Review: Suunto Movescount

Site: Suunto Movescount

Score: 72/100

 Summary: I'm surprised it scored as low as it did, given the amount of work that was put into it. The biggest deductions are for it being lack of a help menu, flow\design oddness, and not being able to effectively get data out. There's a lot more to like though than not.

Layout (25)

• Logical Flow: Movescount isn't logical, at least to my logic. First you have to digest the verbiage, which is that activities are known as 'Moves'. That's fine, but it's not logical, I've never heard anyone say they 'did some sport moves'. Anyway, when you start on Movescount, you're presented with your 'Scoreboard'. Though, you don't know it's your scoreboard because nothing tells you it is, you have to figure that out by navigating away from it and back again. The scoreboard itself is kooky, it gives you a large, fancy dial saying how many hours you've worked out in the last 30 days (which isn't rounded up, it's rounded down for some reason?), as well as your total distance and calories over the same period. Below that is a small detailing of the same summary period, broken out by sport. Below that is Suunto news, then you have to start scrolling down....already a bad sign. Literally half the visible page is unused, with a dark grey background. It's so grey, that depending on your browser and resolution, you might not even notice you can scroll down, another problem. Also, even though this 'Scoreboard' sure looks like a summary page, there's another page called 'summary'...which is where you can find a calendar and pretty much everything else. 
• Feature Location: I've been using Movescount for months now as a Suunto owner (I love my Ambit 3) but I have a lot of trouble finding what I want in Movescount, if I can ever even find it. I always have to click around a few times to find the workout I'm looking for. Other features are not documented anywhere, and I discovered by mistake - for instance if you want to view the summary of your year, you need to click the '2015' in the Summary view of the calendar. Same thing for months. It's confusing. To view a single workout, you need to change modes of the calendar to 'Single', then click the 'Move'. There are more issues, such as the swim view being borderline useless, terms you have to look up offline to figure out, and other wonders. 
• Feel: Movescount is like visiting a foreign country. It's very deep, there's a lot going on, but the culture is unfamiliar and odd.  If you commit to acclimating to it, after a while the oddness fades away and you assimilate, but there's still a phantom notion that you wish things were more like they are at home. Movescount is like that - there are different terms, different charts, different ways of presenting data, and you're never sure if you need or want what it's giving you. What's PTE or EPOC peak? If you're not sure, it might make you feel odd to see it used all over Movescount. You'll figure it out, but it like being told to eat kelp when you want lettuce. 
• Performance\responsiveness: It's very sharp, and highly performant. Nothing but great things in this department.
• Mobile conversion: Finally. Actually flawless transition between the full screen version and mobile version, all from the same code base. Movescount the website is loads better than Movescount the app (which you need to sync an Ambit 3 via bluetooth, but not much else). I beat this drum pretty loud, but folks, you really can create a great mobile app from your web app just by working with css. Simple, effective, and a joy.
• Creating a plan: It's a little painful, but you can create a plan by creating workouts and dragging them onto weeks. The drag and drop from your 'library' is disabled in the mobile version, for no other reason than you can't drag and drop on a touch device with any reliability. 
• Creating a workout: You can create a summary level workout (meaning no intervals), with the specified sport, duration, distance, and intensity direction, along with a description.

Score:20 - The points are taken away for the pure strangeness and flow issues. It's visually striking (in a good way), very professional, but you can't tell what you're looking at half the time.

Analysis Tools (20)

• Charts are time variable: Yep
• Heart Rate: yes
• Fatigue vs. Freshness: Technically, yes, but it's confusing enough to make you angry. There's a user-defined chart called 'Free Compare' which allows you to plot any x against any y axis, with the plot item size a third option. If you chart EPOC peak vs Date with a size of VO2, technically you're looking at the same ridge line of load vs. recovery. I'm being a little generous. 
• Duration: Yep
• Distance: Yep
• Zones: Yep
• Personal best calculation:Nope, although with each move you can declare it as 'Share as greatest move'. I never felt like clicking that. All that does is make it show up as one of your greatest moves in your profile. Hopefully it impresses people.
• Zone calculation: Yep.

Score: 18 -The points off are for the personal bests missing, and one off for Fatigue vs Freshness.

