GadgetVersus - Headphones, Smartwatches and Tech Compared

The Extra Hundred Metres Nobody Ordered Most of the gap comes from running wide of the tangents, not from the watch, so a better receiver only trims a little. If you race in a dense city centre, multi-band reception is the one purchase that helps, and everyone else should start the watch at the line and take corners deliberately. You cross the line, stop the watch, and the screen reads 10.18 kilometres. The race was a 10K, the course was certified, and your watch has just quietly told you that everyone else got it wrong. This happens to almost every runner who wears a GPS watch, and the reaction is usually suspicion. Either the organiser measured badly, or the expensive device on your wrist is not as accurate as the box implied. The truth is duller and more useful. Both numbers describe real distances, but they describe two different paths through the same streets. Once you understand which is which, the gap stops being irritating. It becomes a small piece of feedback about how e...

The Two Numbers That Disagree Two devices on the same body, one workout, and two different heart rates. Runners meet this contradiction the first time they wear a strap alongside a watch during intervals. The watch is not broken. It measures a different physical signal, and that signal behaves badly in exactly the moments when precise numbers matter most. Here is the short version. Keep the watch alone if your training is mostly steady, and add a chest strap if you run intervals, chase narrow zones, lift weights, or train in the cold. An optical armband is the middle path. It measures on the forearm or upper arm, where movement interferes less, and it skips the chest band that many people dislike. Our Garmin vs Apple Watch for running comparison covers the watch half of this setup. Why The Wrist Lies During Intervals Wrist sensors shine light into the skin and read the pulse of blood beneath it. Chest straps read the electrical activity that triggers each beat, which is a cle...