With the recent Australian release of the
latest Bryton Cardio range I thought it was the perfect opportunity to share my
thoughts on what products I’ve been using for the past few months. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a
Bryton Cardio 60 and Rider 40 a few months ago and didn’t realize how lucky I
was to get my hands on the Cardio 60 in particular before it had even been officially
released into the country. The guys at
OC Bicycles have been of great assistance to me and I’ve been using the Bryton
range of products for close to three years now and these products have come
along in leaps and bounds.
Previously I’ve been using the Bryton
Cardio 35 for all of my running but since taking delivery of the Cardio 60,
this watch has sat unused on my desk.
I don’t really know where to begin with my
assessment of this watch because it is truly an unbelievable piece of equipment
and anything I say will probably not even come close to how good I think this
watch is! If the above video isn't enough to sell you on getting one read on and hopefully the rest of this review does! Straight out of the box it
looks amazing, so much so that I’ve taken to wearing it as a casual watch a lot
of the time. It is slightly smaller and
less chunky than the Garmin GPS watches so it doesn’t look out of place as a
casual watch and with such an unbelievable battery life, you can go over a week
between charges (and this is even while running 100km + in a week).
Garmin have long been the gold standard for
GPS running watches and for good reason, they have a proven history of quality
products and some great features to help monitor and improve performance. Having used both Garmin and Bryton products
in the past I can safely say that the new Cardio 40 and Cardio 60 are at worst
on a level playing field with Garmin, if not in my opinion superior.
Loading satellite reception seems to happen
almost instantaneously so there is never a delay in waiting for satellites to
load. Once running (or swimming or cycling for that matter!) you have the option
of up to four data fields on the screen and can have up to four screens to
scroll between, giving even the fussiest athlete endless data to monitor. I like to keep it fairly simple when I’m
running and alternate between total running time, distance and time of day for
my long runs on one screen and lap time and lap average pace on another screen
for my interval sessions.
Upon completion of a run all of the data
can either be reviewed straight away on the watch through the history or in
more detail on the Bryton website.
Having a degree in exercise science degree I love looking at all of the
data and I could spend hours looking at all of the available data from any
single run once uploaded to their website.
The other great feature is that I can straight away send this link to my
coach or anyone else who needs it and they can access it from wherever they are
as well.
This new range of Cardio watches comes in
two different models. The model I’ve
been using is the Bryton Cardio 60 range which comes with heart rate monitor
and retails for $299. The Cardio 40
model also comes with heart rate monitor and retails for $249. The main difference between the two models is
that the Cardio 60 is designed for triathletes and multisport athletes and can
be used for swimming, cycling and running while the Cardio 40 is specifically
designed for running and also has a slightly lower battery life. Whatever you decide on you won’t be
disappointed. There isn’t much more I
can say other than this watch is truly the best piece of training equipment
I’ve ever used and after almost 600km of running I can’t find a fault and will
say it has the ability to be a Garmin killer in the GPS sports watch market!
