mioPOD: Buh-bye Garmin Fenix?

[digitalredeye]

I've been part of several posts that talk about leaving Garmin behind for the AW. Most people that try have two major concerns. Battery life and physiological metrics (in regards to training status from Firstbeat).

In a review on DC Rainmaker's website he mentioned he was testing a new product named mioPOD. I did some research and the product looks promising.

Check out these links and see what you think.
https://www.firstbeat.com/en/consumer-product/mio/miopod/
https://mio-labs.com/products/miopod

Maybe I can finally leave the buggy world of Garmin and stick with wearing my AW for both as an all day wearable and while running. There is no way my AW can replace my Garmin 530, however for running and short hikes, I might be able to finally say buh-bye Garmin.

Anyone bought one of these yet? Thoughts?

 

[NME42]

Thoughts?

If you had asked me about six months ago, I would have answered: "where can I order? I need this thing NOW". But today my answer is: "what for"?

I was a Garmin addict and number junkie and believe me, I tracked everything that was possible. From the basics like pace, distance, heart rate to running dynamics, 24/7 HR, running power, sleep time, body battery, VO2max, LT and add 1000 more parameters. What for? To be sure to not miss something.
And then came a thought process where I decided I am fed up with all this stuff as it was

a) not really helpful for my purposes, with most parameters I did not do anything except for looking at them
b) from questionable quality. In German we say: if you measure a lot you measure a lot of s*t
c) sometimes irritating, e.g. starting to fear an injury because your ground contact time balance is shifting from 50/50 to 52/48 is really stupid

So I abandoned everything except for time, distance and HR and let runalyze (the best free platform) do the job of analyzing the stuff. And the output is understandable for me, it predicts my racing times (very good) and shows me when I am over- or under reaching.

Just my 2cents.

 

[Indianwin]

I am just leaving Garmin after 9 years and getting an iPhone and AW5 this week. If Garmins HR is way off, which it is, than ALL the metrics and stats are useless. I even used a chest strap for activities but during the day my HR would shoot up and down when just sitting still. That screws up body battery, calories burned and other metrics, rendering the whole platform useless.Plus after using Garmin for so long, I really don't trust first beats metrics anymore.

 

[NME42]

The AW OHR is lots better than the Garmin ones I had (935+945). But still using a chest strap in outdoor workouts from autumn to late spring as outside temperature also affects OHR measurement quality. This is inherent to the technology.

For me, all the metrics in the Garmin platform were interesting but in the end the inconsistency and data quality was a factor to abandon it. For instance they never fixed the problem that multisport workouts did not affect training load which is ridiculous. Also the Physio True Up functionality is surely interesting when your training stats are synced through multiple devices (I had a Forerunner for everything and an Edge for biking) but in the end, it did not work reliably. Also, workouts from other devices (like Zwift) were not being accounted in the platform.

I repeat: for me, runalyze is the only truth and absolutely sufficient for my needs. And I can use whatever device I want to feed the platform. When there is garbage (e.g. chest strap produces false values), I can decide what to do with the calculations.

My last marathon was predicted one or two minutes from my result and never had any "WHAT?" effect on reported fatigue or load or whatever. When I look back at the Garmin stuff, I often had me shaking my head. Calculating/measuring a LT pace of say 4:00/km and in the meantime calculating my VO2max to a value that says I can do a marathon with a faster pace is not something I can/want to rely on ;-). This is basic crosschecking and sanity checking that is missing ;-).

 

[Pseudo-Fed]

Depends on how it's integrated. Would like all the promised metrics and might ditch my Scosche for it. But if all the metrics dump into Apple Health and don't show integrated with the activity, it's useless. I like all the Garmin metrics in one place, and for my casual/fitness runner status they are right and comparative for me.