nike SDM

Has anyone else had any problems with the speed distance monitor. mine has been back to seiko(who service the watch) 3 times! i have finaly been sent a complete new unit only thanks to START FITNESS cheers guys!to top it all off seiko wanted 99 quid to fix it! ive only had it 6 months, dont you get a years waranty these days! BOO Nike and SEIKO. HOORAY for START FITNESS.

What went wrong with yours Nick? I have had no probs with mine, but I thought that you got a year warranty with it as well. That sounds like excellent service from Start Fitness though.

Gareth

Initially, I had some problems with mine.

In the foot sensor, the battery leads were joined onto the circuit board at a tight right angle and after a couple of weeks broke off with movement. I replaced these with slightly more sturdy leads myself (yes, I know it invalidates the warranty ;-).

I also had problems with the batteries working loose and breaking contact in the foot unit, cutting the power. I got round that by packing them in with foam padding (cut out of a shoulder pad bought from a dressmakers shop for a few pence!) underneath and above to keep them held in place.

Once I was aware of what was going on it was easy to fix and I've since had loads of use out of the SDM - it's been very useful and I use it on all my training runs. I've also checked it against OS maps and on the track and it's very accurate.

I had the same problems as you Nick, and luckily after having the unit sent back to Seiko 3 times, they finally came good and replaced the footpod. In my unit the soldering on the wires connected to the battery housing broke, and hence the connection to the watch kept being lost due to the damn thing powering down!
Booo Nike & Seiko!
Yay Sweatshop!

Dave, thanks for a very informative post. I am so pleased to see good reasons for the problems I have been having with my SDM.

I have now gone through two SDMs, for the same symptoms as the rest of you have had. Luckily I got mine through Sweatshop and they sent me a brand new replacement the first time. I was so disappointed when exactly the same thing happened with the replacement that I haven't yet got the energy together to send that one back.

I spoke to someone in Runner's Need about it and he confirmed that there are definite problems with them. It is a great pity because they are marvellous when working.

Tried out my brand new Timex GPS one this morning (boo Nike) and that is looking good.

Val.

Hi Val.

Hope you get your SDM sorted out - as you said, when it's going it's a great bit of kit. It's just disappointing that sometihng that useful and (let's face it) expensive is spoiled by what look to be some relatively minor (to fix) problems.

Be interested to know how you get on with the Timex GPS. I've had a couple of reports - one singing its praises and one not very impressed (mainly because of the time to get an initial satellite fix, or something like that).

Dave

Dave,

This is a little premature because I have only used my Timex once for real training (4 x 2km at 10 km pace this morning). There are some definite improvements over the Nike SDM in that you can choose average speed/pace and best speed/pace as display (something I always wished the other one had) and the display is more flexible generally. My one concern though is the pace information can be very out, presumably when a satellite fix can't be made frequently enough. Often I was running rather hard and it had me down as 6'30" per km (no way). It worked the other way as well - my best pace was somehow 2'35" per km (nice to dream, but it's not going to happen in this world!). Unfortunately once it had decided I was running that fast it kept that as my max pace throughout, thus invalidating all the session data. I am hoping I find a way to work around these idiosyncracies.

Val.

Hi! being a man who loves his gadgets I'm torn between the two options for pace/distance measuring i.e the nike GPS system and the SDM one. Although I love gadgets I'm useless with them so I need someything idiot proof, I also run in a very hilly area, lots of valleys, will this affect the GPS system Any advice would be much appreciated All the Best fran