guess you could say of a lot of the metrics that was collected. What's perfect news, though, is that I think, just yesterday, the day before Fitbit just came out with the Fitbit OS 5.1, which that's going to add Google Assistant, it's going to have audible replies from Alexei and then there's going to be enhances to like calling and texting as well, but probably, most importantly, is that they actually updated the OS to have the blood oxygen information kind of just actually baked in this time, where you didn't have to have the specific watch face to view that information so but um in terms of your initial thoughts of it, how did you fare with it yeah? I think the sense was something that's on paper was super exciting, like there are so many features there. The amount of sensor data they're pulling in as the name implies sense, and you could take that as a sense on how you're feeling or on the sensor data either way of it.

They were doing a lot of things right on paper, and I was like wow. This is going to be a rock and watch uh, and you start wearing it. You're like okay. This is good. This is good, and then you start to realize that the guidance from that in the app just sort of kind of fell flat.

In my opinion, like it just didn't, it didn't take the next step of telling you what to do with all this mass amounts of data and sure that same criticism is totally valid as well. When you look at something like Garmin or even, to a lesser extent, polar where there's just so much data thrown at you. But in this case this watch was targeted out of market and marketed at being telling you how to use all this data and do something with it, and it didn't it just didn't, and I also for me, I found pretty severe issues with the accuracy, the heart rate, on both the sense and the versa three um. That kind of you know pushed that even further down the road uh. I liked what Fitbit was doing here.

I liked the look of the watch. Furthermore, I like a lot of things about it uh, but I think like most reviewers, that reviewed it, it just seemed a bit rushed, and it seemed a little like it just didn't gel like it just kind of they just kind of went yeah we're good Friday like beer time like no, and so I uh, so I have been. Furthermore, I've actually had the sense for about. Furthermore, I think, two months now, and I've I review devices that I'm generally like excited about for sure, but when a device starts to underperform, that's where I get less excited about it, and I am basically less motivated to actually put out the full in-depth review. So basically the biggest thing for me- and this is what ray just said- is that the heart rate sensor performance was not great.

You know I'll give you a little of a spoiler alert. When my, I will still do the in-depth review of it. Just for those of you want to see it but um. At this point, I can't necessarily recommend the sense, but the versa 3 I actually didn't choose to cover that device, but you already kind of gave us a little of a spoiler on that, but go ahead and give us your thoughts on the versa three yeah I mean it's literally, as you can see side by side, it's a Fitbit sense without the ECG functionalities. What this comes down to, and a few other tiny metrics like three that are not included in here.

Otherwise, it's the identical watch through and through and the same heart rate sensor. So I had the exact same issues with that as well, and I, like the price point, a lot better on the sense. I think that's a good price to be. They just need to fix the accuracy issues and if they could fix the accuracy issues for me for heart rate in the center or sorry in the versa. Three then, I'm actually pretty happy with that price to value ratio uh, whereas a sense to me was just way too expensive for what it was from the value standpoint and all that there yeah yeah uh, that's that's uh kind of, and I think that wraps up Fitbit for the year.

So that's uh kind of the theme that's going on there so uh. Next up, we have the Samsung Galaxy watch three, and I think I may have actually skipped ahead to the fit bits but anyways with the galaxy watch three. So this one is definitely going to be their flagship, galaxy wearable. So it's got a really nice construction. It's stainless steel! I mean it looks amazing.

The display again is phenomenal. On this thing. Everything else on the surface was uh or underneath the covers is kind of really the same, except for the fact that it does have ECG functionality. However, the big caveat with the ECG functionality or EKG functionality was that it was only available with select Samsung Galaxy phone and then obviously, it's not going to be uh. The ECG functionality is not going to be available on an iOS device so but in terms of the performance of the galaxy watch 3.

As I said in my review, it was better than every Samsung wearable I've tested in the past. However, it still did fall a bit short. I did my full end of three. I don't think you have, though, yet so what have your experience has been so far, I've turned it on I've powered it. Furthermore, I've charged it I've, let it die, I charge it again and, as you can see right now, it's ready to get started.

