Choosing a Health and Fitness Ecosystem - Part 8 - The TomTom Ecosystem

The final ecosystem in the line-up is TomTom. Although they started off with the ability for users to easily export data to almost any service, TomTom got off to a real rocky start in regards to their app, computer software, device firmware updates and fixes and website. Fortunately, for the most part, their latest devices have been pretty solid, with the most recent line being really awesome. In addition, they have really overhauled their apps and site, making TomTom a great contender in the ecosystem arena.

Devices
One of the things that drew me to TomTom when they first entered the fitness arena was that they made a multi-sport watch that was extremely affordable. Now, they still don't offer a mode for triathlon, so I definitely don't recommend TomTom for triathletes who are competitive and/or need their metrics tracked in a steady manner for a race. That aside, when I was just getting into triathlon, it was amazing having a watch that tracked literally everything I needed for training. TomTom now has a diverse line of products, ranging from running watches, to multi-sport watches, daily fitness trackers to daily activity monitors.

Even though I already noted it, I think it's important to emphasize how affordable TomTom's product line is. They truly offer one of the easiest user interfaces on their devices, one of the best GPS I have ever used, and similar products are usually much more expensive; and by affordable I mean under $200. You might not get all of the fancy smart features of an Apple Watch or Polar M600, but you are going to get almost everything else you want and need.

Website
I was with TomTom in the beginning, and their website was very vanilla, especially compared to every other competitor's website. However, the always made sure they could send data to virtually any service out there, making TomTom's platform one of the most flexible. Today they have really beefed up their website to create a mostly one-stop-shop for your stat needs.

Main Tabs

You start off with "Latest". This will have various tiles, such as Distance, Average Resting (HR), Sleep, Goals, map and summary of latest GPS-based workout, and your latest workout. There can be multiple goals, but you can only have one cardio-specific goal, such as running, cycling or swimming. The other goals that will appear if you choose is Weight and Steps. You can then click on any of these items to see more detail. Overall, this is a wonderful and clean screen, giving most people exactly what they want and need to see.

Activities

Next you can see all of your activities that have been logged via your TomTom device. It's very similar to Strava's activities list, which makes it an easy-to-view screen with details of each activity a click away.

Planning

The Planning screen is a very neat tool. This screen allows you to take courses (Trails) people have posted via GPX format, and upload it to the My Sports site. You can then upload this course to your watch. There are also the pre-defined "Races" which you can customized and appear on your watch as well. This is really fun because it serves to track your best performance for a given Race distance. Synced races include Running, Cycling, Treadmill and Freestyle (indoor swim).


Progress

Finally the Progress screen is just a visual analytics page to let you see trends for all or specific activities, as well as specific stats for the activities. It's a wonderful and simple tool for analyzing your workouts and races.

Set a Goal

Goals are extremely simple and allow a user to quickly set a goal then go. This is very similar to FitBit and this feature is excellent! You can set an activity-specific goal, such as a specific number of running miles per week or total time cycling per week. You can also set a weight goal, as well as the standard 10k steps per day goal.

Sleep

I wanted to break this part out because I am very impressed with TomTom's sleep tracking. Of all competitors, I have found TomTom to be one of the best at accurately tracking sleep. As you can see from the picture below, it does an amazing job at identifying when you are actually sleeping or napping. It was almost 100% accurate with my times.

Apps

TomTom technically has 2 apps; TomTom MySports and TomTom Sports. Although you can still use MySports, it's technically the old application, and when you download Sports, TomTom's newest app, you can migrate your MySports data over and use Sports as your default.

The Sports app tabs mirror the website for Latest and Activities. However, instead of Progress, the app calls the tab Trends. Finally there is a Manage tab to all you full customization and account / profile management.

The Latest tab is what loads first. Like the site, it shows a clean summary that has most of the important stats you would want at-a-glance. Activities is identical to the web version, and Trends is very similar to the web version as well, so nothing new and important to note here.



