 Hello everyone, welcome to Film My Run, my name's Stephen Cousins. Despite being an ultra runner, I do a lot of my training indoors on the treadmill and on an app called Zwift. Today we're going to be reviewing a device that helps you measure the speed of your treadmill belt to help you get running in Zwift. You can see it's a fairly minimalistic box, nothing fancy, a snap open magnetic lid and inside you can see the unit sitting there in its cradle. Inside the box you will get some instructions, so you'll get these instructions, you will get some 3M tape and some stickers to stick on the treadmill belt. And that's it, oh and also a USB cable for connecting your device to power and for charging the battery. The Run unit offers you three things, it offers measurement of your speed, your cadence and also incline of the treadmill. The unit sits in this cradle, the cradle can be put at the front of the treadmill or at the back of the treadmill basically somewhere where you're not going to kick it off and it has grooves on the inside so that you can align the unit at different heights for calibration purposes and then the unit itself. It's a little bit plasticky, it has the word run written on the front here. But plasticky is not necessarily a bad thing of course. On the back there is a micro USB port and also a white button here. The white button is used for self calibration and also when you're putting the stickers on the belt you can use it to make sure that the optical sensor on the underside here is reading those plastic stickers. So you affix the cradle to the edge of the treadmill using the 3M tape supplied and then you put the Run unit inside the cradle. North Pole Engineering recommend using about a pencil width height above the treadmill belt but you do need to experiment. The next thing to do is to attach the stickers to the treadmill belt. This is annoying and fiddly and to be honest doesn't really work very well. You might want to use paint or Tipex or Whiteout or something to mark the treadmill belt. You can have as many marks as you like on the belt. I found the sweet spot to be around four evenly spaced stickers. Doesn't have to be exact but you need to experiment. And then you can perform a self calibration of the Run unit. So if you set your treadmill belt to five miles an hour, eight kilometers an hour and you press the white button on the back of the unit for six seconds the Run will perform a self calibration. The unit that rather the treadmill does also need to be at 0% incline. You can check that the optical sensor on the underside of the Run is reading the stickers or the marks on the treadmill belt as they pass underneath the unit. Simply press the white button on the back of the Run once and the lights on the top will toggle left and right as each sticker passes underneath the optical sensor. There are a couple of apps that you might want to download to help you calibrate your Run Smart treadmill sensor. The first is called configures or configures perhaps and it's used to update the firmware on your unit. So as soon as you get the Run make sure you download the app and check whether you are due any firmware updates for the unit. And secondly there's an app called Jim Tracker. Now this is particularly useful for incline. If you're using the Run with Zwift for example Zwift will quite happily show you the speed and the cadence that the Run is broadcasting won't show you incline. So press the white button on the back of the Run unit for six seconds make sure your treadmill is going at five miles an hour and make sure the incline is at zero and the Run will self calibrate and you'll use the Jim Tracker app to make sure that incline is at zero and then when you change the incline on the treadmill that the incline also changes on the Run unit. I've been using the Run Smart treadmill sensor for a number of weeks now I've used it on Zwift in a number of events. The thing about the Run is it's great it's really good once it's set up. The problem is setting it up it's really annoying and fiddly getting the height of the unit above the belt of the treadmill setting the stickers up making sure they stay in place or having to put Tipex or Whiteout on the belt the alignment of the unit up and down you know the angle of the unit you keep having to change it all the time to make sure it's right and the cradle doesn't hold the unit very firmly so sometimes it'll just knock out of place so you just kind of accidentally bash it with your foot and it'll just fly off or lots of things that make the unit particularly fiddly to deal with eventually I got to a point where I decided I would calibrate using the Zwift calibration tool which I did once I calibrated the Run using the Zwift calibration tool I found it to be a lot more accurate but your experience might be different of course so just experiment, see how you go take your time with it, don't get too frustrated and eventually you'll come to some kind of compromise that means you've got decent speed decent cadence and elevation so how does the RunSmart treadmill sensor compare to other devices that you might use in Zwift the Zwift Pod for example well I'd always choose the RunSmart treadmill sensor over the Zwift Pod simply for accuracy the Zwift Pod cannot cope with sudden changes of pace it cannot cope with fast speeds or particularly slow speeds it's okay when you're doing one set speed kind of in the middle about 10 kilometers 12 kilometers per hour but anything faster or slower any quick changes of speed the Zwift Pod cannot cope the RunSmart treadmill sensor can cope the Stride foot pod this is an interesting one because the Stride offers some different metrics to the RunSmart treadmill sensor and the Run also offers different metrics to the Stride, for example the Run offers incline as a metric whereas the Stride doesn't but the Stride was originally developed as a power meter for runners so we have power from the Stride but not from the Run pricing is the big thing here the Run is half the price $100 compared to $200 for the Stride the Stride however I would say arguably is slightly more accurate possibly and you may get a few less dropouts with the Stride foot pod than the Run unit that are prone to occasionally drop signal but again that depends on your setup you might have an awesome setup and you never drop and plus or Bluetooth signal at all but most of us we've got lots of interference around and maybe our computer or our iPad isn't quite as close to the unit as we'd like and you are prone sometimes to getting dropouts on both devices if you have a smart treadmill I wouldn't go changing to the Run anytime soon from your smart treadmill to have incline and you should have speed directly into Zwift you may also have cadence directly into Zwift and you will see that the display on your treadmill exactly matches the display on Zwift and there's no fluctuation whatever device Run pod, Stride Run smart treadmill sensor, any device like that will always have fluctuations in speed on Zwift so you'll see it going up and down hovering around about the speed that you're going the Garmin foot pod well the old Ant Plus Garmin foot pod is actually quite a good foot pod to use on Zwift if it's calibrated if you don't calibrate it in Zwift it will run way faster on Zwift than your treadmill speed and you'll be annoying loads of runners by going way too fast so you do need to calibrate the Garmin foot pod but once it's calibrated it really is not too bad at all you can always choose the Run Smart treadmill sensor over it though simply because the accuracy is better and also it's a Bluetooth and an Ant Plus device whereas Garmin is only Ant Plus so you would need a bridging device a device to convert the Ant Plus signal into Bluetooth if you want to use it on iOS for example in terms of other devices that you might use to get your speed into Zwift for example the Polar Stride sensor or the various earbuds that you get which all measure your speed in Zwift or the ticker heart rate strap which measures your speed in Zwift all of them are much of a muchness kind of work sometimes not brilliantly accurate I would always go for the Run Smart treadmill sensor above all of those devices so should you buy the Run Smart treadmill sensor from North Pole Engineering well I think the short answer to that is yes certainly if you're upgrading from the Zwift pod it is a worthy upgrade in terms of price and features and accuracy if you're looking at the Run Smart treadmill sensor to replace your Stride then I wouldn't stick with the Stride if you are thinking of buying the Stride then you've got a choice I think equally they're both as good as each other the Stride wins in terms of features the Run in terms of price in terms of value for money is way up there if you are thinking of getting a Smart treadmill then there's no competition if you've got the money for a Smart treadmill go for a Smart treadmill you won't look back I think the one downside with the Run is simply setting it up some people have been really lucky they stick the unit in the cradle and it works perfectly first time no problem whatsoever but I think those people are in the minority most of us have spent quite a long time getting this right okay you might get speed right first time but have you tried incline have you looked at cadence it really is something that you need to take your time with and it's taken me an awful long time to try and get something that's workable with this unit once it's set up no problem at all great value for money great unit really accurate that's it thank you very much for watching my review of the Run Smart treadmill sensor from North Pole Engineering take care we'll see you for another film my run review next time