So that's as far as I've got on this I've been busy with a lot of other watches, uh. So yeah. That it is ready, though. It's charged again for, like the ninth time that I've charged it up, and I'm ready to roll on this at some point here in the future, but I will say it's I think they've nailed the industrial design on this iteration though um to me, this is a gorgeous watch, and they've made some nuanced changes that I think are nice on this one. Yeah, no absolutely like I said the good news is better than every other Samsung wearable I've tested in the past.

Is it on par with any of these? Not necessarily, it's still absolutely a smartwatch. First, fitness watch. Second, fitness is definitely something they, I believe just tossed in there just to make it appeal to a broader audience, but if you're looking for a fitness device first, I would probably look for some other options. So that's the galaxy watch three next up is the corps pace. Two.

So initially, when I got the information about the coarse paste, I'm like okay, I, to be honest- I didn't really pay attention to it too much. I started to dig in, and I think it's one of the one of the devices I'm probably most excited about this year altogether, so it was kind of interesting the marketing behind it was like it's like a super light watch. What it really is. It's tiny, it's very comfortable to wear, but it's absolutely phenomenal. How many features it comes from the money.

So does it start at 200? I believe is that correct, yeah 199, yep, yeah 199, and it comes with features that um you would expect out of the three or four hundred dollar watch. I mean it's an it's a multi-sport watch. It comes with power, meter support. It actually comes with running power native on the wrist itself, yep, and then you actually have native stride foot pod support as well. So you don't need to unlike a Garmin device where you actually have to download the stride app.

It comes with stride. Foot pod support just built into the device it uses, course's crown interface to interface with the device, which is probably honestly my only real like complaint about the device. Is that I'm? Just I'm that's. I know a lot of people do like that interface. But for me, it's just not.

I don't know it's just not for me necessarily. So what are your thoughts on the pace? Dude ray yeah? I would say if you know looking across this table to me this is probably the watch of the year. If I were to like grant a watch the year title or something or someone, I've never done that. But if I were then I would say like the pace. Two is probably the watch of the year um just for the amount of features packed in there and that it's still, you know accurate and all those things that you would expect um for 199 is super impressive.

Full multi-sport watch full everything. My only knit is the same as yours. I hate the crown on this watch. I really do um. Furthermore, I just think it's clumsy it's its all the things that you don't really want um, and it wants to be like an Apple Watch, crown button combination, but it's not and not because it's not as good as that, and it's not.

But it's not because now it was a crown there, but also because it's just not that practical on an Apple Watch either for sport and fitness uh, it's great for like lifestyle stuff, but when it comes to working out hard and stuff being able to just press the buttons you want to press very quickly to get as many as you want not dealing with this stupid crown. I'm begging you a course ditch the crown just please ditch the crown go to five buttons, there's a reason why almost every other you know heavy sport watcher has five buttons um. That, aside to me, it's an incredible watch and I think it is does a good job of showing up. Many of I mean almost everything else here is probably more expensive um, so I would say: there's a good job of showing up almost every other watch on this table. That's priced in some cases, one two three four times as much.

It's its super impressive. What was fascinating about this, too, is that going back to the price is that last year we definitely harped on CoreOS for their pricing, because with the um vertex, as well as the apex pro, those were definitely priced higher than they probably should have been, and this one was priced lower than I would have completely expected. So that was a really great thing to see this year from horror yeah. This was them getting back to the roots. They came into the scene, I think two or three years ago now um with a 199 or maybe at the time it was 299 but eventually dropped.

I think to 199-ish the original pace and that had all the multi-sport features all these things that was showing up you know effectively Garmin and Poco and unto. This is one that sort of got back to those roots versus last year, like, as we said, it was the vertex and the apex and other variants of that that just felt forced, like they just felt like they wanted to be phoenix, is so bad, but they weren't phoenix's, like at the end of the day. They didn't have the true polish of the design. They didn't have all the features underneath it, but they just had the price tag next to it, and you're like no you, you can't charge that for that um and this has resonated super well with. I think a lot of people all right.

So that's the CoreOS pace too um yeah impressive, offering from uh chorus this year. So next up, we have two different watches, so we have the Apple Watch Series six, as well as the Apple Watch SE. So with the Apple Watch Series 6, this was going to bring a blood oxygen sensor to the Apple Watch, and then there was also the always on altimeter, and I'll just go into it. Right now is that with the always on altimeter plenty of watches have this already. It was just.

