Garmin 910XT vs. 920XT
Hi EN Team members, I'm new to tri training and would like to pick up a multi sport watch. I noticed on Amazon that the Garmin 910 XT is available for $109 (cert refurbished) and the 920XT is $260 (new). I currently have a Garmin 510 that I use to track my ride. My basic requirements are:
1. track my swimming (distance, laps)
2. Track my indoor and outdoor bike training (must support grabbing power data from my Powertap hub)
3. Track my runs and provide pacing
4. Important ---Easily Upload data to Connect and Strava (or it never happened)
Q. Am I missing anything going with the 910?
Q. Is there a reason to go with the 930 over the 910?
1. track my swimming (distance, laps)
2. Track my indoor and outdoor bike training (must support grabbing power data from my Powertap hub)
3. Track my runs and provide pacing
4. Important ---Easily Upload data to Connect and Strava (or it never happened)
Q. Am I missing anything going with the 910?
Q. Is there a reason to go with the 930 over the 910?
0
Comments
The 920 finds the gps satellites much MUCH faster than the 910
SS
I love them
looks like a potential solution for workout sharing. I'll check it ou.
After careful review and the feedback from the group, I'm going to go with the 920 XT. Is Amazon the best place to pick it up, or do we have a team discount at one of the EN partners?
But I get the allure of the current model. Does that price include the Bluetooth hr strap? That's a potential game changer.
1) 920 finds satellites WAY waster (night and day comparisson) - If you always run in the same rural town in Canada, you might be okay with any gps watch, but my old 310 could take up to 10+ mins in say Central Park in NYC, the 910 maybe 5 mins (but as many as 10), and the 920 less than a minute. When I turn my 920 on inside my house in MN it has the satellites locked before I make it outside (It might be using my WiFi for this, not sure). Newer technology is simply "better" when it comes to stuff like this (would you go out and buy an iPhone 5 right now as your only phone to save a few bucks? The 910 was released before the iPhone 5 - not even the 5s, but before the iPhone"5").
2) Form factor - The 310 was an orange toaster on your wrist. The 910 is two 9V batteries on your wrist. The 920 is half to 2/3 as tall as the 910 and just "feels" sleeker. If you're going to swim in it, I have to guess this drag matters after 10,000+ arm strokes into the water per swim leg.
3) WiFi - Ant+ dongle "works" for the 310/910... The WiFi upload on the 920 means that my workout uploads the second I walk in my house literally before I have made it to wherever I will be changing out of my sweaty clothes, so no fussing with my computer and exactly zero time wasted.
4) Bluetooth - When I travel, I still want (need) to immediately tell the world that I completed my workout, so my watch pairs to my phone and I can immediately sync to Garmin/Strava/Trainingpeaks without thinking all that much. Not quite as seemless as the WiFi, but without a laptop and an internet connection, this is impossible with the 310/910 (I only usually travel with an iPad and couldn't even do it with that on the 910). Also when I run to work, I can pair my 920 to my phone so my wife knows I'm safe along the way and gets a message when I arrive.
5) Swimming - the 920 simply has better swimming analytics than the 910 and just forget it with the 310. I do mostly open water swimming, and the better satellite reception and better programming algorithm simply make the 920 better for an open water measurement tool (not to mention the smaller form and less drag I mentioned above). I think it's also better for lap swimming, but I do that so infrequently that I'll leave that to DCRainmaker.
6) Battery life - the 920 has better battery life and MUCH better (smarter) auto-shutoff of the gps and other features when you finish your workout. So not only could it double as a "regular" watch (and/or fancy step counter / sleep tracker / fitness tracker) if you wanted it to, it could also have a better chance of surviving a long IM or even an Ultramarathon.
7) Bike metrics - I also have a 520 (and a 510 and a 500) bike computer. I would say the 920 and the 910 are a "push" in this department, but both are far superior to the Vivoactive alternative. And I have had my bike computer crap out during an Ironman before and it was REALLY nice to have a fallback plan to switch to my watch to still have Power data and some other simple metrics in front of me on my watch.
If money is the ONLY limiter, then you wouldn't have even asked the question. The 910 is a great watch and will be totally capable of serving your Triathlon needs. BUT the 920 is superior in every way and you won't notice the extra ~$100 bucks especially if you pro-rate that over the 2-3 yrs you should expect to use the watch. Literally pennies per workout. That should be enough to save you the cumulative minutes (per workout) that will add-up waiting for satellites or messing with an ANT+ dongle when you're all sweat from a workout and you have to quickly shower to get to work (or hang out with your kids). FWIW, I expect the successor to the 920 to be released within the next couple of months. They have started discounting it pretty severely as of Christmas (and will likely discount it further when the ?930 comes out). I'd be surprised if the new model doesn't also have an optical HR monitor, but that's for another thread.
I also found out that the Garmin fenix3 Has all of all the goodness of the 920 plus a few other Garmin units. I'm leaning heavily towards it.