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Comment by caractacus | Hacker News Reader

As a runner, I really don't see the point. I have a gps watch (Garmin) that records distance, time, pace, cadence, etc etc and shows it all to me on my wrist. Sure, there are people out there who just want to track a run but the use case for this - particularly with no display - seems very very limited.

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I have a Garmin watch (forerunner 220) and it is a bit frustrating how limited it is for the price and how Garmin segments their watches. Example: there is no bike mode so if I ride my bike it messes up my records, etc. instead of changing one bit in the data and the model that does this is hundreds more (at the time). There were also lots of issues with auto pause, pace smoothing and the like. Finally it only has 2 custom screens, another arbitrary product segmentation limitation.

I love Garmin hardware as it is super reliable. Software is more meh.

Also with this we get a music player which obviously would be suboptimal to have a cable hanging off my wrist (though Bluetooth could be cool but a bigger battery hog). This could also be interesting to monitor running form at some point too.

Your Garmin can't play mp3s.

My TomTom Cardio can: https://www.tomtom.com/en_us/sports/fitness-watches/gps-watc...

But I wish it could play music from Spotify, specifically Spotify in offline mode... which this can! I'm sold.

As a fellow runner as well, I keep searching for that "perfect" device to replace my phone for my runs. For races I just have a basic Garmin, but for training runs I love having my phone on me for music, podcasts, emergencies, and endomondo (training app).

I think the Core is a step in the right direction, depending on how extendible it is with 3rd party apps. I love that the GPS is in such a small device and that it doesn't seem to suck the battery too much (as advertised at least). Sucks it doesn't have LTE as music streaming over 3G is painful to say the least. 4GB isn't much space to store music or podcasts either. While I'd love to ditch my phone for runs this doesn't allow me to do that quite yet.

Yeah I know back in the day we would just run with our little Casio watch, but I'm spoiled now :)

You listen to 4GB of media on a single run?

According to DC Rainmaker, when combined with the watch you'll get this information on your wrist as well.

So now it's a <$170 device that has optical HR and GPS. It may not have some of the Garmin features (ANT+ is a maybe, GLONASS isn't included), but it adds a headphone output, connectivity and I suspect it will ultimately have a stronger app ecosystem.

If they've implemented optical HR well, it could be a very compelling alternative to the less specialised Garmin devices.

As a fellow runner I freeking love this idea! I've been a Nexus user since the Nexus One and have rolled through the One, Four, Five and now Six.

Running for 3+ hours was iffy with any of those devices because they'd eat their battery. Want to take your phone on a kayaking trip? Well sorry, guess you need a drybox and an extended battery!

I don't like anything on my wrist or arms when I run. Maybe I can clip this somewhere on me that is not noticeable.

Nothing stops you from clipping a garmin to a belt loop.

I might as well spend less money on this then, yes?

As a runner, I love my Garmin (since the latest Forerunners introduced bluetooth sync, decent battery life, and reasonable time to GPS lock). But I'd like a watch that has a real map and can play music over bluetooth earbuds.

I just got a Moto 360 sport which has GPS, HR and BT. You can pair it with BT headphones, and it will play music from Google Play music without a phone.

The sad thing is that I actually like to listen to podcasts while I run. And, even though Google added podcast support to Play Music, podcast cannot be sync'ed to the watch. So I still have to carry my phone.

>As a runner, I really don't see the point.

You can send a SOS and listen to spotify.

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