A few quick Tech Tidbits from the last day or two, with a super interesting one slated to drop tomorrow morning. That one is coming strongly out of left field, and I can promise it is on nobody’s Bingo Card for 2026.
COROS Pace 4 Black Crystal:
COROS has launched a new edition of the COROS Pace 4, the COROS Pace 4 Black Crystal. This new edition costs $30 more, and gives you an aluminum bezel, makes the case lugs semi-translucent, along with a matching translucent band. Despite the ‘Crystal’ name, there is no Sapphire Crystal display here, still the same as the previous.
I don’t tend to ‘review’ or cover colorway variants, at least in terms of dedicated posts/videos. Though this one is slightly quirky-different in that they added an aluminum bezel (meaning, it’s not just a color change). It does look nice, I’ll give them credit there. Though notably, on COROS’s site, they don’t refer to this as ‘Pace 4 Black Crystal’, but rather, ‘Pace 4 Aluminum’, which I think makes a bit more sense (Black Crystal is Matrix-sounding, but not very clear).
My only thought though, is that COROS’s lineup is getting pretty cluttered at this price range. Don’t get me wrong, cluttered is all relative (see how many watches Garmin can stuff into a $100 spread). But obviously, COROS is not Garmin (just like Garmin is not Apple).
Specifically, what I mean is that COROS has the Pace 4 at $249 (an awesome price), and now the Pace 4 Black Crystal at $279, then the Pace Pro at $299 (yes, no longer $349), and then the NOMAD at $349. To be super clear, if you’re looking at $279 vs $299, you should absolutely go $299 for Pace Pro and get offline maps. But of course, that’s kinda the genius of that pricing, it’s the perfect upsell.
In any case, if aluminum and translucent bands are your jam (I personally love translucent bands), then go check out DesFit’s video, where he’s got you covered with all the wrist shots you could want.
Garmin Strength Connect+ Dashboards:
Next up, Garmin has added a new Strength Performance dashboard to Garmin Connect+. As a reminder, when Connect+ launched a year ago, it included a new ‘Performance Dashboards’ section, which basically allowed you to create more customized reports. In most cases, these reports were both highly limited and honestly pretty much duplicates of other reports you’d already find in Garmin Connect.
These Performance Dashboards only apply and are visible to the Garmin website, not to Garmin Connect Mobile (the Smartphone app). You can technically access them from GCM, but it just launches a web browser and is kinda clunky.
In any case, as for the Strength ones, you can customize the different panels to a whole crapton of different reporting metrics, as well as re-arrange the order, quantity/etc…
I’m guessing this particular venture cost Garmin very little in terms of dev time, since it was likely just defining which fields to enumerate into the Performance Dashboard engine, just like all the other fields they already have. Equally though, unless you’re *really* into custom desktop dashboards while also really being into Strength training analytics, I suspect this will be a shrug for most people. Nothing wrong with it, just probably not unicorn exciting like some other features.
As for Connect+ a year on? Shrug, it’s not for me. Sure, I’m still signed up for it (since I can get screenshots of new features), but I don’t really use any of the Connect+ features. The biggest-ticket one, Food/Nutrition Logging, is likely worth the premium if that’s your jam and you’re in the Garmin Ecosystem, but doing so would likely undercut my ice cream consumption. For some of you, there might be specific features that are worth it (e.g., text message LiveTracking), but for my daily life, I just haven’t found anything that fits my usage patterns. As always, to each their own.
Zwift’s Level 100+ Starts Rollout
If you remember from a month ago, Zwift announced a slate of changes, including levels beyond 100, new routes, and plenty more. Check out my post from then. As of this week, Zwift has started rolling out the update, which adds support for levels beyond 100, as well as the century stripes in-game. Some of the other changes, like the new routes, already started, with of course various pieces slated to hit at various times over the coming months (like the Tour de France bits in June).
To read all about it, check out ZwiftInsider’s coverage of the new leveling, which goes into far more detail than I personally will ever need. Plus, there are some other tidbits in this update, including new wheels and frame updates.
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With that – thanks for reading!
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