My opinion on Venom movie.

When I first heard about a new “Venom” movie being made I wasn't all that much excited because the fact of how they handled the character in the slightly disappointing “Spider-man 3” movie. Imagine my surprise when I was shown the first picture of “Venom”; I was like “WOW man, looks like they got him right this time”. Unwittingly I judged too soon. Read on to find out why.

Having booked my ticket to go see the film on day one (and planned repeat viewings) I was excited...'here's one of Spideys most infamous villains, someone who gives  as good as he can dish out'. The thought didn't even cross my mind that Hollywood would %@*! this up like so many as before: I mean like they had the “Venom” proportions right this time...BIG, muscular and scary so what could possibly go wrong? As usual, I avoided all trailer and hype surrounding its release and on release day bought a shit load of popcorn and other munchies settled into my deluxe cinema seat, turned my phone off and tried to dismiss the comics from my mind. Anyone who has been to cinema with me knows that I time it just so that I sit in my seat after the previews of other films but this time wasn't so lucky and did catch the end of an animated??? Spider-man film? Oh well, nothing too concerning (I hope). The lights dimmed and was about to be exported to another world...a world of heroes and villains: a big smile was on my face I'll admit. Tom Hardy as “Brock”? Good actor but not what I was expecting. About 2 hours later I walked out a pleasant feeling of what I had just seen mixed with feelings of disappointment. Yes it was entertaining but as a comic book guy I will say that it missed a HUGE chunk of the bigger picture. Firstly, whose idea was it to pair Tom Hardy with Michelle Williams? Two good actors But no chemistry between them one little bit (you could get more chemistry when a rock hits your face). In all honesty, the first (roughly) half of the movie crawls and is quite a challenge to sit through if you're not clued up and firing on all cylinders. The real fun begins after Eddie is introduced to the symbiotic Venom. Second: the main villain is such a cardboard cutout that its a wonder he can even think for himself. C'mon Marvel you've had non-stop hits up until this point. Did you fire your script writers or something? Also enough of this PG-13 malarkey, we can handle it now. It's time for grown up heroes and villains. Venom is meant to be an anti-hero meaning that he gives out punishment as he sees fit kind of like wolverine but not. I can also understand that this film is set in Spider mans universe away from the Marvel universe but that does not justify that you give a sub par villain. Hopefully the next few films will up their game or we might end up getting a film based on “masters of kung fu” (shudder). 'nuff said

Why I sold my Fenix 5s and went back to Fenix 3

When they were first introduced it was all 'WOW, WEE and WOO' but if you were to ask me for my opinion on  the subject nowadays...I will say that it has become ridiculous and these new range of trackers\activity monitors are actually making us dumber.
OK. Now I've got the obvious off my chest, let me explain a bit. This realisation came to me after I bought the Garmin Fenix 5s. At first I was really excited at having ordered this new technological marvel that is until it arrived. I'm used to having the Fenix 3 on my arm which is a BIG watch whereas when the Fenix 5s arrived it was like my Suunto Spartan trainer had a baby with the Fenix. Yes, in all honesty the Suunto is a good watch but too small for my liking with battery life much shorter than the Fenix: the Fenix 5s should be better right? Or so I thought. Comparing the Fenix 5s to my Fenix 3 was a joke of sorts I mean that with a step up in technology one would think that Garmin would move forwards and not look back. Far be it as they did move one step forwards and two steps back. Firstly the battery life on the 5s was pitiful...ONLY 4 DAYS monitoring my daily activities, GPS and receiving notifications from my phone. Oh yeah, if I used the 5s solely as a watch (no monitoring and no notifications) then maybe I could get about a week or maybe 8 days. On top of that debacle the option of "wifi" was missing from the watch not to mention the range of Bluetooth was shortened and the GPS lock took longer. WHAAATTT??!!! Well maybe it was because I got the 5s which was the cheapest in the Fenix range of watches but as I can't afford to buy the bigger Fenix 5 watches (£600 upwards) I can't really say. Forgot to mention that the Fenix 5s is small much smaller than my old Fenix 3 watch. in fact I'd put it as the same size as my Suunto watch (which is still much better). The new features put in the watch were all fine and dandy for some but for me it was like the watch was treating me like a child and not letting me use my own brain. Why would anyone want to rely on a tool to count reps of an exercise when we're perfectly capable of doing that on our own? I could not believe I had sold my Fenix 3 to buy this sorry excuse of a fitness watch. Yes I had bought a Suunto to bridge the absence while waiting for a fenix 5s. I still do use the Suunto from time to time alongside the Fenix 3 which I managed to find and purchase again at a reasonable price (saving money on what I sold the 5s for I might add). Lastly what is the deal with watches adding an optical heart rate monitor? Not required...all it does is shorten the battery life and it's not very accurate anyway. Whats wrong with using an external heart rate monitor? More accurate and has its own battery on the monitor itself.

