NK SpeedCoach SUP 2 With Training Pack

I’ve had the Speed Coach for a couple of months. I purchased it as a training tool for longer SUP events. Having had all manner of metric reporting and calculating devices since the mid 80’s (Largely cycling related), I was expecting a much more refined product given the thousands of similar devices on the market from which to draw inspiration and glean user interfaces and connectivity.

Trying to keep this short… The Speed Coach (SC) does provide feedback for structured workouts. And it does provide live feedback on stroke rate, current speed, distance, etc. Frankly though, all these features are a very low bar to hurdle. Garmin watches provide all these features with hundreds of other captured metrics.

The SC has many flaws in the user experience. A lap timer for instance would be super useful. (Activated via a remote that could be installed near the handle of a SUP paddle would be a major plus) There no such lap option. It’s either start or stop. And this is where one of my biggest disappointments lie… Stop an activity to pause to take break for whatever reason and miss the sleep feature and you lose all data to that point in your effort. When I say lose, the data is captured but, the SC begins a new event starting from zero and the old event info is not present on the screen. e.g. I lost 16 miles of a 21.5 mile event when I stopped to take on food and water and missed the sleep timer. As noted the data is still saved but it’s no longer displayed on the screen.

While I am on the screen, field customization is also lacking. Most other devices allow for adjusting the number of fields and the contents of those fields. The SC only allows for the top two fields to be customized and the bottom two are “flex” fields where you can cycle through the pre-programmed options. But, this cycling requires that you stop paddling, bend over or sit down to adjust. While training, this is less than optimal.

What is also disappointing is the SC would stop registering movement for as little as 5-10 paddle strokes to as much as 50-100 strokes. I lost over half a mile in the first 10 miles of a workout. My iPhone running Strava and my Garmin Edge 1030 both recorded the same mileage which at the end of the 21.5 mile effort was 1.3 miles more. I’ve paddle this particular waterway many times and know the distance. The SC numbers were not correct. Not to mention the frustration of glancing down at the SC to see 0’s for strokes per minute and speed when you know you are around 53spm and 4.8mph.

There are other software quirks as well but these are the most disappointing. Oh. The internal memory could be much better. My Garmin 1030 literally has thousand of miles stored. This is likely down to how the data is stored and compressed but after ~10 paddle events of 5 miles to 15 miles, the memory was full and you need to offload previous events to free up memory.

Hardware – The form factor could also use some work. The mount is loose on the SC itself and there is a slight but annoying vibration when you’re out on the water for hours at a time, vibration that reverberates through the board. I used a small bit of shock cord tucked under the SC to keep this at bey.

The dedicated charging cradle is a bit of a bust as well. I get the need for keeping the SC water tight but, there are many waterproof devices on the market that use a simple micro USB or USB-C interface with a water tight door to seal the connector. Misplace the dedicated charging adapter and the SC is rendered useless.

Connectivity – Connecting a heart rate monitor is at best hit or miss. Pairing is required just about every other paddling effort. This has been the case with both a Garmin and Wahoo HR bands that have both Ant+ and Bluetooth connectivity options. Both of these connect with an iPhone or Garmin device in seconds.

Back to data recording. Adopting a standard format that could be used with any number of athletic data collection apps would be nice. Frankly, the fact that this capability does not exist raises and eyebrow. e.g. Connect the SC up to Strava and that would be a big plus. There is really no way to compare a recent effort with a past effort over the same water.

The last item is pricing. $450 is frankly insane. And I regret having spent the money for a quirky and almost unusable device. I’m a product designer and understand the possible manufacturing costs related to a device like the SC. The pricing is out of place particularly given the above noted usability issues. So many ways to optimize the manufacturing and improve the user experience. I don’t wish to denigrate the designers but this could be a much better device and there are literally hundreds of other devices on the market to study and possibly glean ideas from. The SC feels like it was developed in a vacuum.

The SC won’t be seeing any more time on my board. It’s just not reliable enough functionally and too clunky to use to be a trusted training tool.. Which is a shame due to the money spent. I’ll sort alternate means of recoding SUP events and workouts.