Activity Detail display (10)

• Time analysis –  yes 
• Maps - yes, of course. Suunto loves GPS data.
• Overlays – yes

Score: 10: Everything is there.

Coaching features: (15)

• Follow athletes – Yes
• Provide feedback– Yes, the 'shout box', or message window allows you to do this.
• Scheduling tie in: Nope, not at all. I can't control or view another athlete's schedule.

Score: 10: Movescount  really isn't designed as a coaching platform, and without the ability to create a schedule for an athlete, it can't really be used that way. However, if you don't need that for some reason (maybe your coach found a way to publish their workout plan into Movescount and you used that?) then it's passable with the ability to have friends and watch their workouts. Garmin Connect has the same features.

Device Store Connectivity (15)

• Garmin - nope
• Suunto - duh.
• Strava –it pushes to Strava, but *only* GPS-tracked activities. Treadmill, pool, trainer...no. So no? Sorta?

Score:6: Obviously no Garmin points, but the half-assed Strava implementation is super frustrating, for one major reason - That's the only way to programatically get your data OUT of Movescount. They have an API, and you can probably find an api key out in the wild if you look in the right places, but Suunto won't give you a new key at this time, so your data is all locked up. Officially, they'll tell you to export the files one by one, but they only export to .fit files currently (other options are disabled for some reason). Suunto announced they will start syncing with TrainingPeaks soon, so it's possible we may be able to use TP as a through point to get our data out until Suunto opens up API usage again.

Import (10)

•  Manual entry - Yes.
• .fit –Technically no. There is a link to a third party tool which can both  imports, but it's not Suunto's. 
•  tcx –nope

Score: 3- Again, I hate always removing the point for no intervals, but I fail to understand why it can't be done! Many many points off for having no official way to import data.

Help (5):

• Well written: No. The FAQ section is a bunch of answers to questions you didn't realize you should ask (for example: "Why do I get 'Application Can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer' error in OSX 10.8 and later?"), and has little to do with Movescount and more to do with MovesLink, another piece of software used with Suunto watches. The 'Tour' is a little more like a how-to, but it won't save you much pain. You still need to figure things out for yourself.
• Clear term definition: Heck no, and there's not even a search function to look for anything. If you don't know what PTE means, you literally have to google 'Suunto PTE' to find their definition, which isn't on the same site. Horrid.

Score: 0 – We have found the bottom of the barrel.

Extra features (bonus, 2 points each)

• Email reminders – workouts: nope
• Email reminders – equipment : nope
• Workout text messages – nope
• Sync with online calendars : nope
• Allow messages with other athletes: yes, via something called the 'shout box'. Again, weird. I'm not shouting at anyone! Yet.
• Allow tracking of consumables –technically, there is a way to do this. You can 'tag' a move with anything you like, and if you click the tag, it will show you everything that matches it in summary mode. However, that's a pretty manual approach. 1 point.
• Metric\imperial conversions\Time zone\Clock\Calendar: yes

Score: 5 bonus points

Review: Garmin Connect

Site: Garmin Connect

Score: 82/100

 Summary: A solid web platform, but missing the coach implementation that many athletes look for in a solution. Connect offers a lot more to users than most will ever use it for, and while for solo endurance athletes it's a robust tracker that's the industry leader in data collection and presentation, it lacks some of the analysis tools you'd want to find.

Layout (25)

