watch

Garmin fēnix® 6S smart watch

I purchased this on a whim to try and replace the pebble I was using for heart rate monitoring. It’s probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

Features:

• Long battery life (about a week if you don’t record activities)
• Always on screen
• Can pair headphones to it
• Garmin Pay (NFC payment)
• Offline maps
• All your normal running/riding activity recording stuff
• Can use standard watch straps

Now here’s where things get interesting. The watch is usually synchronised with an app called Garmin Connect - a cloud based service. But before you write it off because cloud, let me explain a few things.

Garmin Connect basically has all the features you see in Strava, is more privacy focused, has a privacy policy that says it won’t sell your data, doesn’t push ads (there’s some promotion Disney watch achievements but its extremely minor), is free. Garmin Connect exists as a service to sell watches, not to sell a subscription.

Ok, so if there’s no subscription - the watches get no updates right? Well no. My fēnix received an update today, and there’s even been features released a year after its launch. The watches themselves are also fairly durable (except for the charging port / charging cables - that has room for improvement).

Remember how I said about the cloud? Well you don’t actually need to use their app. You can plug in the watch over USB and copy the FIT files directly from it. I guess the disadvantage here is that it can’t be done over Bluetooth.

Garmin watches seem like a breath of fresh air when it comes to devices with cloud integration. Sure there are some niggles, but gosh its so much different from everything else I own.

Shokz OpenSwim Pro bone conducting headphones

I weirdly put off bone conducting headphones for so long as I had a bad experience with trialling radio headsets that used bone conduction. Running Warehouse ran a Shokz try out day and within minutes of my run I entirely forgot I was wearing them. Towards the end of the run I brushed the back of my hair and nearly freaked out because I forgot I had the headset on. I purchased a set within a week.

The advantages of bone conducting headphones is that they don’t block out sound. So you can hear other people and the environment around you. Hugely important for safety. The other part is since they don’t go into your ear like earbuds but rather sit on top, you don’t get moisture build up in your ear. That had become a bit of a problem for me and I was constantly getting blocked ears.

I bought the swim model in the off chance I got swimming again. Swimming can be a bit tedious so having some tunes to boop to is good.

A bit of a warning though - these devices are very personal preference. The audio quality isn’t like what you’d get from normal headphones. Its probably a good idea to try one out first.

VR-N76 handheld radio with packet TNC

As soon as I saw the VR-N76 firmware update provided a KISS TNC interface I had to have one. Unlike the HG UV98 the the TNC actually works as proper TNC, not just APRS.

I was skeptical of using the app, however its been great. The APRS features seem to work well enough. What I’ve been enjoying is that you can listen and TX from your phone - which might initially seem like a silly feature, however what it lets me do is listen to music on the Shokz while also listening to the radio. The radio stays in a pocket in my bag, and if I want to TX I just key up using the app which uses the Bluetooth. The app also keeps a history of transmissions, so if you miss and important detail you can replay it to get the info you need.