Final Thoughts

Overall TomTom is probably one of my favorite companies for general activity and sports tracking. The wrist HR is very accurate, chest strap HR is right on point, and devices, sites and apps are insanely simple to use. However, TomTom is designed for people who cross train or just want daily activity tracking. Their devices don't really have any smart features and don't really give enough stats for the stat-hungry athlete. In addition, although devices like Spark 3 can track multiple sports, it does not cater to multi-sport such as triathlon. But their devices work well, sync well, and can send data to almost every major site and service out there, making TomTom compatible with virtually everything.

This concludes my Ecosystem write-up. If you have any questions or comments, let me know. Enjoy whichever ecosystem you choose, and remember, always have fun and if you need motivation, go with the ecosystem that most of your friends or motivational friends are using.

Choosing a Health and Fitness Ecosystem - Part 6 - The Garmin Ecosystem

When you think fitness and sports tracking, one of the top names people respond with is Garmin. Garmin is one of the leaders in fitness and GPS technology. They were slow to the ecosystem game originally, but Garmin has really done an amazing job at building connections with third parties and making a diverse line-up of devices.

Garmin Fitness and Lifestyle Devices

The first thing to note is that Garmin makes many devices. But what matters here are its lineup of fitness and lifestyle devices. Whether you are looking for an all-day activity tracker (Vivosmart HR), a stylish activity tracker for work (Vivomove), a GPS fitness tracker (Vivoactive and Forerunner series) or a multi-sport and rugged GPS tracker (Forerunner and Fenix), they have you covered. One thing I want to note here is they also have a tracker for kids, vivofit Jr. I note this because nobody has really done this very well, and Garmin definitely has done a great job with this device. There are other devices as well for cycling, swimming, and more. They all integrate onto the same platform, making a great ecosystem for the devices.

Garmin Connect App

The Garmin Connect App has really come a long way since its inception. I will be covering the iOS app. With a simple dashboard, found in Snapshots, you get an immediate visual of your steps progress and sleep. Right below you can see your active calories, number of activities for the day, remaining calories you can consume, and how many calories you can consume. The calories remaining and consumed come from connecting to MyFitnesPal. I really like the lack of clutter on this first screen. Even though FitBit is one of my favorite connected apps, it can still be a little daunting to some to see so much information as you see right away with their dashboard. So, Garmin has additional screens, or Snapshots, you can swipe to. You can customize these as well. Basically, they go into more details from the dashboard and will cover specific activities, such as running or swimming.

In addition to Snapshots, you can see leader boards for challenges you have joined and with your connections (friends list). Your calendar gives you a glimpse of your scheduled training and events, as well as your completed activities. It takes a little bit to get used to what each color stands for, but once you learn that, the calendar is a really awesome tool. The News Feed will show activities or steps for your connections. Finally you get access to a massive amount of other features under More.

Overall, this is a wonderful app, especially for people who are very fitness and activity focused. However, unlike many of the other apps from competitors, there is a learning curve to this app, which may not be for the timid tech user.

Garmin Connect Website

The Garmin Connect Website is one of the most powerful sites I have ever used. It's also one of the most complicated to use and has a rather steep learning curve. The site is mostly easy to navigate. The real power to this site is that you can heavily customize tabs to show whatever information you want. For example, my loading tab is called "Training" and shows an overview of things I find important, as you can see below. I also have tabs for swimming, biking, running, and activity tracking. Each tab is customized how I want to see my information.

Some of my favorite features include being able to create training plans, running or cycling routes, and creating workouts. Garmin provides some free training plans which are pretty decent. You can sync them to your Garmin device, assuming that device supports it. The calendar is where I spend most of my time. I plan out my weeks by adding workouts I have created. I can then sync my calendar to my watch, and load the specific training activity on my watch for that day and begin that workout. Polar does this as well, and it's an awesome feature.

Similar to MapMyRun, Garmin has the ability to create routes. It is not as advanced as MapMyRun, but it's good enough that you don't need to rely on MapMyRun to map out your routes. There are tons of other features on the site, which would take a long time to cover.

