Windows Phone Thoughts: Setting the Pace - Navman's Sport.Tool W300 Reviewed

What’s a Sport.Tool?
Navman’s Sport.Tool line is a series of personal GPS units designed to be worn by athletes and fitness fans. They’re lightweight, self-contained and designed to be worn on your arm. The features of each version are designed with a particular activity in mind. For example, the “Snow” version provides altitude information and has the ability to display only actual skiing time, suppressing lift time. The “Run” and “Skate” versions can be programmed with a target speed and set to sound an alarm when that speed is reached, helping you to keep within a particular training zone.

I’m currently involved in a physical rehab program as I recover from some recent surgery, and it involves a lot of walking. So I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to give the Sport.Tool W300 (the walker’s version) a good workout.


Figure 1: The Sport.Tool W300 (and a rare glimpse of me flexing my geek muscles!)

The W300 provides a wide array of information that’s pertinent to a fitness walker. This includes current and average speeds, distance and pace, odometer, timer, clock and calories burned. The W300 is designed to be worn on the upper left arm. An elastic band keeps the GPS securely attached to your arm, and it’s flexible enough to accommodate the muscle flexing that occurs during activity without being too loose or too tight.


Figure 2: Lots of information is available on the LCD display.

Controls are simple so that they can be easily used while the W300 is attached to your arm. All functions including setup can be accessed with two buttons. Readouts are provided with an LCD display that’s positioned at an ideal angle to be read while the unit is worn.

Setup Mode
While the W300 is turned off, you enter the setup mode by pressing and holding the power button. While in this mode, you can set date and time formats, weight units, calorie units, distance units, user weight (used to calculate calories burned) and time offset. As with all GPS units, the W300 determines current GMT from the satellite network, and the time offset is used so that the unit displays local time.

When setup is done, press and hold the power button again and the W300 is ready to go.