• Logical Flow: Most navigation is achieved from a fixed menu on the left side, with the selected option in a giant pane. There are also customizable tab views at the top right, allowing you to collect your favorite widgets in a dashboard view. 
• Feature Location: One of the more common features - importing a workout - requires three clicks to reach and you have to know where you're going to find it. I feel like a single 'file utilities' widget for importing and exporting files could accomplish a lot of good for a little cost, but other than that the 'Modern', or new version of Connect is slick and logical. I felt the classic view allowed for very simple feature location, but looked cluttered at the same time. Connect offers a LOT of widgets (too many?) so the balance of clutter vs. streamline is not an enviable task. There are some ways it could be made better, but for a 'fits most sizes' approach, I have to say it's pretty darn good. 
• Feel: Garmin is trying awfully hard to make their new version of Connect better than the classic version, and it's almost there, really. There was a time when certain functions were not available in the new version, but that seems to have been corrected, so the pending deprecation of the classic version should really no longer cause quite the alarm it used to. The new version feels modern, and I have to give serious credit to the effort put into the execution - the entire code base appears to be proprietary, which take mucho grande cojones these days given how many web frameworks are out there that offer stable and extensible functionality out of the box. As a developer, I have a hard time rationalizing why it would be worthwhile to roll your own, but it looks like that's what Garmin have done. It behaves like any single page application would, where the back\forward buttons on your browser take you to the proper navigation, but I feel like if it got a real workthrough there would be a few things it doesn't account for. However, I didn't find any, so it's nothing more than suspicion!
• Performance\responsiveness: Every widget takes a second or two to load. I'd presume there's a sizable amount of data in Garmin's database, but for an enterprise-level application such as this, one should reasonably expect the database to be designed and tuned for this amount of data. 
• Mobile conversion: Simply put, it's OK. Not the worst I've seen, but certainly not the best. Menus collapse, headers on tables are fixed, font sizes change, and all of these are good things, but the glaring issue is that the tab control for creating custom dashboards hangs out obtrusively in the middle of the screen at all times and can't be viewed or operated due to truncation. Garmin's official solution for this is to use their app instead, but I'll say it again - creating a web application that renders properly on a mobile device is a simple process, and there's no excuse for not doing it properly. Presto, you have a great application across all the platforms and you only have to maintain and extend a single code base.
• Creating a plan: Not really. You can choose from one of several canned plans which schedule properly when selected, but I couldn't see a way to create your own. You can - and I'll get into this next - create workouts and place them on your calendar, but there's a difference between that and a plan, which has a longer scope. 
• Creating a workout: This feature is, in my opinion, Garmin's 'killer app'. Not only can you create  workout with interval details, you can actually send it to your (albeit Garmin) device and have that device tell you what to do and when. It's simple to use, and opens up the scheduling process tremendously if you're technically inclined; you'll need to figure out how to connect to the web services (some day I'll post how that's done without paying $5K, but I've done it, so have others, and I'll leave it at that for now), but once you do, you can schedule workouts from a spreadsheet and have them show up on your watch. Awesome.

Score:18 - The points off for 1) not being able to create a plan and 2) the mobile conversion come back with the super tight ability to create a planned workout and sync it to your device. Additional points off for database performance, for which there's no good excuse.

Analysis Tools (20)

• Charts are time variable: Yep
• Heart Rate: yes
• Fatigue vs. Freshness: Nope
• Duration: Yep
• Distance: Yep
• Zones: Not for analysis, no
• Personal best calculation:Yes and no. For some reason it doesn't seem to care about swimming. Two points off.
• Zone calculation: Nope.

Score: 12 - what is there is well done and responsive. It's not all of what endurance athletes are looking for, however. A tough hit to take in points.

Activity Detail display (10)

• Time analysis –  yes 
• Maps - yes, of course. Garmin is GPS company at their core.
• Overlays – yes

Score: 10: Everything is there.

Coaching features: (15)

• Follow athletes – Yes
• Provide feedback– I could leave notes on workouts, but there's no messaging component
• Scheduling tie in: Nope, not at all. I can't control or view another athlete's schedule.

Score: 10: Connect really isn't designed as a coaching platform, and without the ability to create a schedule for an athlete, it can't really be used that way. However, if you don't need that for some reason (maybe your coach found a way to publish their workout plan into Garmin and you used that?) then it's passable with the ability to have friends and watch their workouts.

Device Store Connectivity (15)

• Garmin - of course.
• Suunto - nope
• Strava –indirectly, yes, since Strava interfaces with Garmin nicely.

Score: 10 Do you get extra points for being your own data source?

Import (10)

•  Manual entry - yes, but again with no intervals.
• .fit –yep
•  tcx –yep

Score: 9 - I hate always removing the point for no intervals, but I fail to understand why it can't be done!

Help (5):

• Well written: Very, and I have to say I really appreciate the popup tour offer on logon. That's how you do it! However, inexplicably the help features are not *within* connect, so other than using your back button, you lose the navigation from your main screen. This could easily be changed, but it's a ding.
• Clear term definition:  Yes, but it's not in the help menu, it's right where you want to find it, like information on heart rate zones is on the Settings>Zone definition page, right where it should be.

