On smartwatches & power meters

September 22, 2014

We had a few words with Ray Maker of the dcrainmaker fame about the new Apple smartwatch, power meter technology and the newest trends in power meters.

Slowtwitch: Ray, it is good to see you.

Ray Maker: Same here, it has been a while since we last chatted.

ST: I saw you briefly at Interbike and Eurobike, but we both had our hands full.

Ray: It is a busy few days – those shows are crazy sometimes.

ST: They certainly can be overwhelming, but at times it feels like Groundhog Day.

Ray: Yes, exactly. They seem different year to year from a reader standpoint, the people looking at the content. But in a lot of ways it is the same show year after year. It is fun because you see the people you haven’t seen in a year, but in some way it is the same thing year to year, or just Eurobike to Interbike.

ST: You recently tweeted about the new Apple smart watch and shared concerns that both the critics and fan boys had bad information. Talk about that new watch.

Ray: It has been interesting watching that [introduction]. Obviously there has been a lot of information released about the Apple watch, but at the same time some things, especially for the endurance athlete, that aren’t yet released. Looking at stuff like waterproofing for example. Officially nothing has been said, but unofficially some of the reporters who are a little more connected to the Apple world have found out that you can’t take it into the shower for example. More like a classical timepiece that wasn’t very water friendly. And that has of course concerns for health and fitness. If it is not shower friendly, sweat will kill things much much better than a shower will. If you are going for a long run and before you know it – sweat will be everywhere. I think there is a lot of interest in the final spec once it is released, but Apple has rightfully been a bit quiet in terms of where they are. I think some of the sensor pieces, including the heart rate sensor they have in there, will make it very fascinating to see where they are and who is behind it – if it is homegrown or outsourced to someone else. There are a number of players in the optical sensor industry and some of them are well known and very well respected, Mio and Valencell, and then there are others who are lesser known and those who tend to produce lower quality sensors, and we find some of those in devices from Samsung, the S5 and the Gear Fit. A lot of those devices and sensors are pretty horrible actually. It will be interesting to see what Apple has done there.

ST: Do you actually think that people who buy that Apple watch will use it for sport, or is it just a cool gadget?

Ray: I definitely think it will be a cool gadget, but initially, or with that first release we may have to hold off on the sporting activities because of water proofing issues. I am really fascinated to see what apps they will pursue, and it will be a wake up call for the rest of the fitness industry – in terms of making app compliant watches, and making watches and devices that can host apps. That will really cause the Apple watch to flourish, in terms of a Strava or similar making an app for the device just like they do on the iPhone. That is totally why the iPhone and iPad have exploded as they have, because of the app capability.

I was reading a blog from someone who is not at all a fitness person, but a guy who likes classical watches and buys really expensive European watches. He said he did not think that people who buy high-end classical watches will use it as day-to-day time piece, they will wear it here and there. And I think athletes might be in the same boat. They might wear the Apple watch to the office, at least in the first version, and it might not be their training watch.

ST: I have a Pebble smart watch that has a lot of functions, but I mostly like it for the style, and swap watch faces but don’t use the RunKeeper app or other features much.

Ray: I think there are a lot of companies who do interesting things in the watch category and converge that with devices that are more athlete focused. We see that a little bit with Suunto’s Ambit 3, and some of Garmin’s watches like the Fenix 2, where they are combining the roles of Pebble like functions such as notifications with what is a multisport watch. That is sort of the first step, but if these companies want to stay in the market long term they will have to move a lot faster to more robust app development.

ST: Is it likely that Apple will set the standard in this category too?

Ray: Absolutely, there is no doubt about it. Keep in mind that this is only the first release. In general Apple always gets it right eventually, so even if this first release doesn’t fit the need of athletes this time around, one or two years from now I am sure they will fix all the complaints and get a device that is incredibly competitive in the fitness industry. They are investing a lot of money in health and fitness and I thus don’t expect it to be just a random experiment for them.

ST: Barometric altimeter?

Ray: The iPhone 6 has a barometric altimeter in it, which makes it really exciting for cycling. Where in the past if you went riding with another phone you did not have very good elevation data and if you went to the mountains you may in fact have ended up with wonky data. Now with the barometric altimeter it gets interesting, not only for on phone device, but also for devices like the Wahoo Rflkt, a cheap $99 head unit that you can put on your bike and leave your phone in the back pocket.
CatEye also has a new Strada Smart that is about $80 and while it has a traditional CatEye look, it is fully integrated with the phone capabilities, but it can also run solo.

ST: Back to smart watches. Swatch group CEO Nicolas Hayek Jr. recently stated very strongly that they won’t go down the smart watch path with their brands (they own Omega, Breguet, Longines, Tissot, Certina among many others.) Is that a dangerous stance?