Final Thoughts

The Garmin ecosystem is what most athletes and active individuals dream of using. It's important to note that Garmin is also, slowly but surely, getting with the times and allowing for multiple Garmin devices to sync with their app like FitBit and others have, working more with allowing third party integrations, finally starting to move to Bluetooth smart, and making the overall experience more streamlined. I am not convinced Garmin is for everyone, even if their devices, since there are some learning curves to the devices, app, and website. However, Garmin is one of my favorite ecosystems...then again, I am biased since I am a triathlete. Up next, Apple!

Choosing a Health and Fitness Ecosystem - Part 5 - The FitBit Ecosystem

FitBit has one of the most user friendly ecosystems of any other company. There are very few personal and company health services that do not connect with FitBit. In addition, most activity, fitness, and health sites connect with FitBit. They are constantly receiving recognition for having one of the best looking and easy-to-use apps for mobile and portable devices. And if this wasn't enough, they have one of the largest active user communities. They have even embraced the fashion and smart watch trends; maybe not the best, but they have pretty much everything covered.

FitBit Devices

I am not going to dive too far into the details on the devices, as there are too many to cover. Basically, they have simple activity trackers (Zip) to general fitness (Charge and Blaze) to a multi-sport tracker (Surge). Some of these devices sport smart features that let you receive phone alerts and control your music. However, the smart features for the most part are usually limited, but with FitBit's recent acquisition of Pebble, that might change in the very near future.

In addition to activity and fitness tracking, they also offer a smart weight scale and designer and collector models and accessories for their devices.

Overall, their devices are pretty good. The wrist HR is fairly accurate, but as with all wrist-based HR, there are always limitations, especially when it comes to how much you sweat and, for running specifically, how much you alter intervals. My only major complaint is their treadmill accuracy. Compared to a lot of other companies I have tested, FitBit had one of the least accurate treadmill values; I always got credit for way more steps than I actually took, average of 15% more steps to be exact.

FitBit App

As usual, I will only be able to comment on the iPhone version, as I do not have an Android device. To put it simply, this is the BEST app I have used for a connected device. You can sync multiple devices with ease and navigation to features is amazingly simple. Even advanced features are a breeze. The Dashboard, or home screen, is sleek, modern, and does a great job at showing you useful information. Since I am not currently using FitBit, I will be showing stock images from FitBit's site. The user experience is identical though, so don't worry.

Aside from the Dashboard, which is basically a summary of your whole day, there are screens for each item that appears on the Dashboard; sleep, steps, heart rate, activities, nutrition, weight, and more. The type of device you have will determine the level of detail and data that appears. For example, if you just have a Zip, you will see steps, can still track nutrition and weight, but won't see things like heart rate.

However, using your device when going outside for an activity gives you the added bonus of tracking that information through the app. So, you can get extra information such as GPS tracking and other metrics.

FitBit Website Dashboard

In addition to having one of the best apps, it also has one of the best websites. Sure, there are some features, or lack of certain customization that make no sense, but overall their site is amazing. You get a good look at everything YOU want to see. And it stays consistent with how you see things on the app, so you aren't confused by screens. Plus, for many, the simple integration with MyFitnessPal is huge for nutrition tracking. There are plenty of places to connect with others and won't disappoint you.

Final Thoughts

FitBit is still the market leader for a clear reason. It's definitely designed with the masses in mind. Very few companies are focused on such a diverse audience. Whether you need to track steps for work or your health care plan, want to get more active, are a constant gym goer, an extremely active person, or a fitness nut, there is an option for you. However, if you are an athlete and looking for a device that can withstand the stress, weathering, beating, sweat and water, and more, FitBit does not really have the devices you are looking for. For me personally, this is the only reason I left FitBit...as a triathlete, I needed a device that was waterproof, could track all of my sports and in the same session, and could handle the beating I put on my watch. Up next is Garmin!

Nike Apps (for iPhone)

I had done a post a while back on NTC (Nike Training Club) and I figured it was time to just talk about Nike's other app offerings for iOS.

• Nike+ Running (Free)
• Nike+ Fuel (Free)
• Nike Training Club (Free)

As you can see, the theme here is "Free". For now, I have a review on Nike Training Club you can check out.

The main reason for bringing up Nike+ is that it's still a very strong community and they have great tools to really help people succeed. There are tons of alternatives out there, and yes, Nike+ isn't as much of a focus anymore since Nike discontinued the FuelBand and there hasn't been as much focus on Nike+ from Nike.

