TFS Review: Nike+iPod Sport Kit and Online Training Log
Posted January 13th, 2008 at 1:39 PM by Paul Petersen
Section: Gear & Apparel, Gadgets & Acces., Motivation, Music, Product Reviews, Special Features, TFS Reviews
Product: Nike+ iPod Sport Kit
Prices: $30.00 (foot pod & iPod receiver). iPod nano and Nike+ shoes sold separately.
Rating: Very Good 8.3/10.0
Pros: Very easy to use. Good accuracy once it is calibrated. Inexpensive; very good value if you already own an iPod and Nike+ shoes. Power Song feature is great idea. Nike+ online training log free, fun, and incorporates good motivation and community.
Cons: Requires calibration. Requires specific ancillary equipment (iPod nano, Nike+ shoes).
Overall: To use this innovative running tool effectively, you need to regularly run with music (or podcasts), own an iPod nano, and should own Nike+ shoes. Given these “ifs”, it is a great product for the money, and a tremendous motivational tool. The sensor will need to be calibrated, and works best in a Nike+ shoe, but tends to yield fairly good accuracy once these criteria are met. Runners who don’t use an iPod, or who want a richer feature set, should continue looking at more “traditional” fitness monitors.
Design - 9 - Out of the box, the Nike + iPod Sport Kit includes a Nike + iPod Sensor (foot pod), a Nike + iPod Receiver, and an instruction manual. The foot pod goes into the cavity in the left Nike+ shoe. The receiver goes into the bottom port of an Apple iPod nano. If you don’t own Nike+ shoes, the foot pod can be put into a shoe pouch (sold separately for $10), which can be attached to any shoe’s laces. All testing for this review was performed with a pair of Nike+ shoes and a 3rd Generation iPod nano.
Before the run, you can choose several settings from the Nike+iPod Menu, including:
- PowerSong: choose your favorite motivation song, which can be played at any time by pressing and holding the Center button. (…great idea!)
- Spoken Feedback: off, Male, or Female. Spoken feedback on your time, distance, calories, or pace can be accessed anytime by pressing the Center button.
- Distances: miles or kilometers.
- Weight: enter your weight in pounds/kg. This is needed for more accurate calorie calculations.
- Sensor:
· Links to a new sensor (foot pod). This is useful if you have more than one person in a household with a Nike+ sensor and Nike+ shoes.
· Calibration of the foot pod is also performed from this menu. Calibration is generally required to get the best speed and distance accuracy. To calibrate, the user just needs to run or walk a known distance (usually around a track), and then “correct” the Sport Kit to that known distance. This is very easy to do with the Sport Kit, and the manual clearly outlines it.
- Remote: Nike + iPod can be controlled wirelessly through a remote during the workout. The remote must first be linked to the receiver using this menu. The remote is sold separately, and is not part of this review.
Adjusting these settings is not required to use the Sport Kit, but they are handy to set before your first run in order to ensure optimal performance.
The Sport Kit is designed to be simple and easy to use, yet give people solid training feedback along with a few bells and whistles. Once the pod is inserted into the shoe and the receiver is attached to the iPod, you are ready to run! Select “Nike+iPod” in the nano’s main menu, and it will prompt you to pick one of four main workout types:
- Open-ended workout: just run for an unassigned time or distance.
- Timed goal: choose how long you want to run for
- Distance goal: choose how far you want to run
- Calorie burning goal: choose the amount of calories you want to burn during the run.
After setting the workout type, the Sport Kit will prompt you to start the workout when ready. When you hit “Start Workout”, the music begins, the clock starts ticking and the tabulation of distance and calories commences! It’s pretty straight-forward, especially for those already immersed in navigating nano menus. To be honest, I didn’t bother with the instruction manual much. User-friendliness is what Apple is known for, right?
During the run, the workout can be paused and resumed by hitting the Play/Pause button on the nano. This will not only pause the music, but also the timing and data collection. When you resume, everything picks up where it left off. Music selection can be changed using the typical nano controls and menus. Workout information is displayed on the nano screen, for on-the-fly visual access. You can also receive audio information by just clicking the Center button, which is usually the easiest thing to do if you’re wearing an arm band.