What I thought of the AMAZFIT STRATOS 2 WATCH

Having had this behemoth of a watch on my wrist for the last few weeks now and having tested it to the best of my ability, would I replace my current fitness watch with this? Read on to find out.

Before I start let me just say that my first foray into fitness band territory was a XIAOMI MI BAND and this is another product of XIAOMI.

Managed to find a picture of it.

 Lets keep in mind that this IS a reasonably priced fitness watch BUT still it has enough features packed in to give many more well known fitness brands of wrist-wear a pause for thought. Starting out with the specifications: the XIAOMI AMAZFIT STRATOS 2 is BIG...monstrously big but strangely enough it doesn't feel big on the wrist (well if you have small wrists then it could be a problem). The watch comes in at 23.00 x 3.50 x 1.50 cm and weighing approximately 60g. Now that is a huge circular display measuring a whopping 1.34 inches of 300x320 pixels and a reflective OLED display of MINERAL\SAPPHIRE GLASS (I don't know bout you guys but this is the best display that I have seen on a smart watch). To keep cost down, the processor does take a hit and is a respectable 1.2GHz dual core. Not the best but not the worst either and does what it is designed for. This is all housed within a thick frame and a textured chassis. It's also waterproof up to 50 meters so it is suitable for swimming. Now for the surprising features of this wearable; not only does it have an impressive battery life (4-5 days in normal watch testing and 1.5-2 days with heavy use of features) but it also packs in an optical heart rate sensor, acceleration sensor, gyroscope, geomagnetic sensor, light sensor, Triaxial Accelerometer, Bluetooth 4.0, and a GPS. WHAAAT???!!! All this in a £150 (give or take) watch? Let me put this in perspective here: SUUNTO watches are between £250-£400 whereas GARMIN FENIX series are £500-£800 (again, give or take) and feature all the mentioned hardware sensors and maybe even a few more. So to get most of the features of a much more expensive fitness watch in a package costing a fraction of the other watches is quite a feat. Oh, and I saved the best for last. This watch also has 2GB (out of 4GB) of storage for music. Yep, no more carrying around your phone while your out on them runs. Stream your music from the watch to your Bluetooth headphones/earphones. SWEEEEEET!

For the fitness profiles it has the usual run, walk, cycling, swimming (pool and open water), run indoor, cycle indoor, elliptical trainer, climb, trail run, triathlon, skiing, tennis and soccer. Of most interest to me were the latter two as I was curious as to how these would be measured so I made a sorry attempt at both sports and true enough the tennis feature recorded the kinds of shots I was making. As for the football or soccer mode, that just basically told me of the two half's and when to start each half. As most of you can tell from reading all this that this watch is built around doing cardio exercises and that there is no gym profile (shock, horror). Well I did cheat a bit here and just used the "indoor running" profile to record a gym session (after all you're just recording your heart rate). Well the results were not very accurate and there were a lot of drop outs in the data. However, pairing the watch with a Bluetooth HR strap did fix this issue.Also keep in mind that this was a test of a feature not included within the watch (and there must be a reason as to why this wasn't included). So to summarise: while this fitness watch is spot on at recording cardio exercises it isn't very good at recording high intensity training exercises which explains the lack of a gym profile. Oh and the watch also records sleeping habits if you can wear it while sleeping. There is also a feature of using a custom background as a watch face which is kind of a nice. Speaking of watch faces, also features various interchangeable watch faces (my favorite feature).

Now for some of the problems that I've encountered while testing: for some reason when I switched from testing the watch from "fitness" mode to "normal" mode (normal as in just using the watch for notifications), I found that the battery was draining fast that is until I reset the watch to its factory settings and then after that I had no issues with battery drain while using as "normal" mode. Weird I know. Anyway, I almost got almost a full weeks use before needing to charge. In full "fitness" mode (continuous HR turned on, use of GPS around an hour or so a day, sleep tracking and recording of daily activities as well) the battery was...admirable; not ideal but it was good enough as it only lasted one and a half days (2 if I recorded a single activity) before I got the "low battery" warning. The sleep tracking on this was one of the best that I have encountered (compared with similar watches I have owned). As for comfort; the strap that the watch comes with does not last very long as it sort of disintegrates with time and in my opinion, wasn't as comfortable. However, the strap is your basic 22mm strap and as the watch features quick release pins, changing the straps is no big deal. So once I had a nice looking silicone sport strap fitted the watch on my wrist felt nice and comfortable so much so that at times I forgot it was there. Wearing this watch with formal attire was a breeze too as all it took was a quick change of strap to a leather or a leather looking strap and a fitting watch face. Saying that this is a good looking watch is kind of an understatement I think. I would call this a BEAUTIFUL looking watch (as long as you have a nice watch face to go with it) and in my time of wearing it, I did get a few friends and other people enquiring about it.

