Review on NK Sports SpeedCoach Training Bumper by Billy Donalson

I've had the Speed Coach for a few months now. I bought it as a training tool for longer SUP competitions. Having had all sorts of reporting and metrics devices since the mid 80's (mainly cycling related) I was expecting a much better product with thousands of similar devices on the market for inspiration and user interface and connectivity options to choose from. . An attempt to keep it short. Speed Coach (SC) provides feedback for structured workouts. And it offers live feedback on stroke count, current speed, distance, etc. To be honest, all these features set a very low bar for obstacles. Garmin watches offer all of these features with hundreds of other metrics tracked. SC has many flaws in user experience. For example, a lap timer would be very useful. (A big plus would be activation with a remote control that can be mounted next to the SUP paddle handle). There is no such circle option. Either start or stop. And therein lies one of my biggest disappointments. Stop the activity to take a break, if for some reason you pause and skip the sleep feature, you'll lose all data up to that point in your efforts. When I say "game" the data is written but the SC starts the new event from zero and the old event information is not displayed on the screen. For example, I lost 16 miles out of 21.5 miles when I stopped to eat and drink and missed the sleep timer. As mentioned earlier, the data will still be saved but will no longer appear on screen. While I'm on screen, the border settings are also missing. Most other devices allow you to customize the number of fields and their content. With SC, you can only configure the top two panels, while the bottom two are "flexible" panels where you can switch between pre-programmed options. But this cycling requires you to stop paddling, lean forward, or sit down to adjust. During training, this is suboptimal. What's also disappointing is that the SC no longer registers movements from just 5-10 beats to 50-100 beats. I lost over a half mile in the first 10 miles of the workout. My Strava-powered iPhone and Garmin Edge 1030 recorded the same run, which was 1.3 miles longer at the end of mile 21.5. I have sailed this waterway many times and I know the distance. The SC numbers are incorrect. Not to mention the frustration of looking at the SC to see 0 BPM and speed when you know you're at about 53 bpm and 4.8 mph. There are other software quirks, but these are the most disappointing. Ouch. The internal memory could be significantly better. My Garmin 1030 literally logs thousands of miles. This is probably due to how the data is stored and compressed, but after 10 strokes of 5-15 miles the memory was full and you have to dump previous events to free memory. Hardware - The form factor can also require some work. . The mount isn't attached to the SC itself, and there's a slight but annoying vibration when you're in the water for hours, vibration that bounces through the board. I used a small piece of string tucked under the SC to keep track of it. The dedicated charging cradle is also a bit annoying. I understand that the SC is supposed to be waterproof, but there are many waterproof devices on the market that use a simple micro-USB or USB-C interface with a waterproof cover to seal the port. Lose the dedicated charging adapter and the SC becomes useless. connectivity. Plugging in a heart rate sensor is arbitrary at best. A pairing is required for almost every other rowing effort. This was the case with the Garmin and Wahoo HR straps, which have both Ant+ and Bluetooth connectivity options. Both connect to your iPhone or Garmin device in seconds. Let's get back to writing data. It would be nice to adopt a standard format that could be used with any number of sports data collection applications. Frankly, the fact that there is no such possibility is surprising. For example, connect SC to Strava and it will be a big plus. There's really no way to compare recent attempts to previous attempts over the same water. The last point is the prices. $450 is frankly insane. And I regret spending money on a bizarre and almost unusable machine. I'm a product designer and I understand the potential manufacturing costs involved with a device like the SC. The price is unreasonable, especially considering the usability issues mentioned above. So many ways to streamline production and improve user experience. I don't want to belittle the designers but this could be a much better device and there are literally hundreds of other devices out there to explore and maybe get ideas from. It seems that SC was developed in a vacuum. SC will no longer see time on my board. It's just not reliable enough and too clunky to be used as a reliable learning tool. Shame about the money spent. I will look for alternative ways to record SUP events and workouts.