It was definitely some extra mark apple marketing fluff. On top of this, the biggest actual functionality- I guess you could get out of that always on altimeter- is that they had a special watch complication where you could see your altitude all the time, pretty fluffy to be honest with you so yeah. Basically, it was funny because, like they, they marketed as being this all like this huge shift, and it's like at the end of the day, you just made it available on the watch face because it always had an always on altimeter. It was always been there for like forever um, and so this was some brilliant apple uh marketing of this brand-new thing. That's, like you, just added this in software to the watch face.

That's it that's the sum total of this entire change. Yeah, and you know that's, and that really brings up a good point- is that the series three four and five they all had altimeters already. It was just again just showing it on the watch face and if you're curious, if, like other watches, show the current altitude on their watch face absolutely there's. Definitely a complication for that on plenty of other watches, so anyways pretty fluffy um, but I guess good job apple on your marketing, so there was also a brighter always on display, that's going to be more viewable, definitely outside more than inside, and then there's also the faster s6 processor. Now, to be honest, I haven't necessarily seen uh necessarily an improvement in terms of speeds with s6 processor, but what I did see improvements on were the battery life.

If you were to disable, you know a few things, but overall, if you were to let's say basically do a side-by-side comparison of the exact same settings on the SC versus the s6 you're, getting a lot better battery life out of the s6 yeah. You went deep down the rabbit hole battery life in one of your, your videos or um on these watches, and it was you, you found the rattle hole, and then you're like hold on we're going for the colony. Now. This is an entire rabbit farm. It's impressive, and it's funny like, so I've you know, used both of them and have videos on both of them and I think to me what was more interesting between the series 6 and the SC is the fact that all the nuanced changes and differences they made on the six that they did or didn't make on the SC yeah.

I think, if you look at the SC, it's funny, because there's so many components in there that are, you know, part like series. Four, some of them are part series, five, some of their part series, six um and there's now like set. You can't just go and lie in the sand and say: oh, it's a cheap series, six um, or it's a series, three plus something else like it's. Just such this weird blend and it's clear that apple is trying to find a way to increase the average selling price of the Apple Watch. Um series lineup as in whole because the series 3 is found it's in a place in life at that sub 200 level, now to 169 pretty consistently, and they didn't really have a good option between there and effectively 400 bucks for the full-featured versions and so at 279.

I believe it is that that's a good option to kind of find that blend there, and I think, for the average consumer they'll, look at that and go yeah I'll pick up that in instead, as opposed to the series three that's sitting back in the past um. But when I look at like sport, tech, uh accuracy and stuff, I found pretty significant differences between them uh and where the series six uh fixed a lot of GPS issues. For me, uh, especially around turns corners and stuff, like that versus the series. Three continue to Mario Kart around corners, where it just you know like slides around them kind of weird the SC. You know, heart rate was pretty similar, but I found just a little better performance on the series 6, which has a new heart rate sensor as well.

So it's funny to see those slight differences and I would have thought for a company like apple, they would have been like uh components are nearly identical on these for almost everything. It was a surprise to me that they actually came out with this advice because, as we've both seen the series three it's become, it's still very popular, and it's, and just at an absolutely amazing price- I mean it's just it's still a very capable device. It's it performs pretty darn. Well, I mean uh, the Siri, the SC and the series six. They do perform better, but I don't know it's like if you're looking for a budget, smartwatch, which is a phenomenal smartwatch that has good fitness functionality, I'd really consider it a series 3.

I've got to believe like the gamins and others of the world were probably excited about the SC because they were probably sitting there in that presentation going. Please let the series 3 go away. Please let the series 3 go away, please! No! It's still there um, because you know in a way like it's way easier for a garment with a vivo. You know active four or venue or something like that to compete at 279 against the Apple Watch than it is when that thing's sitting down there at uh 169. That's a really tough conversation to have to people that, assuming you have an iPhone which I realize you know, people on the video right now are screaming, but it doesn't support android yeah.