About the music features of this watch: I really had no need of testing this as my earphones have their own built in storage but test it I did and the results were quite surprising. If you remember the mp3 players of old and how one had to drag music files from the hard drive to the music player then you will have no problem using this as it uses the same train of thought. Just connect the watch to your computer\laptop and copy the music files into the music folder on the watch itself. Easy right? The sound is clear too depending on earphones\headphones used but the downside is that using the music features coupled up with using the GPS does drain the battery pretty quick.

So, in conclusion what did I think of this technological marvel? Would I replace my SUUNTO SPARTAN TRAINER with this. Short answer is NO as this watch although really good at tracking cardio exercises and the like is not suitable for tracking progress in the gym. I will keep the watch for formal events as it looks damn good under a suit with a leather strap and an appropriate watch face and use my SUUNTO (unless I do manage to purchase a FENIX 5) for all of my activities. It is worth purchasing as it features a wide range of activities that are found in many high end devices and it does this at a very reasonable price.

Purchased the AMAZFIT STRATOS watch

Okaaay: After a lot of hunting around I finally managed to purchace the XIAOMI AMAZFIT STRATOS.  Got it for a more than a reasonable price (A LOT less than the RRP) and it's the international version too. Am going to test it for a few weeks now before giving my opinion on it and the important question asked "does it hold up to the more popular and well established brands of other fitness watches"? Only time will tell.

Why I opted for a SUUNTO SPARTAN TRAINER over the GARMIN FENIX 5

Firstly: lets get the obvious question out of the way...PRICE! There is a Huge difference between the price of the SPARTAN TRAINER and the FENIX 5. Depending on where you are purchacing from, the FENIX 5 is anywhere between £500 and £800 whereas the SPARTAN TRAINER is half that ammount (although if someone was to gift me a FENIX5 I wouldn't say no).Second: the features. Even though the SPARTAN TRAINER is not as feature rich as the FENIX 5, I only used aout 65% of the features of the FENIX (when I had the Fenix 3) which compared to the SPARTAN TRAINER I use more than 70 to 80% of the features. Also of note is that the SPARTAN TRAINER watch can use the optical HR while swimming; accuracy is not 100% but it can do something other trackers can't. With the FENIX I used a HRM swim strap and even though it was very accurate in the readings, I found that the strap would become loose and move down as you swam no matter how tight the fit and for that reason (in my opinion) the SUUNTO was a better choice for me. "But the SUUNTO has no GLONASS" I hear you cry. Big deal! I don't live in the wilderness and GPS signals work just fine were I am thankyou very much plus I don't really go hiking much so I see no need. Anyway, whats wrong with carring a good ol' compass and a map if you do go hiking? I don't know about nowadays but when I was at school, map reading was a required skill. For arguments sake...you do have "breadcrumb" mode if you want to rely on the watch. Lastly: after I had the SPARTAN TRAINER on my wrist for 2 whole weeks (after which I returned it and purchaced my own) I was painfully aware of the weight of the FENIX 3 as I ran: be it on the treadmil or outdoors. With the SUUNTO SPARTAN TRAINER WRIST HR (phew, what a mouthfull) the weight isn't an issue and it is really not noticable while wearing it and its comfy to wear too. Will I miss having the GARMIN FENIX? Well I'll admit that I will miss having the changeable watch faces it offered but other than that...no. Who knows, somewhere down the line (and if I can afford it) I might get the FENIX 5 but untill then I'm perfectly happy with the SUUNTO SPARTAN TRAINER. Still if anyone is willing to gift me a FENIX 5, I'll accept. Anyone?? HELLO...HELLO??

UPDATE!!!

Was just made aware of the XIAOMI AMAZFIT STRATOS 2 watch

Nice looking watch and from what I've read so far, it has changeable watch faces and also is an activity/fitness watch with GPS+GLONASS. Hmmmm: a contender for the Garmin Fenix series of watches perhaps? But wait!!! The price can't be right can it!!! It's less than the SUUNTO watches and waaay less than the GARMIN watches and yet it offers more or less the same features (maybe a few more even). Well I was looking for an additional watch that had features such as this and didn't break the bank and looked decent with a suit so I'm going to go ahead and order it. Will post my opinion on it after I have tested it out so watch this space.