Finally got a chance to try out the Nike+ sportband. For this inaugural run, I choose a flat route, one that I had ran often. Starting from my place to the underpass along the ECP just before going over to East Coast Park. The distance as measured on Mapmyrun is 10.24km (+ return) but somehow I always felt that it was slightly longer more like 11km.
As I was wearing my regular watch on my left hand, I had to wear the sportband on the right. Being right handed, it was a bit difficult to get it to fit just right. It was either too loose or too tight. It would have been better if it had come with normal watch strap.
Using the sportband was a breeze. Just press and hold the button and go when the display start flashing. The Nike manual said it was 95% accurate out of the box and 98% with calibration but only if worn with Nike+ shoe. As I still do not have a Nike shoe, I wore my Ascis 2110 and attached the sensor with the Switch Easy Runaway which means that I expected it to be slightly off.
At the u-turn point at the entrance to the underpass, which I usually take as 5km, the distance shown was 5.47km. The total distance was 10.97km which was pretty close both way and I think more reflective of the actual distance.
So far so good. The only grouse I have with the sportband was it small display area and lack of light. As I was running at night and being shortsighted, I had to stopped under the road light to peer into the display to check the distance which means I had to make several stops.
Back home, the initial uploading was a pain and nearly caused me to threw the darn thing away. Firstly, for some reasons, my notebook could not read it and I had to use my desktop to upload the run record.
Unfortunately, even though it keep saying uploaded, when I logged into Nike+ using my existing Nike+ ID, it failed to record the run. Finally, I had to create a new ID before the uploaded run could be captured. Hopefully, this is a one off thing. So here is the initial run details.
One thing though the Nike+ website is notoriously slow to load. So maybe for uploading, to save my time and lower my blood pressure, I shall only upload every few runs.
The one thing I hate about the Sportband is the replacement cost of the sensor, which the salesperson said will run out in about a year. It costs S$55, which is more than half of the $100 cost, for a battery!
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