After the run, you can choose to review your recent workouts directly on your nano through the “Nike+iPod>History” dialog. The iPod will store and retrieve date, time, duration, distance, pace, and calories burned for a whopping thousand workouts. It will also tabulate your totals for all combined workouts, along with your personal best mile and kilometer for all workouts.
Once you plug the nano back into your computer, iTunes will send your workout data to nikeplus.com – an online training log and runner community. At nikeplus.com, you can graph, analyze, tabulate, and map your runs, as well as make running goals to track and engage in user community challenges. Nikeplus.com is a free service.
Effectiveness - 8 - I was able to get very good results without a whole lot of effort from the Nike + iPod Sport Kit. Getting out the door with the Kit was easy and simple. The Kit found the foot pod without problem, I selected the play list I wanted, and I was off and running!
Since I wanted to check the “out-of-the-box” accuracy of the Sport Kit, I completed my first run without any sort of calibration. The Sport Kit ended up overestimating my 18-mile run by just under a mile (I used my Garmin 205 as a “control”). Clearly, calibration was badly needed, but I already knew that from previous reviews.
I took it out the next day and performed a 1600m calibration around my local track. Thanks to the nice, clean interface offered by the nano, calibration itself turned out to be quite easy compared to watch-based foot pods I’ve used. After calibration, my subsequent runs (usually 7-10 miles in length) were “off” the Garmin by anywhere from a few hundredths of mile to a couple tenths. I find my Garmin to be pretty reliable compared to known distances, so I took this as a very good sign of the Sport Kit’s accuracy.
I do think calibration makes all the difference in accuracy, and using a Nike+ shoe helps as well, since the pod cannot shift or move while in the specialized cavity. With any foot pod, changing your stride will affect the accuracy, as the pod is calibrated to your “normal” stride. I noticed the Sport Kit would stray when I was going up steep hills, since doing so would greatly change my stride. I would expect that it would be less effective on trails and other routes with variable terrain for this reason. On the other hand, fitness GPS units, such as the Garmin models, tend to be very erroneous on trails due to reduced sky coverage. So whichever type of sensor you choose will have unique short falls in various situations. But I feel that the Sport Kit will provide very good accuracy for “everyday” type aerobic running and walking through country and urban landscapes with reliable terrain and footing.
I enjoyed the Sport Kit during the run. Obtaining audio feedback, switching songs, and adjusting volume was quite easy. Again, if you can navigate the nano on its own, plugging in the Sport Kit just creates another menu on the nano, and everything seems to work the same.
After the run, the fun really started. As soon as I plugged in the nano to my computer, my workout data was uploaded to the Nike+ website. Here, I could view my runs on an individual, weekly, or monthly grouping. By clicking on a daily run, I could quickly see an aesthetic-looking graph of my pace vs. distance, as well as summaries of my total distance, average pace, time, and calories burned. Pretty neat. Did I mention this is a free feature?
The Nike+ site also allowed me to set goals, such as running 100 miles in 4 weeks. You can set a variety of different goals, including mileage goals, time goals, pace goals, and calorie goals. Every time you upload data to the website, the goal tracking will be updated and you can see your progress. Again, the graphics and animations are very pleasing to eye, and the website is responsive. I found the summation of all this to be a very good motivational tool, as I enjoyed visiting the website, and enjoyed seeing my progress updating on the fly.
The Nike+ website goes even deeper than that, beyond the scope of this review. There is a whole community aspect to the site, including route mapping and sharing (with a very nice Google Map interface), user challenges, distance clubs, discussion forums, and more. Drilling down even deeper, I found desktop widgets that can stream your workout data, a “trophy case” exhibiting your personal bests and various awards you can “win” through challenges, and more.
I could go on, but I’ll just say that the Nike+ website might be the most impressive aspect of using the Sport Kit. Yes, it turns out to be a very robust training log, but in my opinion its most impressive trait is its ability to motivate through goal tracking and community. I could use this site for a long time without getting bored, and I think it can be a very useful tool to both neophytes looking for a reason to run, and for veteran runners as well.