I get all that um, but you know for this market what they're going for here? The majority users are actually indeed iPhone users for people that are buying this type of watch, and we see that in stats over and over and over again that for the consumers of this. If you talk about like android on the whole right, we say: oh android's got whatever it is. You know, 90 of market share sure a dozen places that people are not buying 300, plus dollar watches. When you look at the market share for this particular market, then it skews much, much more into the iPhone realm iOS realm and that's in most of the stats that I see like on my site and on my videos um. It tends to be more like 60, 66 uh for iOS versus 33 or so for android.

It's been super consistent year after year, yep for sure now and yeah and uh to back you up on the uh fitness performance yeah. I also did see differences between the series 6 and the SC. Those reviews are coming out imminently on those. So next up we have the foreigner 745, so the 4745. It replaces the long-standing foreign 735 at they drop the at naming, but basically this is going to be Garmin's lowest end triathlon, offering it essentially looks almost exactly like a 400 or 245.

It's almost exactly the same in dimensions, but it's essentially going to be a paired down.400 945, with essentially all the functionality but without maps, and I did I miss anything else in terms of what it's missing. That's about it maps. Oh wait, golf yeah! So sorry, what's what's that, I'm not aware so yeah it's got and there are some dependencies on maps as well. This loses uh. So, for example, in um climb pro you, you lose some additional bits there uh, because it doesn't have the maps under underneath it to be able to pull some of those things off.

So you can still do climb pro on this, but you have to pre-load those courses ahead of time, um, and the same goes for paste pro as well, that there is paste pro here that can take a paste pro profile, but it can't like generate one on the fly, and you know practically speaking, if you're using client pro you know where you're going, you probably put the course there to begin with. So it's really not that big a deal um. This is a funny watch to me like this is one that I've actually been wearing it as my daily driver. If you will, since essentially like September or august, I guess um the minus testing of other things here and there, and- and I like it like, there's, there's really no point in my day-to-day uh that I miss having a phoenix or an uh 400-945 this. It fits everything that I need um now.

That said, I'm not traveling right now. So in that sense I don't need the maps. I don't. I don't care where I know exactly where I am all the time around here, so uh versus, if I'm going into the mountains- and I want to have maps on this, so I'm seen where I'm hiking and all that, then this is going to quickly fall off, and I'm going to pick up the 945 of the phoenix 6 or something like that. As my daily kind of to use out hiking, but there's been a lot of talk around this being overpriced and I think that's probably valid.

I think that 4.99 is a bit tough for this, and I get that it has music and that kind of stuff that I'm sure that's what Garmin is probably shouting it like. It's got music. It should be 100 bucks more like that's the way, Garmin works, but then I'd say yeah, but so does the bioactive iv and the venue at you know roughly 249 right now so uh I don't. I think this is a tough, tough pitch. I think, if 3.99, if this was 3.99, they'd be like boom done and that just you know, someone sunk their battleship sort of thing, but exactly just me. Well, no, and I think at a lower price point too.

It would be a lot more palatable considering the 645 is getting pretty dated at this point um. So there's a large gap between the 245 music and the 745 and um to see this at a lower price, because the difference between a 745 and a 945 at full price is a hundred dollars, which is not that much, and then we're already seeing pretty good prices on the 945, basically at the 745 level. So it does make the um base level price of the 75 a little challenging and especially when you start like sliding the cordless 2 back into the picture and going oh that's right. Full triathlon watch 199. For everything, except for music.

I mean yeah. The Garmin has like a million. What I often call one percent features right: they're features that are you know, one percent of the population. That's their must-have feature. They can't have a watch without that feature, and then Garmin has so many of these it's nuts, and so that's where Garmin is able to retain a lot of those you know past users, but for the average person getting into it.

They might look at this and go wow this. This is 199, and this is 300 more for music, uh, and again I get that. Garmin has many many more features that are nuanced things, but that's a tough that's a tough pitch um, just yeah, that's just absolutely all right! Next up we have the Garmin venue sq, so the venue sq. This is going to be kind of the little sibling to the original venue, which turned out to be a very popular device. So the original venue that had an AMOLED display where the venue sq this comes with an lcd, it's still quite vibrant, and this one's obviously going to have a square design with the.

