Everyone is jumping in on the smartwatch bandwagon and making the future prospects of wearable tech quite interesting. The latest entrant is Adidas. A sports brand, it did just exactly what we would expect of it: go after the sporting fraternity. Adidas’ new smartwatch, the miCoach SMART RUN, is targeted at those who are runners and coming a day after Adidas’ main rival Nike announced a new version of its fuelband, Nike+ Fuelband SE. Indeed Adidas takes a swipe at the fuel band in its press release by saying this of the miCoach SMART RUN: There are no cables, straps or additional sensors with this unique all-in-one device.
The Adidas smartwatch users will be able to track their runs using GPS mapping, monitor their heart rate off their wrist, listen to their favorite music and get real-time coaching through it. It has a built-in accelerometer that counts every step made so that runners can monitor their stride rate. It has built-in GPS to tracks speed, distance and logs the route and an MP3 player with Bluetooth wireless audio to deliver music and audible coaching guidance, eliminating headphone cables and music players. Quite interesting… until you realize that for all that you’ll have to part with $399.
The Adidas miCoach SMART RUN will be available in November through adidas.com.
For the members of the Kenya athletics team and all Kenyans who engage in running (after all it is all we are known for alongside other things) this could be a handy accessory. I say accessory because unlike other smartwatches that we have seen recently like Pebble, Sony Smartwatch 2 and the Galaxy Gear, the miCoach SMART RUN is a standalone gadget and does not pair with your smartphone to show notifications and allow you to do some other things like answer calls. It also does not have applications like the Galaxy Gear does. Since it is targeting sports personalities, it will have to compete with Nike’s newly released Fuelband SE which is less costly.