Value - 9 - Before I launch into discussion of the Nike+ iPod Kit’s value, I am going to make some key assumptions:
- You run with music on a very regular basis. In fact, your mp3 player running out of batteries mid-run is usually a cause for tears.
- You already own an iPod nano OR you are planning on buying an iPod nano
- You like Nike shoes, and already own one or two pairs of the Nike+ shoes
If you don’t meet at least two of the above three criteria, you won’t find the Sport Kit to be a very good buy, since it will either be of little use to you (ie – you don’t run with music), or because you will need to make extra purchases to make the Kit work (i.e.: a nano, Nike+ shoes, or a shoe pouch).
However, if you already meet these assumptions (and I do), then the Nike + iPod Sport Kit is a tremendous value. You can buy the Kit from the Apple Store for a mere $29.00. And if you like to shop around on Ebay, you can find it for even less.
Consider this: for about $30 (the cost of a couple of large pizzas), you are getting a device that tracks your speed and distance with reasonable accuracy, integrates seamlessly into your Nike+ shoes, integrates seamlessly with your nano, and provides an online training log, community, and motivational tools on the Nike+ website.
And I know I already said this, but I just loved the Nike+ website. The data upload is absolutely painless, the visual interface, graphics, and motivational factors are outstanding, and I could drill down deep into rich content…all on a free site.
The Nike + iPod Sport Kit is not for everyone. But I consider it to be a must-have for nano-users, music-lovers, and runners looking for a boost of motivation. And hey, for 30 bucks you can’t go wrong!
Editor’s note - The overall rating was calculated by weighing Effectiveness as 70%, Design as 20% and Value as 10%.
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Tags: calibration, Foot POD, ipod, ipod nano, motivational tool, mp3 player, music, nano, nike, nike+, nike+ shoes, nike+ipod receiver, nike+ipod sensor, nike+ipod sportkit, nike +, nike plus, nike plus shoes, podcasts, running electornics, running gadgets, sport kit, training assisatnt, training device
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The Final Sprint
[…] TFS Review: Nike+iPod <b>Sport</b> Kit and Online Training Log […]
January 7th, 2008 at 6:35 pm[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptOverall: To use this innovative running tool effectively, you need to regularly run with music (or podcasts), own an iPod nano, and should own Nike+ shoes. Given these “ifs”, it is a great product for the money, and a tremendous … […]
January 7th, 2008 at 6:36 pm[…] Joshua Topolsky wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt […]
January 7th, 2008 at 6:37 pm[…] ricksgrey89t wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt… Calorie burning goal: choose the amount of calories you want to burn during the run. After setting the workout type, the Sport Kit will prompt you to start the workout when ready. When you hit “Start Workout”, the music begins, … […]
January 7th, 2008 at 9:07 pm[…] William Patry wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThis will not only pause the music, but also the timing and data collection. When you resume, everything picks up where it left off. Music selection can be changed using the typical nano controls and menus. … […]
January 7th, 2008 at 10:20 pm[…] Original post by Paul Petersen Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
January 9th, 2008 at 6:49 am[…] Read the full review at The Final Sprint! […]
January 9th, 2008 at 1:17 pmLet’s not forget that there are plenty of ways around having to buy Nike + shoes. You can use any shoes and just buy a little kit holder.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:52 pmYou’re right Alexandra and there are now many “adapters” on the market to choose from if you don’t own Nike+ shoes.
One of the first such adapters to be released was the Marware Sportsuit Sensor+. I reviewed it for TheFinalSprint.com in late 2006 and have had good results ever since.
To check out that review, please visit:
http://www.thefinalsprint.com/2006/10/tfs-review-marwares-sportsuit-sensor-for-ipod-nano/
If anyone has questions about the reviews, the Sportkit, or how to use it with an adapter - feel free to send us an email (contact@tfsmedianetwork.com) and we will get back to you as soon possible!
Thanks again and best of luck!
Adam Jacobs
January 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pmEditor-in-Chief
TheFinalSprint.com
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