Hasta La Gadget!

Garmin has more or less had a monopoly on the GPS watch market for years now. But since September’s launch of the Timex Global Trainer GPS ($250 street), Garmin has a new competitor. While the Global Trainer is a valiant effort from Timex, it’s going to have a hard time challenging the breadth of Garmin’s line, especially the Garmin Forerunner 110, as well as its range of price points.

The first thing that strikes you when you first lay eyes on the Global Trainer is the sheer size of it. This behemoth of a sports watch has a huge face — wider even than my wrist. On the plus side, this means that it can show a lot of data on the screen while you’re running, but this also makes it a bit cumbersome. Luckily it’s still on the light side, so the watch won’t weigh you down when you hit the road.

Otherwise, the design is unremarkable; it’s a plain black watch with a main button for starts and splits on the face, and power and menu buttons on the side. One gripe is that the start button does not also function as the stop button. While having a start/split button is intuitive if you’re keeping track of splits, you have to train yourself to press the smaller stop button on the right-hand side instead when you’re done with your workout. If you’re concerned with exact timekeeping, this will be a bit of a pain for your first few runs. I do appreciate that the Indiglo button is easy to find. Other GPS watches, like the Suunto X10, make it harder to activate the light, which makes tracking your progress tricky on night runs.

The biggest gripe I’ve heard about GPS watches is how difficult it is to sync them with satellites. While testing in New York City, I’ve found that the tall buildings and general lack of open space can make it particularly difficult to find a signal. This is one area where the Garmin watches have the advantage. While the Garmin I tested quickly synced most times I used it, the Timex was a bit more finicky. The trick, I discovered, was to start it, let it try to sync for a minute or two, then restart it. Usually the second go-round would go a lot smoother, with the watch syncing within seconds, or a minute at most. Without a restart, the watch could fail to sync for 10 minutes or more. I never had the patience to see if it would ever eventually find the satellite signal. Of course, the syncing occurred faster in wide-open spaces like parks.

We’ve seen some pretty interesting and insanely unique watches in our time, and just when we thought we’d seen it all, artist Olivier Demange whips up this timepiece concept — dubbed Konect — that packs a wide range of features and looks futuristic while doing so. Embedded in this Tron-esque gadget watch is a Bluetooth radio that’ll act as a receiver — yes, you can finally fulfill your lifelong dream of using your watch to communicate (only if you’ve strapped a paired BT headset to your skull). You’ll also find proper controls for music playback, a button to answer and end calls, a removable USB stick, and well, a way to tell the time. Judging by the renders, we’d say finding out when it is might take more than a second or two, but you can be sure that we hope to see this thing on our wrists sometime. Check out the concept in video form below the fold — and yes, we know, House!

Continue reading Konect USB watch concept is awe-inspiring, hard to tell time on (video)

Konect USB watch concept is awe-inspiring, hard to tell time on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Give yourself a cookie if you can still remember as far back as August 29th of last year. That was the day when HP’s Phil McKinney teased the world with images of three new prototypes being developed in his company’s labs — there was a tablet, now known as the HP TouchPad, a smartphone that’s since taken on the name of Pre 3, and something snaked around his wrist that looked suspiciously like a watch. Today, we learn more about this Metal Watch, as HP calls. It’s a continuation of the company’s overarching theme of mobile interconnectedness, however unlike its webOS devices, this connected watch is nowhere near ready for prime time (or maybe it’s just like them since none are actually shipping yet!). The new Metal fella is still a research project as much as anything else, but it’s seen as a key part of our future, acting as an easy-to-use information aggregator. It looks just like any old watch to us, but why not jump past the break and let HP’s CTO enlighten you on what makes it special?

[Thanks, Obstacle-Man]

Continue reading HP shows off Metal Watch concept (video)

HP shows off Metal Watch concept (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 05:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re like us, you don’t mind working that grey matter to tell the time, especially if the watch your wearing looks and acts like something ripped from the U.S.S. Enterprise. The Timescape Sci-Fi watch, thus named for its cryptic time telling interface, sports a chrome exterior and uses a series of blue LEDs to illuminate a rectangular grid, giving you unique temporal readouts. Each line contains a series of dots representing minutes or hours, with the vertical lines displaying hours, the first three horizontal lines showing five-minute increments, and the last row offering exact minutes. Sound complicated? Well it is, but sometimes looking good takes a little work — you think Uhura rolls out of bed looking like that? The Timescape Sci-Fi watch is now on sale exclusively from Gadgets and Gear for $70, but if you just like staring at shiny flashy things, we’ve got a video of the timepiece after the jump.

Continue reading Timescape Sci-Fi watch makes you work for the time of day, looks good doing it (video)

Timescape Sci-Fi watch makes you work for the time of day, looks good doing it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 10:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s a reason Garmin has a virtual lock on the GPS watch market: Garmin watches just work. When you’re getting ready to head out on a run, you want to be able to just turn on your watch, let it sync while you stretch, and go. No watch I tried out allowed for that–except for the Garmin Forerunner 110 ($249.99 direct).

Though it was the smallest of the watches I tried out by far, the Garmin still had plenty of room on the screen for all the essential stats: distance, time elapsed, and pace. Unlike the Timex’s wide range of views, the only other options for the Garmin are heart rate and time. I was sent the more expensive grey and pink women’s version of watch (The price goes up $50, because it comes with a heart-rate monitor), but there is also a red and black “male” version as well as a less expensive black and grey unisex model. I didn’t mind the faint floral design on the bezel, but many of my running companions complained that it was a little too girly for their taste.

Like the display options, the functionality of the Garmin watch is pretty bare bones. I appreciated its simplicity, but this watch can’t differentiate between athletic activities like the triathlete-friendly Timex or provide more detailed geographic information like the hiking-geared Suunto. Pressing the menu or start buttons will launch the search for satellite connection. From there, operation is simple–start, pause, and stop the watch with the start/stop button on the top right. There’s also an illumination button on the top left for night running and an option to record splits with the lap button on the bottom right. Unless you press the lap button, the watch automatically starts a new lap each mile, briefly displaying your average pace for the past mile.

Post By Nicole Price-Fasig