Hi all,

Since there isn’t really a review on the SmartRow kit on Reddit/YouTube/Google search I figured I’d write one and use it as a sort of feature request as well for the Dev’s. I was planning on mailing them about that anyway. Hope it helps if you are thinking about buying one and that this isn’t a complete shitpost.

First some background info on me, you can skip this part but I figured some context wouldn’t hurt.

I’m 35 years, 1.80cm/5' 11" weigh 78kg/172lb(?). From 14 to 25 I’ve been inline-skating/skateboarding/riding bmx, which in turn destroyed the cartilage in my knee. From 25 to 33 I switched to running, up to the point where walking up the stairs with some added weight made my knee swell up like a water balloon (quite literally). So in 2017 I had the broken cartilage surgically removed and the surgeons performed an ice picking thing to create a new layer on my bone. All in all it healed up nicely but it was recommended to stop running or any other sports that would have that shock like impact. So the advice was to start rowing or cycling to keep in shape and polish my knee inside. Cycling isn’t my thing per se so I decided to make rowing my new hobby.After some reading it was pretty clear there where basically 2 choices if you wanted to buy an erg, either a C2 or a WaterRower. I had been rowing on the C2 several weeks during physiotherapy as part of recovery, but still decided to go for the WaterRower Club. This was mostly for the sound/aesthetics and I wasn’t planning on breaking world records so I accepted lesser computer on the WaterRower (for a while at least).With some lurking on reddit and watching YouTube vid’s I think I’ve got the basics down but am still learning/improving. My stamina when starting was none existent. So clueless as I was I picked up the 5k running schedule and applied that to an 18-22spm, 1:55/2:00 per 500mtr and eventually extended that to 10k. I’ve been rowing for give or take 8 months now and got to the point where I wanted more (precise) statistics. I row 3 or 4 times a week so I decided to pick up the SmartRow kit for 250€. Although I still find the price tag fairly steep.

The SmartRow kit.

https://smartrow.fit/#/From what I gather I have the 2nd revision, with an easier installation process. There is like a plastic bracket around the unit. Previously you had to install 2 “clips” where the unit was inserted into and that wasn’t all that easy. You can still see that in the YouTube installation video, apparently they haven’t updated the video for the newer model. This installation was quick and easy.

The software.

I am using the android version, SmartRow 2.0 from 30 November 2018 (latest version), in conjunction with a Polar H10 chest strap on a Samsung S7.You get a phone holder to place on the rower to show the app. Using the app on a tablet seems to just stretch the app to the entire screen. From a development perspective I get it, it keeps stuff consistent across devices. It would be nice to have more values shown on a tablet, due to the screen size.

Here is the bucket with screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Evf3PIx

Starting with the menus, the bottom icons (left to right):Start screen: https://imgur.com/fQeXNkkYou can start rowing or swipe to do a distance based or time based session.Tutorials screen: https://imgur.com/YVJ8GJUIt contains some video’s from the WaterRower YouTube channel.Insights screen: https://imgur.com/aE4jlPVIt shows activities, which sums up the saved sessions: https://imgur.com/EsnGnsUIt shows personal records, based on distance 100m/500m/1k/2k/5k/6k/10k. You can tap see your fastest session. Don’t have a screenshot for this, since I row on time, but it shows the same sort of overview as a time based session.It shows history: https://imgur.com/ZymXc2eThis contains your saved sessions, like: https://imgur.com/uYVLT0jProfile screen: https://imgur.com/tQAkH6zIf you want to keep your sessions saved in the cloud, you create an account here. So when reinstalling the app you keep your data.Settings screen: https://imgur.com/hSxdx3bThis contains quite a bit.Pace boat: https://imgur.com/6zQuHH0You get an inner circle that fills up at the pace you set. The circles represent 100m. So you could set it to 4.17 m/s for a 2:00 per 500m and do steady states with that.Display settings: https://imgur.com/O55mWAQThis is where you get to change some metrics. For example I wanted to see my speed/500m in the first screen, so I swapped work for speed/500m: https://imgur.com/O55mWAQYou can select: Power [W], avg Power [W], Energy [kCal], Str/min, Str length [cm], Str count, Work [J], Peak force [N], Speed/500m, Speed [m/s], Speed [km/h], Speed [kCal/h], avg Speed/500m.Connection: the Bluetooth SmartRow connection and Heart Rate Monitor is connected here. My girlfriend used the same devices on her own phone, so we have to reconnect manually, but when only 1 phone uses the hardware this is just for the initial pairing and it should auto connect thereafter.

So the Start screen is where the magic happens. You start a session, Just Row, Distance or Time based and get the following screen: https://imgur.com/e2BPXHuYou can swipe the bottom part to view several things. But honestly, the first one is the most interesting since it shows your last stroke curve and 3 customizable metrics. But for good measure, the second page shows 4 customizable metrics and the third page shows 3 customizable metrics and your heartrate timeline. The top half is fixed, with exception of the pace boat option in the Settings screen. The top half shows a ring, the outer ring is a 100m representation and fills up per stroke you take. If you have the pace boat enabled, the inner ring is the speed of the pace boat. Inside the ring you have your current heartrate, time elapsed or remaining (depending on Distance/Time session) and distance.The stroke/power curve is honestly super nice and I tend to use it a lot. Over time you get tired and start to mess up strokes, pulling with your arms after the leg/back work has been done and you see like second bump in the curve going down. That clearly shows you that you’re doing it wrong, since it’s not a fluid/connected stroke. Not sure how else to put it.That’s mostly the overview of the app. I’ll spare you the license/privacy/etc.

