Optical Heart Rate Monitoring Watch: miCoach Smart Run

 Adidas smart run

Sports watches usually don’t arouse my interest. The new Adidas miCoach Smart Run, however, comes packed with new technology that might very well revolutionize pulse monitoring watches. Last August, Adidas had started a Kickstarter campaign to finance development of a new method of monitoring the heart rate. Teaming up with Philips, they developed the technology that now has been build into the Smart Run. This is the feature that sets the Adidas watch apart from its competitors: It uses an optical technology to take the heart rate – which means that the wearer, finally, doesn’t have to wear a chest strap any more.

The diameter of the touchscreen is 1.46“. All data the watch has gathered are analyzed in Adidas‘ online cloud. The watch itself runs on rechargeable batteries. It’s possible to use the miCoach Smart Run as a conventional watch; this mode saves a lot of battery power and lasts about 14 days till you have to recharge. Using the watch in marathon mode (data is stored every 5 seconds) allows the wearer to use it for about eight hours straight. Using it in training mode means the watch stored data every second, but will run out of power after four hours.

The Smart Run is about 400 Euros.

Adidas smart run 3