I will start this review saying I really really wanted the Bryton Cardio 30 to be a great product. On paper it seemed perfect – a small size, waterproof, gps enabled but I have been sadly let down.
Out of the box it seemed nice presented in a neat case with instructions and lead enclosed.
Physical:
It is smaller and lighter than I thought it would be – the tiny face displaying 3 lines of data. The strap is comfortable which is a major point for me. The waterproof rating is very good and the construction seems robust.
In Action:
This is were I start to well up – it is hopeless as a training HRM. It may pair easily enough with ANT+ coded items and it may acquire a satellite reading in an OK time but it sucks when you want to read any info from it in a run. The display is useless – it always shows distance in the top line of the display and it will show Heart Rate / Time / Calories / Distance(rpt) but what any running watch needs to show is at least HR and Disatnce AND Time …. preferably at the same time.
The second bad point is that although it can be set to autolap at every 1km say it does nothing else … there is no lap time shown / there is no summary to read and no way to gauge how fast your last split was unless you deduct the last km from current and try work out the split …. and when you are pressing on in a training run this is the last thing you can do.
So this leaves it as a GPS tracker with which you can analyse your run when you finish …. but the disaster here is that the GPS is wildly inaccurate. I used it on the MTB marathon in Wales and it was way different from the Garmin Edge 305 I had on the bike (this is a steal these days at £170 ish)
This was bad enough but did a run on my regular river route and the Bryton came up very short again … you can see the type of track it records … this is an open park with near zero tree cover and NO tall building nearby ….
My Suunto T6 with GPS and the Garmin Edge (as well as sites like WALKJOGRUN) gave the same reading only ever differentiating by about 50m over a 12km run – but the Bryton is bad – it is out by 800m on this run which is an 83.9% accuracy according to a comparison on Sportypal…. so distance wise it was 800m out on this run and 2km out over a 52km ride. Very Very VERY poor
So thankfully Wiggle operates a good return policy and I will be buying something else that is ANT+ compliant (prob a Garmin of some sort)
BOTTOM LINE – Avoid the Bryton Cardio like the plague ….. it is faulty with bad software, bad GPS and terrible interface.
I have since bought myself a polar RCX5 which is just fantastic …. review HERE
Kite*Surf*Bike*Rambling 