Ray: Absolutely, that is sort of the same thing phone manufacturers would have said 5-10 years ago, that they did not think that smart phones will catch on. I think that will cause a huge gap in their profits long term. There will be always people who want to buy very high-end multi thousand dollar watches, and that won’t go away, but there are a lot of people who buy less expensive watches and they will find that these smart watches will fill a need and want for them. Those companies will see a decline in revenue.

ST: Agreed on the high-end, but in that $100 to $300 dollar trendy watch range just being a watch will likely not cut it anymore. Folks can read the time on their phone.

Ray: I think you may see some of those brands look closer at Withings. They came out of nowhere last summer and introduced the Withings Activité, which looks like a classical European watch but has full activity tracking inside it and is controlled by your phone. So if you were to switch time zones it would automatically update your watch instantly via the phone time zone. It is fully waterproof but looks like a classic European watch. Very cool idea and you may see more classic European brands do something along those lines.

ST: Let us talk about power meters as we now see a flood of them coming towards us. Do you think that is confusing to the consumer?

Ray: It has been interesting watching discussions and people are currently trying to put things in a bucket logically. If it is cheap it is probably not accurate and if it is really expensive it is super accurate, and I don’t think we are going to see that to be quite honest. Once these products hit the market, I think we will find that the technology has advanced and is advancing so quickly, that the accuracy is as accurate as it would be on a multi $1,000 power meter. I think there will be entrants that come in at the low price point that do have bad accuracy, and I am sure we will see that over the next year. But I also think we will have cases of cheap power meters that could be $400 or less that are just as accurate as a $2,000 – $3,000 power meter.

ST: There is this thought that how one meter compares to the next is not important, as long as it is constant with output.

Ray: I would say that is an easy trap to fall into. Because once that power meter reaches the end of its useful life, whether that is 1, 2, 4 or 10 years from now, then how do you compare your historical gains to the next power meter that you buy? So you want it to be accurate, because if you are going to be in the sport long term, you want to be able to compare your growth and history over time. And you can’t do that, if you don’t have things that are not going to match.

ST: What trends do you see?

Ray: I think right now we are seeing a Left Only phase where folks are saying we can make money and reach a different consumer by going Left Only. So Stages, and then we saw Garmin, Rotor and Polar all following this summer. But I also think that is a bit of a short-term trend. As we saw the power meter prices plummet over the last few weeks, within a year or so there won’t be any more need to buy a Left Only power meter. A left-right power meter will be half of Left Only ones today.

ST: But isn’t the science and technology much tougher to figure on two-sided meters?

Ray: It tends to be a little simpler being on the non-drive side when you are attaching something to the crank, because you have fewer things to worry about. On the drive side you have chain rings and chain and usually the frame is different on that side too. So it is more complex to install the power meter there. For something pedal based like the Vector and the Brim Bros it is less of an issue, as there is no difference at that point of the bike. For 4iiii for example it is slightly different to install a pod on the left hand side or on the right hand side to get under the chain rings. But I think those things will settle out.

The cool thing is in the last couple of weeks, especially 4iiii and Watteam introduced solutions that are easy for the end user to install. I think we are going to see more of those, and the thing to keep in mind is that the things we saw at Eurobike and Interbike are really but a fraction of the companies out there that are working on price points that are far lower than what we have seen in the last weeks. Home install and all that with the same accuracy – we are just at the beginning of that. But as I said before, I expect companies coming to the market and they won’t succeed. But through testing we can figure out which ones are good and which ones are bad.

ST: I did not just mean left sided meters, I meant one sided in general, versus accurately measuring both sides.

Ray: Correct, it is a little more challenging to go dual sided and have sensors that pull together, and we have seen some companies that have some problems to pop that out. The good news though is that the protocols, the Ant+ and the Bluetooth Smart side are making that a little bit easier for companies now. So they can adopt that and that then just becomes a mechanical issue, in terms of how you get those things attached.

ST: You hinted we are just at the beginning of that push. What is the lowest price point in power meters we might see?

Ray: I think within 2 years we’ll probably see them at about $199 US for single sided, and probably $399 US for left/right. There are more players on the way aiming for more consumer friendly prices at the same accuracy point.

ST: Is there a power meter you are especially keen about?

Ray: I am really excited to see where the 4iiii one goes. They are coming out at the $399 price point and I am excited to see what that can do in the market place. As I have said before, to better understand that, it is basically a foot pod on your crank arm. The cost of where that running shoe pod is, that is where this could go. I don’t think they will hit the target at the end of the year, I think they will likely hit early next year, but I think that is ok. Put in some extra time and get it right.