Monday, June 10, 2013

Bryton Cardio 60 Review - OC Bicycles


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.

Sitting at the computer opens up a whole new range of features for the Cardio 60 because once on the Bryton Sport website you can create workouts that even the fussiest of athletes or coaches would be happy with that can be uploaded to the watch for your next workout or saved to be completed on a specific date.  I've found this to be really useful of late because I can plan my own workouts in advance and set the specifics of my set to include the duration/ speed/ time/ pace of all of my interval sessions so I know I am hitting my targets every time I train.  

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!

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