Wahoo Rival Watch Review

After having an Apple Watch for about a year I decided that it was time I get something more sporty. The Apple Watch is a great watch, and super cool to use, but doesn't really get the job done when it comes to athletics. It is a great watch that can connect to your phone, run some cool apps, and take phone calls, and on occasion track a run or a bike ride. When it comes to athletics, the Apple Watch is fairly sub par. You can't really track your heart rate. You only get a ping here and there, and that's about it. If you have to stop at a stop sign and wait for cars, you have to flip through 100 different things just to pause you're run or your bike. So that's why I bought the Wahoo Rival.

Sort of the reason I bought the watch is because of the Wahoo "ecosystem." I have a wahoo smart trainer, and a wahoo bike computer, so it seemed like i should continue on that trend. I have also used the app before, and it is really easy and super efficient to use. The watch itself is really sleek and really light. It doesnt have a touch screen, and is opperated by buttons on the side. you can chage the watch face to a different accent color, which is kind of neat in my opinion.

Workout options are fantastic. You have all of the different workouts preloaded onto the watch, and you can and new ones via the app. With the app, you can manage each workout mode, and what you want to see while your running. Along with basic funtions like mile time, time working out, and heart rate, you can look at a heart rate graph. This graph can show you what zone you are in by the certain color the graph is. You can also look at an elevatiopn graph, which is the lastpage you can flip through.

So far I like the watch, but there are things that I am not a huge fan of. For one, the heart rate data goes all over the place when doing a run outdoors. the watch needs to be tight around your wrist if you want to get a supper good reading. Another thing that bugs my is elevation. When comparing to my phone, the elevation gain and loss is way off. I could have only climbed 100 feet, but on the watch it says 1000. I think this has to do with a gps inacurracies, which have been reported by other people. The last thing that makes this watch a deal breaker for me is the Strava automatic upload. It barely works. When i try to upload a run to the app, it just wont. If the run isnt on the app, then it cant be uploaded to strava. Even when it is uploaded to the app, it is a gamble wether it will opload to strava.

My final review is that it is a nice watch. It looks nice and the funtions, when working right, are great. However, these funtions barely work right, and they are supper tempremental. Maybe wahoo can fix this in the future via firmware updates, but until then, I would by a garmin or a suunto instead.