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From Fellrnr.com, Running tips
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I've wanted a heads up display for running for some years. Having a constant display of my pace and power would be wonderful and being reminding of my heart rate would be useful too. I've only had them for a short time, but here are my initial thoughts.
* While they have many flaws, having a constant display of pace, power, heart rate, and cadence is as awesome as I'd expected. It allows me to stay at my goal intensity, and I think that's going to improve my training. I can detect when I'm easing up or going too hard and adjust early. The synergy with [[Stryd]] is huge (see below.)
* If Solos stops supporting these glasses, they're useless without the App. If they supported the Garmin remote display, they'd be useful even if the company support disappeared.
* It's not clear if Solos are still in business. Their support email address bounces and their customer support number is disconnected. The certificate for https://solos-wearables.com/ expired April 14, 2020 which indicates their web site is not being adequately managed (it's 4/21/2020 as I write.) Their last "in the news" update was May 20, 2019, and there are no updates to their Twitter or Facebook accounts in over a year.
* The display is tricky to see. While part of the problem is the glasses bouncing slightly as I run, that's not the main issue. To understand how the display works, imaging putting your cell phone in the bottom of a cereal box. If you look directly into the box, you can see fine, but move your head up or down and the top of the box will clip the screen. That's what happens a lot with the Solos. You are looking down a clear plastic pipe that transmits and reflects the display that's off to the side. The solos display arm has several bendable joints which allow you to align the display, but I found they didn't have enough adjustment.
* The software feels like a late beta rather than a polished product.
* You can set target pace, power, heart rate, and cadence. The fields are then color coded to show if you're in the target range, which is nice as you can see the color in your peripheral vision. The huge downside is that Solos uses an average value for each of them, not your current instantaneous value.
* Solos wants to own your run data. They want to record your workout and publish it to Strava and other sites, rather than acting as an accessory.
* I've had the Solos iPhone app crash once. The glasses stopped updating and the app lost all details of my workout to that point. I had to restart the app on the iPhone and restart the workout.
* The addition of speakers and microphone increase cost and complexity.
* Having another Bluetooth headset paired is annoying when you want to use a quality headset. I have the Apple Powerbeats Pro, and I must manually select the audio output device.