It is hilarious, though I mean to be honest with you, putting it next right side by side with an Apple Watch, I mean you can get them confused really easily. They look nearly exactly the same, but basically it's going to have nearly all the features of the original venue with again an lcd rather than the AMOLED, and then it lacks the altimeter, and I think it also doesn't come with a golf again, the golf profile, but other than that did I miss anything. No, I think that's that's it. I mean it's, it's just a square wannabe venue, that's basically if it's funny. I think to me, though this is a little actually of Garmin flexing their display muscles um, meaning people you know have historically associated garment with uh displays that look like this right that are like the instinct display or the um the phoenix display that just don't look gorgeous um they're, fine, they're they're great, because they have super long battery life and all that kind of stuff uh.

But to me the venue s key is a little of Garmin, saying yep. We did the AMOLED last year with the venue now, let's just do a non-amoled display that looks just as nice and has incredible battery life, and I think this is them sort of saying yep we can do. We can do pretty displays. Furthermore, we're going to do a couple different ways: we're not just a one-trick pony here, uh, and I'm looking forward to seeing where this ends up down the road, and maybe we'll talk about that at the end of video. I don't know, but I think you know the idea that a phoenix series watch will always remain likely like this is a flawed idea like eventually not eventually people I mean this is a watch that sells.

You know a million units a year or something like that for a phoenix series device and a lot of people are not sports people. They just want a beefier. Looking watch, that's a smartwatch, and they will really want a watch that has the display of something like the venue or the venue sq, and they don't necessarily care that it's not going to have a 90 hour, GPS battery life. I think there's some serious potential to see Garmin do interesting things next year and whether they do that in the phoenix lineup, but they start off with something like a 400, 245, equivalency or a 645 or who knows but um. I think we're not just going to see this sort of fancy display limited to the lower end or budget range or whatever you want to call the VIVO series mid-range.

Furthermore, I guess yep no, and I think what's hilarious about that, is that you know with the phoenix having you know, 20 plus different SKUs. They don't necessarily have one with a little prettier display. What's one more at that point, like I mean really exactly uh talking about displays, we have also the tic watch pro 3. Now I literally just unboxed this right before this video. My boy did send this to me for review.

I just have not had the time to even test it quite yet, just because I've gotten so many other watches out the tick watch pro 3. It's going to be a Wear OS device again, so I think they've been talking about like a faster processor with this guy, but with the pro 3, it's going to have a dual layer display technology. So it's going to have a black and white kind of LCD like display on top and then there's going to have a's gonna. Have a full color display right below that, so basically the theory behind that is that it's supposed to extend the battery life quite a bit. So in terms of the battery life, see here it's supposed to be three days in smartwatch mode and then up to 45 days in what they call an essential mode which essentially just turns everything off and just uses the black and white display on top.

So I'm going to be testing this over the next few weeks after I get some in-depth reviews out. So next up we have the polar vantage v2. So the v2 it's going to have a new aluminum case which reduces the weight I think down to it was like 53 or 52 grams. I believe on this guy and the aluminum case is also supposed to improve the GPS reception and then other than that it was kind of just software stuff. Underneath the covers, I think the problem is they sort of like let all their not their secrets out, but the secrets out for the grid x and so like Tommy got to the v2, is like there was just a handful of tiny little things: they've added um that didn't really seem to pop as much um and the price difference is only what 70 bucks between the two.

I think it's. This is 499 versus 429 there, and obviously it has, as you mentioned earlier in the video. It's got, the recovery pro and the orthostatic test and uh. You know some of those additional features around muscle recovery, which is interesting uh, so the leg um recovery test as well, which is kind of you, know different unique, but I'm not sure if I think it's a tougher spin, I would say like from a visual standpoint. I liked it.

I like the way it looks. Furthermore, I think it's an it looks a little classier than the original vantage series. Furthermore, I just had hoped to see a few more things that sort of like set it apart from the rest of the uh, the competition I did notice. For example, just yesterday they announced they are sponsoring in uh, one of the uh pro cycling, esports kind of teams, uh like in the swift sort of realm, a swift, professional sort of team of sorts, and I thought to myself. Ah, this would have been ideal if this watch had amp plus support or if it had the ability.

