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{{BuyAmazon|AZID=B012D4OE0W|AZN=Epson SF-510}}
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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Epson Runsense SF-510 Review}}
If you're looking for a watch for ultramarathons lasting for 20 to 30 hours, the Epson SF-510 is worth serious consideration. For everyone else it's best avoided as there's little to like about the SF-510. The Epson range feels like it's 5-10 years behind other companies which with the rapid advances we've seen in ergonomics and functionality is an age. The Epson looks rather clunky, with cheap feeling materials and a design that does not seem to have had a lot of effort. If the SF-510 were ultra-budget, it might be more viable, but they'd need to drop the price down much further to be value for money. My overall score for (Update: the SF-510 is prices have dropped a cheerless 1/30long way now, so it's looking a little better. ) Looking at the four basic questions I use to evaluate the foundational capabilities of a running watch, you can see the weaknesses.
* '''How far did I run?''' This is the most basic question, and Epson make a big deal about their "highly accurate GPS tracking." Epson created their own chipset to ensure accuracy, but my testing indicates that the SF-510 is one of the least accurate devices I've tested, even worse than the [[Epson SF-810]]. This is a major disappointment given how far behind the state-of-the-art Epson are in other areas. However, if you compare the accuracy of the SF-510 with other watches in extended battery mode, where they wake up and check the GPS signal periodically, then the SF-510 does much better.
* '''How fast am I running?''' Knowing how fast you're running can be a nice to know, or it can be vital for your training or race performance. Because GPS never really provides the level of accuracy you need for good pace information, the best watches support the display of current [[Pace From A Footpod]] while getting all other data from GPS. Sadly, the Epson does not have this feature, and doesn't even support the use of a Footpod at all.
* '''What's my cadence? '''[[Cadence]]''' '''is one of the most critical and often overlooked aspects of running. If you get your Cadence right, many other things naturally fall into place. The SF-510 has an internal accelerometer and will display cadence, but there is no option for a [[Footpod]]. Typically an internal accelerometer doesn't do a great job, and the SF-510 seems superficially rather poor. Unfortunately, it is not possible to get the Cadence data out in a format that can be analyzed for accuracy, so I can't be sure how bad this is. (For some reason, Epson call Cadence "pitch" which is a little unusual and slightly confusing.)
The only bright spot in an otherwise dismal device is the SF-510's battery life, which I tested at 30 hours, almost exactly what Epson claim. I think this makes it a worthy contender for your money if you need a watch that will give more than 24 hours of running without recharging and without crippling the GPS accuracy. See [[Best Running Watch#Watches for Ultrarunning| Watches for Ultrarunning]] for more details.
{{BuyAmazon|AZID=B012D4OE0W|AZN=Epson SF-510}}
=Epson SF-510 Pros=
* The biggest advantage of the SF-510 is its long battery life, lasting for 30 hours. This is a chunk longer than other devices can provide with their GPS fully on. Other devices can go even longer, but they have to keep their GPS off most of the time, which can produce vastly inaccurate results.
* The SF-510 can upload your workouts via a Bluetooth link to your smart phone, but yet again this proves rather impractical. The Bluetooth link takes so long to upload your workouts that this is unworkable for regular use. The upload via a PC is less painful, but still feels rather crude and unfinished.
* Epson will upload your workouts to their website, which is rather rudimentary. There are various options for syncing your data with other sites, but if you want to have your lap splits included then things get tricky. I had to sync my Epson data with Strava, download CSV data from Epson, download TCX data from a Strava, and then write code to combine the two. You can consider me thoroughly unimpressed.
=GPS Accuracy =My previous test of the SF-810 was rather grim, so I didn't expect much from the SF-510. Imagine my surprise when the SF-510 managed to disappoint me in spite of rock bottom expectations! I would have thought that the SF-810 and SF-510 would have the same GPS system, but maybe it's tweaked in the SF-510 for greater battery life. The image below is from a small section of the trail I use for testing as I've found it highlights the strengths and weakness of the different devices nicely. In this case, it's just highlighting weaknesses:* The blue lap markers are widely scattered, and are so bad it's not obvious where they are supposed to be. If you compare with the [[Suunto Ambit2]] image below you can see that the markers are vaguely clustered either side of the true lap, almost like they're avoiding the correct spot. * The section under the bridge shows some issues with occasional trouble re-acquiring the satellite lock, but like most devices, the SF-510 does better here than in other sections. This is most likely because this is a fairly straight section of trail so even if the satellite signal is lost there's not much overall error introduced. Even here the SF-510 does worse than most devices. * In the twisty section in the middle the SF-510 does really badly, rarely recording a track that's close to the true distance, and often wandering off aimlessly. * The sharp corner at the right side is a little better, and this also is common. Most watches nail this surprisingly well, but not the SF-510. {| class="wikitable" |- valign="top"[[File:BridgeEpson SF-510.jpg|none|thumb|x300px| A diagram of the Epson SF-510's tracks, color coded with green indicating good accuracy through to red indicating poor accuracy, and the lap markers as blue dots.]]|- valign="top"|[[File:BridgeSuunto Ambit2 R 2.0.11.jpg|none|thumb|x300px|For comparison, here's the tracks from the [[Suunto Ambit2]], which does remarkably well. This is how the data should look. ]]|}(I've contacted Epson support and they are aware of the problem.)
=What's Missing=
While I don't consider these missing features as 'cons', it's worth understanding the features that are missing compared with other watches. You'll notice that the SF-510 has a rather long list of missing features.
* '''Smartphone Notifications'''. Having alerts like incoming calls or text messages on your watch is a rather nice, though far from a core feature of a running watch.
* '''Alerts'''. Some watches will alert you when a metric is out of range. The alert for [[Cadence]] is really useful and one of my favorite features on other watches. Of course, you need a decent measurement of cadence for this to be relevant.
=Visual Comparison=
{| class="wikitable"