Conclusion.

Now for my very subjective conclusion.Pros.- statistics (powercurve / customizable fields)- stable and responsive appAlthough the first time I used it, it got stuck in the last 3 minutes of a 50 minute workout. At that time my phone got a load of new push notifications, so I figured that was causing the workout session to “hang”. It still saved everything. It just didn’t receive new data and the timer stopped, which caused the last 3 minutes not being recorded. This was a onetime occurrence, been using it for a month now. It might have been the BT connection between my phone and SmartRow kit, not 100% sure.- customizable fields for active sessions

Cons.- no custom workouts- no customizable fields for saved sessions

Some random observations:- Integration with Apple Health and Strava are on the roadmap for the next release. Personally don’t care much about it, but I guess people miss that.- Something else I noticed was that the kCal per session was pretty conservative. I’m not the instagramming-pat-yourself-on-the-back-everytime-I-do-something type, but the difference was pretty huge compared to Garmin or Polar. The first few sessions I wore 2 heartrate monitors. A Garmin Forerunner 910XT with the ANT strap and the Polar H10 strap. I loaded up the Polar Beat app, started it and did the same for the SmartRow app. After a minute or so, the bpm did differ more than 1 from the heartrate monitors. After a 50 minute session Garmin and Polar burned 630-635 kCal and the SmartRow app 390. I researched a bit on how this is calculated and compared that session with 6 sites. They use age/height/weight/exercise type and duration/MET. So when filling out the forms for rowing a 50min 150 [W] avg workout it was realistically more like 400-410 kCal. Not a huge deal, but the first time I saw this I thought that it wasn’t calculation the 1 minute pauses in an interval training.

All in all I would recommend it, even with the price tag, but only if you want more precise statistics. If you row like once/twice a week you probably wouldn’t care enough about it to “justify” the price tag. WaterRowers aren’t cheap, so for the 1200€ I do think you should get this monitor as a default it and not as an option.I haven’t rated the app in the Play Store and I won’t yet. As it stands I would rate it 4/5 and I would really love to rate if 5/5. If they would add an option to do custom workouts it would add half a point and if they would add customizable historic sessions or just show more/all stats it would add another half point.

Feature requests.

This I will mail to the SmartRow Kit Dev(s).Custom workouts.What I really miss the option to create custom workouts and I can’t imagine I am the only one doing intervals of some sort. My suggestion would be to add an extra workout option to the Start screen like so: https://imgur.com/DEx6OPLEven just having 2 customizable timers is better than nothing. If you for example would set it to a 4min high, 1m low and repeat 6 times. It would only be able to start when connected to the SmartRow, just like a regular run works (Just Row/Distance/Time). To use as much of the existing code/layout you could it as following. Sum up the time in your custom workout ((4 1)x6) and count it down, like rowing on a timer currently works. You would have a 30 minute countdown that shows the timer from 30:00 to 26:01 in red for high intensity and 26:00 to 25:01 in green for low intensity, etc.You still wouldn’t be able to more complex intervals (pyramids), but I think this would be a great addition.

Session history.For the saved sessions, I would love to see more info. For all the metrics that are recorded there are only a few shown in the history. It would be amazing if you could do the same customization for it as the active sessions. If that is too complex then I guess a scrollable or swipe able history session would work as well. I’m missing time/500mtr even if it’s just an average.Another nice to have would be type or tags on the history. If you look at 1 month of usage: https://imgur.com/ZymXc2eYou can’t really make sense of what was what. Saving a session with some basic tag like Steady State/Interval/Platform would help.The last nice to have, would be some min/max on the current metrics. For heartrate it would be nice to have those. Example: max 172bpm, avg 160bpm and record min heartrate after 5 or 10 minutes. Since showing 65bpm on the first stroke would be nonsense.

One thing I find odd, but that is mostly about the entire “WaterRower Ecosystem”. I figured, since rowing tutorials are in the app, that there would be some integration with https://howtorow.com/workouts/ It would probably be a nice gimmick for like the workout of the week. I’ve personally never done one, but I guess for the general user it might be a nice addition. You could create a link in the app to show the partial site for example: https://howtorow.com/workout-of-the-week-148/ or just the image https://howtorow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Workout-of-the-Week-148-1-700x700.jpg

[edit] SmartRow v2.2
The timing. SmartRow just got updated and you are able to export your activities to Strava now.

Create an account/Log in to strava on a webbrowser on the phone. Open the SmartRow app, go to the Settings screen and hit "Paired with Strava account". You get linked back to the webbrowser and have to accept SmartRow as a data source. It takes a few seconds and all the saved sessions are uploaded.
Looks like logging in to the Strava App wasnt able to set up the pairing. It has to be a browser.

Opening an activity on Strava it shows that the following statistics have been exported:
- Distance
- Speed/500m
- Duration
- Avg Power [W]
- Work [kJ]

All the imports where done with the "wrong" timezone it seems. Apperantly all my activities are done at night time now.

I never really worked with Strava so I have to see what is possible. Didn't expect much, but it feels kinda of underwelming without graphs/splits etc. Guess I'm used to Garming Connect.

Atleast we have some offloaded statistics at least.
[/edit]

As for the closing note: INB4 C2>WR