You know like to be able to deal with that, because those were those athletes would be using on trainers and those most trainers, except for the Yahoo kicker series can only broadcast out one Bluetooth, smart channel, and so now you have a problem where, if someone's using, you know swift on iPad, they can't connect to their polar watch with it and that's going to be a challenge for those pro athletes. No absolutely- and I think that so that brings us to the fitness test. So this was probably in terms of the work I had to put into this in terms of my actual workouts. It was astonishing how many workouts I had to do with the v2 to actually collect all that data and actually show it properly um. You know it was basically like a question of like how many ftp tests do.

I really have to do on this device. There are three new fitness tests that came with the v2, so there's going to be the leg recovery test, there's going to be a running test for vo2 max and then there's going to be a cycling test for your ftp now, with a lot of other devices out there. Well, this information just calculated kind of automatically based on your existing workouts, so there's no special test that you have to do, but with the v2. What polar wanted to do was create these specific tests and um. I mean, I think it's great, that they have these built in like so.

If you really want to get a hard number, I guess you could say, like you know, doing a actual test. That's great! But I think, like most of us most of us don't like doing tests yeah for me the the test piece, just like you said, like every other platform. Just does this automatically now, and I shouldn't have to do like if I want to do an extra test to do a set ftp test then great go forth, but that concept is largely fading away and people are going towards ramp tests on the cycling side, and things like that, which is what their running test is. The running test is a ramp test. Like that's, I mean it's the same thing, and it's yeah, I know so and, like you said I had so many dropout issues on mine and getting.

I eventually gave up on ftp test. I did a number of them and was like you know what it's just, not working because of connectivity issues and issues. Furthermore, I don't think I would have had uh if this had worked with amp plus, just because of some finickiness there, it's kind of oxymoron to me that you know doing the cycling test. It would have just been so much easier with an amp with and plus connectivity, but it just didn't have it again um. I don't know if that'll ever change, but I really hope to see that yeah.

We were lucky too. You figure like me, and you have in some cases multiple power meters on our bikes and, like I compare different things, but the average consumer doesn't necessarily have that and so the average consumer, if they're indoors doing this on a trainer, they might not technically be able to pull it off. Those are real problems and unless you had a kicker, unless you had a secondary power meter, you probably couldn't use that test, which is a issue yeah. No, I mean I, I can't remember if I even said this in my review or not, there were portions I peeled out, but basically yeah so for my uh cycling ftp test, I actually used a Garmin head edge unit, uh connected to my trainer via uh and plus IOC to control resistance and then was collecting the power from the yeah. So basically it was.

It was kind of a mess yeah. It was kind of a mess so um, so yeah anyways, that's the vantage v2 and next up we have the Garmin instinct esports and I don't have one of these devices uh but ray you do so. Please talk us through it yeah, so the Garmin instinct esports is essentially what happens when Gavin looks at a pile of leftover instincts. Looks at some leftover software from the verb series that they haven't updated in a few years and was like done new product um. It's like it's.

It's literally the hardware of the original instinct with a fancy new display on top of it, combined with the verb older software that they've, gutted and renamed is something I can't even like attempt to type up more than twice. Furthermore, it's called stream up, but it's using like elite and it just it's yeah, it's its rough, but the actual end-state product ignoring their marketing funkiness. There is kind of cool whether there is a market for that. I have no idea, but what the idea behind this is that it's for uh esports, so gamers, primarily and not of the know, sporting variety but of the computer variety, and it can broadcast out your heart rate, your stress and your body, battery um, via kind of back-end Bluetooth, smart channel to a little app called stream up, and that app then sits in your tray, and it pumps it over so that obs can pick it up for streaming online on twitch or YouTube or any platform. You want doesn't really matter at a software level.

It works technically. Well like it all is good. The one challenge, though, is the body battery and stress metrics, cut out above a certain heart rate. Roughly around 120 beats per minute um. So that's sort of counterintuitive with you know having a high heart rate because, as your heart rate goes up so like I try to untwist, which I know is not the point of this watch.

This would be playing like video games, but that's what I want to try it on, and you know once I got past my warm-up. The stress and body battery disappeared and just was heart rate which maybe for a gamer. They better keep their heart rate low enough, but you know Garmin has kind of pointless being like that gamers they had studies that they touted as part of the press release. Talking about you know, heart rates that are just as high as someone running a race and stuff, and so I'm not really sure those two blend together but uh. I think it's a cool concept to me.

