A few months back garmin bought dynastream. Dynastream is the company that provided(s) the 3d accelerometer technology for the Nike triax, polar speed and distance, and garmin footpod.
Just today Garmin announced a footpod based speed and distance watch called the forerunner 50 that they say will retail for $100 and have downloadable memory.
At $100 this would beat the pants off of any other downloadable heart rate monitor system in price. There are few details so I don’t actually know if the watch, hrm and download ability will sell for $100 or maybe just the basic watch will be $100.
It also makes me wonder how much longer polar and Nike will be using dynastream technology for their speed and distance monitors. I figure either Garmin will stop the sales or polar and nike would get tired of buying from their competitor; but who knows, stranger things have happened.
Garmin has also been buying up the largest gps distributors around, reaching further into the chain. It’s a similar case, where they buy up a distributor that sells the three major brands of gps, do they continue to sell al three brands through that division?
The suggeted retail for the FR 50 will be $107 with Heartrate, $160 with Footpod, and $214 with Heartrate and Foodpod. All packagings come with USB adapter for downloading data and it apears that the GCS10 Speed and cadance sensor will work with the FR50.
I spoke with a Garmin rep at the NYC Tri. He said the next GPS Forunner will be out in September and that it will be smaller - but at the expense of battery life. Argh…
interesting. We occasionally run with a regional Polar rep and we always ask him when Polar is going GPS. He doesen’t say no, but he doesn’t say yes either. It leads me to believe thay are working on a GPS system.
interesting. We occasionally run with a regional Polar rep and we always ask him when Polar is going GPS. He doesen’t say no, but he doesn’t say yes either. It leads me to believe thay are working on a GPS system.
Can’t stand foot pods! I had the first Nike one and I came to the conclusion that I like my running shoes to be as light as possible. Just not my thing. I love the Garmine 301!!! It is very accurate even in heavily wooded areas and I don’t find the watch too big. In fact I like it that size so I can see all the details I want in a decent font size.
I had the fitsense fs-1 and my wife has a nike triax that I have used. Both had footpods and they never bothered me, different strokes I guess. I liked the accuracy and quick response of the unit.
I use a garmin 301 now and in the woods near my house it has a signal about half the time. Running the same route gives distances within 30% of each other.
I used the fitsense for several years and always had good accuracy with it - within 3%.
To be fair, the garmin does well on roads where it doesn’t lose the signal.