Score: 4 – The navigation issue from the help menu is annoying.

Extra features (bonus, 2 points each)

• Email reminders – workouts: nope
• Email reminders – equipment : yes
• Workout text messages – eh, technically no, not traditional text messages, but Garmin are moving towards having your watch be your text message receiver, so kinda yes? 1 point.
• Sync with online calendars : well this is no good. There's a method for publishing your calendar, which gives you a link to nothing - not a valid calendar file. I found a thread about this on Garmin's bulletin board, apparently it's a known issue that hasn't been fixed for years!
• Allow messages with other athletes: yes
• Allow tracking of consumables – chains, shoes, etc :yes, and it's done really well.
• Metric\imperial conversions\Time zone\Clock\Calendar: yes

Score: 9 bonus points

Prediction Time

I had mentioned to a friend while going through EndoMondo's site that I thought it looked like they were trying to get bought. Turns out I was right, as EndoMondo and MyFitnessPal were announced as acquisitions yesterday by UnderArmour, who have been on a major spending spree of late. What is still conspicuously missing from their portfolio, is a data provider, and the brains that come with that. In my opinion, the reason for that is because they're currently trying to acquire one and haven't closed the deal yet, and I believe it's Suunto. Of course, I may be wrong, but here's my analysis regardless.

Suunto is a division of AmerSports, a sports conglomerate that owns such brands as Wilson, Solomon, PreCor, Mavic, and others. Suunto have a full suite of what they term 'sports instruments', which for 2014 totaled EUR 125.6 million in sales, with everything ranging from triathlon-minded watches to hiking and climbing watches, running watches, and  - where it all started for them - dive watches (neat, huh?). Being a Suunto owner, I can echo what any Suunto owner will tell you, that the device is built like a rock, lasts forever, and just plain works. That's not what you hear from their main competitors' (aka Garmin) users, which is that the watches sometimes/often work, don't last, and aren't built durably. That being said, the data storage and analysis of the two brands is a stark contrast; Garmin's Connect is a (relatively solid) open platform (albeit for a cost), and Suunto's Movescount is a (relatively solid) closed system, without much explanation for why they don't allow developers to connect to it. I think Suunto loves being in the watch business and hates being in the data business which I would surmise is because that's been their heritage. On the other hand, UA is salivating to get into the data business, and has no expertise in data collection devices. UA wants to deliver the knockout punch on storage and connectivity, but other than acquiring partners, they haven't built their own system (UA Record) out much at all. Could be because they are in the process of taking over Movescount? Possibly, but that's not based on anything other than a guess. Movescount even *looks* like UA Record in font, color, and layout. Interesting coincidence. Further, Suunto is more an EMEA brand than a US one, a market UA has stated was one of the reasons they were interested in EndoMondo.

I took a quick spin around the 2014 financials for AmerSports, and it's not very clear what the financials are for the Suunto division, as it's largely consolidated in with the other brands, so I'll refrain from commenting or guessing as to what the purchase price could be, but UA's appetite for spend looks substantial. If UA wants to be completely vertically integrated in the athletic data world - which it appears they do - that means at some point they need a data collection device. While Apple and Microsoft fumble along to figure out what people want and what they don't in activity monitoring, by acquiring Suunto's technology and integrating their store, they would immediately be in the thick of the fight, and with a much more credible brand (Under Armour that is) in the activity market than Apple or Microsoft.

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. I'm personally frustrated by Suunto's API being locked down but I love their equipment, so I'd love to be proven right.

Review: Endomondo

Site: EndoMondo

Score: 55

Summary: The basic version of EndoMondo simply is not a viable training tool for triathletes - or any kind of athlete. The focus of the basic version is that of a social media site, and provides little other value.

