Black Friday 2018

JaRok2300 · Joined: 01 May 2014 Posts: 461 Location: Worcester, UK

Toying with getting a new watch this year and noticed that Wiggle have gone early with 4 weeks of Black Friday deals including the Garmin 735XT for £215 with the HRM Run Strap.

I've got a Fenix 2 at the moment but like the idea of wrist HR and all day tracking etc. but wondering what else might come up.
Fenix 3 HR looks perfect but prices seem to be holding up really well on those.

Anyone other thoughts or anyone else on the lookout for anything?
Ps. Direct Drive trainer would be nice if there are any good deals on the old Flux.

hammerer · Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2018 4:22 pm Post subject:

Tacx Neo 2 is coming out and its really no different to the first one, well L / R pedal mechanics but not worth buying again. I recon there'll be some deals popping up on the original soon. Its a great piece of kit.

Garmin 735 looked great but its borderline if it'll last for an Ironman unless you are pretty quick taking into account their quoted times wont be close to whats achievable in real life.
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stenard · Joined: 04 Sep 2013 Posts: 2063

Tri'ing Swimmer · Joined: 15 Nov 2016 Posts: 219

Looking for full cycling collection, been using same £15 jersey and bib shorts for last 2 years since I started. So far in last month have bought a Gabba (not yet tried on), second pair shorts, gloves and overshoes.

Wetsuit is 15 years old so will have one eye out; looked all summer on eBay for ~£100, not sure how much of an upgrade anything would be and not tried any on either so not ideal.
Could be tempted by power meter as a toy to enjoy, but again more likely to risk second hand.

JeffB · Joined: 04 May 2008 Posts: 1406 Location: Middlesbrough

Check out TC's thread on the Zone3 wetsuit sale, although he's talking about the top of the range they have a lot of others with about 50% off I think

Jeff

Tri'ing Swimmer · Joined: 15 Nov 2016 Posts: 219

Cheers, zone 3 aspire £150 looks worth ordering for size try on at very least

Tri'ing Swimmer · Joined: 15 Nov 2016 Posts: 219

Cheers, zone 3 aspire £150 looks worth ordering for size try on at very least

Andy916 · Joined: 08 Oct 2011 Posts: 712 Location: Cambridge

Jorgan · Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 12:22 pm Post subject:

On the 735XT:

Wrist HR is pretty pants, but you can massively improve battery life by turning it off. The Garmin HRM straps are sh1te (fail/fall apart often), I now use a Wahoo Tickr. So I'd go for watch-only. Apart from that, I'm pleased with it.
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FatPom · Joined: 26 Dec 2005 Posts: 5411 Location: My happy place

[quote="stenard"

Agree with hammerer on battery life. If you're going long and not sub 10, I wouldn't practically want to trust it. Despite headline claims of 14hrs. Everyone I know that has one uses it for the swim, then a separate bike computer, and then for the run. I know one person who has the multisport mode set to indoor bike mode for IM, that way she gets full race time info, plus total TSS info etc, but can upload a bike gps file for strava purposes.[/quote]

I used my 935 at Wales, it's the only computer I have. I just used it in tri mode and didn't make any other power saving adjustments. I went 14.30 in the race and the watch was showing 28% power left.

(Swim splits are at 500mtrs, bike 8kms and run 1km).

Whisk · Joined: 09 Jun 2005 Posts: 8739 Location: London

I used my 735 at Lanza this year with the wrist HRM turned on and Glonass turned off. The battery died at about 11:50 into the race. I got chatting with another bloke on the run who's 735 had died at pretty much the same point in the race, so not an isolated case Mad

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Jorgan · Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:07 pm Post subject:

doug · Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 2:35 pm Post subject:

Having worked as a developer of (non Garmin) gps sports watches, you want to turn off everything you don't use:
- OHR a big battery hog, can reduce battery life by about 10% over a chest strap
- bluetooth, this can be especially bad if you are linked to your phone and then go out of range as it will keep trying to connect, best to turn it off
- backlight, set the timeout as short as possible and to the lowest brightness
- glonass uses a different set of frequencies to gps so uses an extra RF stage, the signal is also encoded quite differently so again uses extra juice
- vibrate alerts, the vibe motor is power hungry so keep these alerts to a minimum
- navigation, having nav turned on is not too bad, but don't keep it on the trail screen as this uses extra cpu cycles to draw/rotate the trail

Do all that and you might get close to the advertised battery figures on a relatively new watch.
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stenard · Joined: 04 Sep 2013 Posts: 2063

Stivrunning · Joined: 23 Dec 2008 Posts: 1285 Location: up north

just buy a 920 xt good for a 12 hr + IM