January 8, 2009: The kind people at Tech4o were gracious enough to send me the Men's Accelerator Trail Runner Watch for review. The watch retails for $69.99. The trail runner is stylish with it's stainless steal look and comfortable. The Accelerator Trail Runner watch measures speed, distance and calories burned. At this point you're probably thinking it must be a GPS watch, but if you thought that you are wrong! The watch has an onboard accelerometer, which acts like a pedometer, but instead of counting foot steps, it uses your arm motion. Tech4o states that with proper calibration, the watch will measure within 95% accuracy. Thus, this watch is marketed to runners who would like to know approximately how many miles they have run, but do not want to pay $300 for a Garmin 405. Out of the box the watch requires some work, you need to make sure that you read the manual and go through the set up options. The basic features of the watch are a pedometer, chronograph, count down timer, daily alarm and dual time zones. You will need to enter in your weight, average walking stride and average running stride in order to ensure accurate results. However, the Tech4o website has a handy calculator on there for calculating stride length, as well as directions. The watch will also keep your history of runs for a two week period. I tested this watch over a series of runs, using my Garmin 405 as the gold standard. I also know that the Garmin 405 is not 100%, but my experience is that it is accurate within 99%. I also did a few laps on the track to see how the watched performed. I was impressed, on my series of runs the watch was always within 1%-3% of the Garmin for total miles. However, when you change your pace up substantially that's when the watch starts to fail, thus if you are running a race, running intervals or a tempo run the pedometer function is thrown off and the margin of error becomes >5%. In conclusion, the Tech4o works well if your just out for a normal training run. However, that's probably when I need the distance feature the least. When I'm out for a training run, I can predict my mileage fairly accurately just by looking at the elapsed time. My training runs are generally +/- 15 seconds per mile and when I need the distance and pace feature the most is on tempo/interval runs. If you're looking for a Garmin substitute for a fraction of the price, I would consider the Tech4o Accelerator Trail Runner watch. It's fairly accurate and relatively easy to use, minus the set up time and it's not that reliable on days that you want to run fast and your stride is altered. I won't be giving up my Garmin 405 anytime soon, but for a recreational runner who doesn't want to pay the high cost of the Garmin, this watch will probably suit your needs. |
