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Epson SF-810

1,548 bytes added, 16:48, 18 June 2017
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* '''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-810 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-810 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.
The only bright spot in an otherwise dismal device is the SF-810s battery life. With the Optical heart rate monitor turned off I was able to get 26 hours out of the SF-810, which makes it one of the best options for longer ultramarathons. However, the cheaper [[Epson SF-510]] has a 30 hour battery life, which makes it an even better candidate. See [[Best Running Watch#Watches for Ultrarunning| Watches for Ultrarunning]] for more details.
<br/>{{BuyAmazon|AZID=B012D4MC2O|AZN=Epson SF-810}}
=Epson SF-810 Pros=
* The biggest advantage of the SF-810 is its long battery life with the [[Optical Heart Rate Monitoring]] turned off. However, the SF-510 is a lot cheaper, and lasts for 30 hours.
* The SF-810 is fairly small and looks like a normal watch. Admittedly, that's a normal watch from the 1980s, but that's better than looking like a wrist mounted dive computer. I found the strap to be comfortable and easy to use, something I wish was true for more running watches.
* The SF-810 has [[Optical Heart Rate Monitoring]] is perhaps a slightly less grim than the competition, but it's still relatively uselesswhich may be useful in some situations. Even in warmer temperaturesUnfortunately, it accuracy is not good enough for real world usage. To compound matters the SF-810 does not support a chest strap based heart rate monitorfor times when you want more accurate heart rate data.
=Epson SF-810 Cons=
* The [[GPS Accuracy]] is terrible; I'll add more details soon, but for now I'll just say that it's at the bottom of my GPS accuracy table.
* The SF-810 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 =
The SF-810 did surprisingly badly, especially given Epson's claim of "outstanding accuracy". The statistical analysis at [[GPS Accuracy]] gives quantitative details on the problems the SF-810 has, but for some folks a qualitative picture is more useful. 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. The most obvious problem is how widely scattered the lap markers are, with some of the markers near the bridge actually ending up on the wrong side. The section in the middle with the rounded curves shows how badly the SF-810 does, with few good (green) tracks and mostly bad tracks. This reflects what I saw on the watch itself when gathering the data, as it struggled badly in this section. The section under the bridge is better, and counterintuitively this is a section where most watches do well. You can see the SF-810 gets a little confused a few times, but overall it deals with the interruption well. The right angle turn on the right of the image is poor, but not as bad as the curved section.
{| class="wikitable"
|- valign="top"
[[File:BridgeEpson SF-810.jpg|none|thumb|x300px| A diagram of the Epson SF-810'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-810 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.
=Support This Site=
{{BuyAmazon|AZID=B012D4MC2O|AZN=Epson SF-810}}
=Visual Comparison=
{| class="wikitable"

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