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Product: Nike+ SportWatch GPS
Price: $ 199.99
What It’s Good For: It promises to track your run via GPS without you needing to carry your phone, as it has a push-button satellite connection.
Who It’s Good For: Runners of all levels who want an accurate assessment of their runs, accounting for corners and hills.
Limitations: There’s an awful lot you have to plug this watch into your computer for, such as adjusting the clock and syncing your location. Plus you have to take a few steps to get to the website that shows your running history.
Bottom Line: The Nike+ Sportwatch GPS is very accurate, and with a little software-side tweaking, it could be the perfect scoring system for your runs.
I love running — so long as I’m getting some kind of credit for it. Some people track calories, others track kilometers. The latter is your score in a real-world video game that can make you healthier faster than just about any other activity. Without a good scoring system, it’s simply too easy to stay in bed instead of hitting the road.
That’s why, ever since the iPhone app Couch to 5K transformed me from a run-o-phobe to a halfway-decent middle-distance runner, I’ve been looking for tech that can inspire me in a similar manner and log my runs precisely. And that’s what I hoped I’d found in the Nike+ Sportwatch GPS.
Prior to reviewing the SportWatch, which came to market last month, I’d been using the Runkeeper app to track my outings. But that can be a somewhat irritating process. Not only does it mean you have to run with your phone strapped to your arm (or bouncing around distractingly in your pocket), but you have to fire up the app, tell it you’re running rather than walking or biking, and wait for it to connect to GPS satellites. And if, like me, you tend to run up, down and around city streets rather than in a straight line, you have to log on to Runkeeper afterwards and painstakingly adjust the map of your run. Because its connection to GPS is not constant, Runkeeper has a frustrating habit of assuming that I ran through buildings rather than around a corner. Unadjusted, this has too often made it look like I ran 9K, say, rather than 10K. The more you run, the greater the lost distance. No fair!
These, then, were my main questions about the Nike+ Sportwatch GPS: Would it have a push-button satellite connection, allowing me to run without the extra bulk of a phone? And would it log my runs more precisely than a phone app? Certainly, the branding would suggest so — the watch was made in conjunction with GPS stalwarts TomTom. Like other Nike products and apps, the watch also connects to the company’s patented shoe pod, which sits in your left sneaker and estimates your distance via your footfalls. But it’s GPS accuracy that you’re paying the big bucks for.
So is it push-button? Literally, yes. Press one button on the side of the watch’s massive face, and the attractive number display is replaced with a “linking” screen. I found that the amount of time it stays on that screen can vary wildly. After I took a trip to Florida, ran there, and came back to San Francisco, it refused to connect to GPS at all. A Nike rep told me that was likely because it was looking for satellites as if it were in its last known location; it would be fixed by simply plugging it in to my laptop’s USB port (there’s a nifty little USB connector built into the strap) and connecting to the Nike+ app. And indeed it was.
There’s the rub, though. There’s an awful lot you have to plug this watch into your computer for, including adjusting the clock itself. Taking a trip outside your time zone without your laptop? Then you’re going to have a hard time — or at least an out-of-sync time. We’re a long way from the convenience of mobile apps here.
The SportWatch GPS does beat Runkeeper on accuracy, overall. The runs shown on the map at Nikeplus.com look more like the route I ran; evidently the TomTom technology is more precise on roads than the iPhone’s GPS chip, so Nike’s software usually understands the concept of street corners without needing adjustment — which is a good thing, because you can’t actually do any adjustment on the Nike map as you can with Runkeeper. The few times my watch was inaccurate, there was no hope of appeal.
Overall, the SportWatch is a pretty cool piece of technology, if a little pricey. I like that Nike has kept it simple and friendly, offering congratulations on a run that beats your previous best time or distance, and personal trainer-like encouragement (“good job!”). It would be nice to have a little more functionality on the watch itself, such as changing the time without an assist from your PC. Where Nike falls down is on the software, which sometimes didn’t load automatically, and takes too many steps to get to the webpage that displays your most recent run.
For that reason alone, Runkeeper will remain my favored system for the moment. With a little software-side tweaking, however, the Nike+ Sportwatch GPS could be the perfect scoring system for real-world video game runs.
Series Supported by Energizer®
The Gadget of the Day Series is supported by the Energizer® Inductive Charger, which brings you the next generation of charging with Qi technology. Qi is the new universal standard for wireless charging. Energizer® has always been designed with performance and responsibility in mind … now that’s positivenergy™.
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