Nike is a brand with a plan in all areas from footwear to sportswear. Their watches are no different when it comes to providing a product that catches the attention of world users. The Nike+ SportWatch GPS powered by TomTom offers plenty of mainstream running features you would want to have with any watch. It is safe from sweat and rainstorms, plus offering you uplinks to websites for helpful tips. If you need a runners watch it is worth considering and comparing, although you may find the satellite response is sluggish or non-existent indoors and around tall buildings.
Description and Features
The Nike Plus or Nike + Sportwatch GPS powered by TomTom offers a beautiful design with the band size the same as the watch face. It is overall a sports watch made to provide you with an easy to read screen for tracking your run.
Features it offers are GPS to track your run location. It will record your pace for the entire run, as well as have a timer to track the amount of time you might wish to run. It will mark laps and any rest intervals you might take.
With a calorie tracker and heart rate monitor, you have further information to track your fitness for the day. The heart rate monitor requires a polar wear link and heart rate transmitter to signal the watch.
It is also water resistant. This ensures protection against sweat and any rainstorm that occurs during your marathon.
The watch designed to track automatic features and those you customized before you start your run. In this way, you have a personal coach along for the run while you enjoy the exercise and track your latest stats. With distance, laps, location, and pace you can take the information back home for download. This enables a comparison of your personal records, which helps to encourage you on your path to fitness. The watch will store all your run history.
After your run, you can check your NikeFuel page, set goals, track history, view splits, and connect with other runners using the same watch or any Nike sports watch. It is a watch for runners versus other exercise modes.
Additional features include auto looping and inverting the screen display so you can see date/time plus your run stats based on your preferences. It also comes with metric choices should you wish to have secondary metrics displayed.
Advantages and Disadvantages
The first thing you need to do with your watch is plug it in to charge the battery. There is a USB cable for the computer, which allows you to go through the entire setup for your watch, including logging into the website for Nike+. As the watch is charging, you can customize the screen settings for the displays you would like most to see. It is all very straightforward, with few instructions actually in the box.
A nice option with Nike’s website for the watch is offering up detailed training programs. If you have yet to run a lot or you want some new training tips for your next marathon, I found these helpful programs are definitely a nice addition to your access on Nike+.
The battery life is also another feature of advantage as you can use GPS and the watch up to 10 hours. It might not be enough for a marathon of 50 Kilometers, but it is enough for most users. You can use the watch in standby mode or without GPS during the day. The simple design will not detract from your business dress.
It comes with Facebook integration in the event you want to put your stats up on your page to share with friends, which is nice for those who like to share.
Unfortunately, the GPS has had some issues. While many do not find satellite problems, it has limitations with many tall buildings and particularly with indoor use. The GPS is not going to link up if you are in a building working out. Luckily, as you are indoors the GPS is not really a huge issue; after all, you want to track your run on the track better than caring about your current location. You can always upload to Nike+ later on.
Something that can be a little disadvantageous is all the firmware updates. In fact, taking it right out of the box can lead to quite a few updates. It is nice as it helps make the watch better, but sometimes when you just want to complete your data transfer, I found that it gets annoying.
Is this the Right Watch?
Value is always subjective and based on shopping around for price comparison. There is value in this runners watch. The setup is easy, which makes it simple to start your run each day. In addition, the initial setup takes a few minutes where you can play around with customizable options.
The battery life has one of the longer run times with GPS enabled than other watches, including some Garmin runners watches, which adds value especially if you intend on running marathons for hours.
The fact that you can stay linked to social media pages adds to the social and sharing aspect of your runs, which for some adds value, too.
Updates are something that add value, but occur often and along with some GPS issues based on location, there are some devaluating points to the watch. Overall, I would say the conclusion is a resounding yes. Buying the watch is worthwhile, but it is important to look at various sellers around the Internet to ensure a fair price for the value you do get. Buying new is especially important about the price. In terms of comparison to other watches, the price to value ratio is similar, so do not discount this and its website attributes over other watches, particularly if you are a Nike fan because it is definitely worth it.