Layout (25)

• Logical Flow: On login, there is a nav bar for Training, Challenges, Routes, Events, Friends, and 'Add Workout', pretty self explanatory. Clicking on 'Training' brings you to a familiar calendar view, but one that has no click functionality, just a lot of eaten space. There's a new sub nav bar then for Workouts, History, Training Plan, Statistics, and Peer Benchmark. The Workouts view is the calendar, but there's another hiding behind 'History', which is really a list view with the ability to compare two workouts. Statistics is your reports window, and Training Plan and Peer Benchmark are premium features, disabled in the basic version
• Feature Location: No trouble at all finding the complete scope of the site's offerings. Also worth mentioning that I became very aware of what the premium features were just from clicking around and seeing 'You Could Have This if you go Premium!' everywhere. That's good advertising. 
• Feel: Endomondo feels like reading People magazine in that there are no less than five generic ads competing for your attention on every screen, In and of itself, that's fine - but it's a little strange that I got ads for Piperlime, roof shingles, Rent-A-Center, and Survey Monkey on an exercise site. Or maybe it's not an exercise site, and it's really a social site? Under 'About', EndoMondo states 'Our mission is to motivate people to get and stay active. We do this by making it more engaging, more social and more fun to exercise'. Okay, in all fairness this is a square exercise peg in a training hole. If I had to venture a guess, Endomondo's founders would rather talk to Oprah about all the connections people have made through exercise than about training. That's wonderful, don't get me wrong, but you get the strong sense that it's not for a training athlete.
• Performance\responsiveness: Excellent, nothing to say.
• Mobile conversion: Fair. It wasn't completely neglected, nor is it an afterthought, but it's also not great. The nav bar collapses, but the font becomes too small for normal reading. Forms don't change shape or layout.
• Creating a plan: Well, you can't. At least not with the basic version.
• Creating a workout: Limited to duration, distance, and heart rate. 

Score:8 I kept wanting to like EndoMondo, because I think the message behind - getting people more active - is great, however this isn't the scope of the review. The onslaught of ads and the lack of features was too much. The points are for pro work, but not for logic or flow.

Analysis Tools (20)

• Charts are time variable: Yes, the one chart is time variable.
• Heart Rate: premium version
• Fatigue vs. Freshness: no
• Duration: Yes
• Distance: Yes
• Zones: premium only.
• Personal best calculation:Yes
• Zone calculation: Can't tell if it's in the premium version, but it's not in the basic. You can enter your zones in your profile though.

Score: 15: deductions for heart rate and zones chart being premium, and the missing fatigue\freshness analysis.

Activity Detail display (10)

• Time analysis –  yes, but splits are very basic - no detail on heart rate, power, etc, except on the chart.
• Maps - yes
• Overlays – yes, no power on bikes, no swim implementation 

Score: 5 Again, it's pretty, but it's not a serious tool missing so much of the data.

Coaching features: (15)

• Follow athletes – definitely. 
• Provide feedback– absolutely, it's all about socializing.
• Scheduling tie in: no

Score: 10 It's unparalleled in the feedback department, but since it's missing the ability for a friend or coach to schedule workouts for you, it's missing the key bit.

Device Store Connectivity (15)

• Garmin - yes, but only pulls moving forward. I didn't see any past history come in.
• Suunto - nope
• Strava – nope

Points off for importing no history from Garmin. Come on, even 30 days would be something.

Score: 2

Import (10)

•  Manual entry - yes, but no intervals.
• .fit –yep
•  tcx –yep

Score: 8: Points off for the intervals missing.

Help (5):

• Well written: There's lots of it, definitely, and it was written by people who write well.
• Clear term definition: I feel like I ran into a lot of cop outs on this. For example, about Heart Rate Zones, you get this: "Heart rate zones are a great tool for monitoring the intensity of your workouts." Great, agreed, then this: "You have an option to enter your resting HR, Max HR and customize your zones if you know them." Um...so how about some guidance? "If you want to read and learn more about heart rate training and learn how to find your rest and maximum heart rate please visit this page at Runner's World" [link provided]. Well, sure, but really? Can't put that on your own site? Yes, I'm aware there is an internet out there where I can learn all about pretty much everything, but...harumph. Things like that make me grumpy. I keep reminding myself this is not really a training site, definitely not so in the basic version.

Score: 3 I didn't feel like the help was...well...helpful. I wouldn't go back and look anything up or seek advice from it, which is pretty important.

Extra features (bonus, 2 points each)

• Email reminders – workouts: nope
• Email reminders – equipment : nope
• Workout text messages – no
• Sync with online calendars : nope
• Allow messages with other athletes: yes
• Allow tracking of consumables – nope
• Metric\imperial conversions\Time zone\Clock\Calendar: yes

Score: 4