The only quirk with this uh is that they only offer that software right now on this unit. So I would think that that would be a feature that if you wanted to go and buy a phoenix six solar and spend like a thousand dollars on the fanciest version of it. I should be. I got that same feature here. It's just it's just broadcasting something they do it's a trivial thing for them to add, and I think that's one area that um you know frustrates people on Garmin sometimes is that you have to you: have all these watches and all these options, but there's not this like building a stepping stone.

The features that uh, if I wanted to have this feature broadcast behind the scenes, there's another sport profile because that's all it is. If I press, start uh, and I see esports and at this point it's broadcasting out to my computer, I'm good to go, but I could also go down and choose other sports as well uh. So we go down, you can see, walk run treadmill just like a normal instinct. So it's just a sport profile, that's unique to the watch and everything else is just an instinct watch, and so I think I would love to see that just be a standard profile. If someone wants to add it to any Garmin watch, that's higher end, they could do that.

They could hook it up to obs and be off and running. I think that'd be cool, that that's definitely something that I hear um. Historically, I guess you could say with Garmin devices that you know they'll come out with a new device, and it has some new software features that aren't necessarily available on older devices, and you could probably say the same thing about polar this year as well. Is that we kind of saw that trend too, where the hardware it was pretty much identical, where it just had a new feature here and there that was just software driven now. You know there are arguments on both sides here, so I mean in terms of developing new software features.

Well, um, you know developers well, they need to be paid some money, so maybe that new feature wasn't built in the original price of the older device, but there's definitely a challenge there, where that's always generally a complaint where, when a new device comes out, there's a new software feature that could theoretically be ported to an older device. Then people are up in arms and I can't necessarily, I think it's justified too, but so there definitely needs to be an answer there. I think just because that does seem to be a pain point um among a lot of users, so but yeah um, that's, unfortunately, what we've seen yeah so last up. We have the Yahoo element rival and this one was very much a late release in terms of like the release schedules throughout the year, and I think a lot of people didn't necessarily see this one coming and this one kind of like the HRM pro. This was a, and you know this was a long time in development, and so they finally came out with it the rival, it's its an exciting offering, because it's a brand-new entry to the GPS sports watch arena.

It's also exciting, just because it's made by Yahoo, who already has a very solid place in the uh sports tech industry. So this is going to be a triathlon focused watch. It's definitely you know designed for athletes. It not doesn't really have much in terms of smartwatch features at all. In terms of my testing, the heart rate sensor performance was probably the weakest point um, but everything else was pretty good from a GPS standpoint, at least over water.

However, as we alluded to at the beginning of the video you've been spending a lot of time in the cold uh water in Amsterdam, so tell us about uh your experience with that. So far, yeah I've had a lot of like, like you. I've had heart rate issues as well. Just hasn't been super accurate, and they're using a Philips sensor for this, which um nobody else uses the Philips sensor these days, but they used one, and that's not necessarily, I mean it's an old sensor. It could be a new sensor, but Phillips just doesn't have a ton of sport.

Specific experience in this marketplace. At this point in terms of widespread experience, they've got a lot of medical experience, but medical sensors are very different from sports sensors because, most of the time, medical people aren't running around somewhere. So you've got to you've got to deal with different aspects of that uh. So optic heart rate and that's a great GPS has been iffy for me in general, both on land but then more so in the water. I really had a lot of issues with some of my earlier swims today.

That was the first time on a new unit they sent over well, they dropped off um that I did get a good swim track on that's positive there that I thought just we can say that okay they're making progress there. I think my biggest issue with this watch is that it just feels super, super unfinished um, so I think I mean like you're looking at it right now, and you see I've got my battery my steps for the day. My heart rate is on the tables you're. Not seeing that that's that's it that there's no more like seeing other metrics. I can't see like how many steps I walk today or uh or sorry how many steps did I like distance walked or anything like that can't see calories.