So let's dive in! The main reason I like these apps is because they are really well built and useful. Aside from being required to create a Nike+ account, there really isn't any downside I can find, unless you are someone that needs extremely detailed statistics. Nike has designed their apps more around the idea of social fitness and the average user. This means that someone just starting out won't get overwhelmed by too many features and screens. In addition, the learning curve is fairly flat, so if you know how to use your iPhone, you can easily use these apps.

The other reason is that I love the way Nike has built the social and rewards aspect so fluidly into their apps and site. One of the hardest things for people to do is stick with a plan to improve fitness, have a healthy lifestyle, achieve a fitness goal, or the like. One of the easiest solutions is to take the journey with someone, which is easy to do with Nike+. You can setup goals, challenges, and share your progress.

In regards to additional tracking, you can link your Nike+ account to other 3rd party sites / apps; some popular ones include MyFitnessPal, Garmin, TomTom, Apple Health, Google Fit, and more.

So, now for a brief overview of each app, which I will have follow-up posts on more details for Running and Fuel.

Nike+ Running

This is basically your standard app that allows you to track you run; indoor or outdoors. You get standard information which is very important to beginner or seasoned runners / walkers. First off, you will be able to track your distance, total time, and average pace. In additional, you will see your total count of runs, total miles overall, Fuel Points, and how you rank compared to friends (assuming you use the social piece).

One thing I always loved was how you could integrate your music into your run. You can create a Pace Station which allows you have you music sync up to your pace to keep you motivated and consistent. This is partnered through Spotify. Or you can just select a playlist you already have.

During your run you will get alerts, such as each mile completed, as well as be able to see your current distance, average pace, heart rate if you have a bluetooth HR monitor, and elapsed time. You will also see what song is playing and have the ability to change tracks.

Once completed, you can add a picture if you want to make the session more memorable. For example, if you are running a race, you could add a finish line selfie. Finally, after your run, you will see a map of the course you ran/walked, total time, average pace, elevation gain, average heart rate if you used a HRM, how you felt after the run, the temperature, and the current mileage on your shoes. You can also share your session with all of the popular media sites.

I want to mention that if you are using a FuelBand or an iPod nano, you can utilize this for indoor running. Now, it is not the most accurate, but you can get a foot pod which is surprisingly accurate for tracking. However, it's best for steady paces, and does not do well with large fluctuations in pace. Interval training works well though.

I also have to mention Apple Watch. You basically have the same functionality, but on your watch. As with most apps, you will need your phone with you for GPS and HRM.

Nike+ Fuel

If you still have a Nike FuelBand, then you use this app to sync all of your information. As a note, I am pretty sad Nike got out of the tech arena, as the FuelBand and their GPS watch really set the tone for the current wearables market today. Anyway, the app is very standard for any activity tracker; shows you steps, activity levels throughout the day, and your Fuel Points. You can view extra detail on your activity level as well; viewing day, week, month or year. You can view your progress, how you are doing on your goals that you defined, and how you are doing versus others. In addition, you get social updates your friends. You can also see you summary of all of your training sessions. This app integrates with NTC for activities. In addition, you can use your iPhone 5 or later if you don't have a FuelBand. You pretty much track what Nike calls Nike+ Sessions.

Nike+ Training Club - NTC

As I noted above, you can read my full review on this app. Basically, it's a fitness trainer on your phone. The app includes workout plans for all types of goals and personal schedules  (I love the 30 minute workouts). The app syncs with your music, gives you alerts and counts reps for you. In addition, if you aren't sure how to do a move, there is a video for every move to show you proper form and technique. There are tons of paid apps out there, and yes, there are many apps you can customize your workouts to your heart's content, but there are still few apps that offer such a solid and well rounded set of workouts for FREE! I still use NTC a bunch, but being a triathlete, I typically use apps that allow for fully customized workouts, such as Fitness Builder.

As you can see, Nike really offers a 1-stop shop for anyone who wants to get fit and healthy, or for anyone who is seasoned and needs solid and reliable tools. Enjoy!