You can't see any of those things like it's super, super basic on any of what Yahoo likes to term lifestyle features, but I think that's probably like playing that off a little. I think at the end of the day, every one of these watches here I can see all the basics for my daily activity for weeks months years back. I can just see this week and I can just see totals for the week and that's it. Furthermore, I can't see my breakdown by day, but it goes well beyond that where they have like the basis of sports, I can record a sports session. Furthermore, I can go record a run.

Furthermore, I can record a bike. Furthermore, I can collect sensor data and, for the most part, you know core sensor- data of heart rate power, cadence um, but I can't do structure workouts on this. Furthermore, I can't do routing. Furthermore, I can't do mapping. Furthermore, I can't do like the list just goes on and on and on and on and on.

Furthermore, I think eventually, Yahoo just had to simply ship what they have, so they can start kind of working on the next one and start working on the features, and I don't necessarily disagree with that. Furthermore, I think it is what it is. Furthermore, I wouldn't recommend it today, but Yahoo has shown over and over and over again they can come to the market with something that's under featured and isn't really a good option and make it a great option, and we saw that with the element series into the bolts when they've come into pass markets, there's been like one or two competitors now they've got a slate of people releasing in some cases, multiple watches per year, and they're so far ahead and so big in terms of development teams and resources. That's going to be really challenging for Yahoo, but I'm super looking forward to seeing what they can pull off right now. It's it just does lack a lot of the features that people expect out of the watch.

I mean. I know that they are focusing on the athlete, especially the triathlete in general, so the most compelling reason to purchase one right now would be is if you are a triathlete, and you really want to benefit from that touchless transition feature and if you live within the wake ecosystem as well yep. No, I agree with you. I think if you have a Yahoo, uh element series watch or sorry element series uh by computer, and you are a triathlete, and you don't care about structure, training or all these other things. Then in that case, maybe you could consider it maybe next year or something like that.

I'm looking forward to, I said where they're going to go what they can pick off. I just want them to see them to find a road plan and talk about those features over the next six to eight months and say: here's where we're going to be and go. Do it yep? Absolutely, I am eager to see what they have in store as well, so um so yeah. That is it for our 2020 sports watch year in review. Funny enough, I think there were about 20 devices, so that worked out pretty darn.

Well, so do you have any final wrap-up thoughts there ray? No, I think, uh. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next year, I'm looking forward to seeing kind of the evolution of displays and some watches, and I think the evolution of um underlying physio type metrics, we've seen Garmin, obviously acquired first speed earlier this year, uh or some point to share midpoint this year, which is going to be interesting to see what happens there and how they can mature that, but at the same time, polar's been doing good stuff in that area as well from a sports standpoint. So I'm interested to see like everything, kind of step up a bit, I'm looking forward to seeing like what will Fitbit do once they finally get the approval um for the merger with Google acquisition by google like. Where will that go, so there 's's lots of cool things. I think 2021 could be like a breakout year for a lot of these companies as they sort of take the next step.

Potentially big steps forward versus, I think 2020 was you know, obviously the first half of the year somewhat mauled uh for companies from a covey timeline standpoint, and you know I'm certainly not saying code's gone away or anything like that, but in terms of normalization of work and manufacturing, and all that that kind of normalized at the midpoint of the year, and that's why we saw so many watches later on so going into 2021, I'm looking forward to just seeing what happens uh from that whole perspective. No, I completely agree. I mean I definitely would like to see a lot more maturity. I think when it comes to uh, when a watch is first released onto the market, I would like to see some headway in terms of like display technology as well. Furthermore, I think that really has a lot of big potential in 2021 as well as battery life too.

So I think that's going to wrap up our 2020 sports watch year, interview um so in terms of actual in-depth reviews of these, like I said both ray and I, between both of our channels and ray's website. You should be able to find plenty of information about this. Hopefully next year we can actually get together. I'm not really sure when that's going to be I'm hoping. I hope we can do it in person next year.

Furthermore, I'm hoping we can make it happen at the end of next year, but uh we shall see yeah. We shall see at this point anyways. I want to give a very special thank you to ray dcrainmaker. com for joining me again for another sports watcher interview. Look forward to seeing you again in uh 2021 for the next annual sports watcher interview, but uh, thanks.

So much for watching have a good one.

Source : DesFit