I got to test out my new Tech4o accelerator watch and so far I’m pretty happy with it.

The watch calculates distance without gps and use of a foot pod, meaning it’s in the watch and basically relies on your arm swing to help calculate your stride, more on this later.

As with most gadget things there are instructions. Instructions that can make life difficult if your dyslexic like me. After a few reads through I was finally able to figure out what to do to calibrate it. First I did the walk and then the run portion around the park by my house. Ideally, when you calibrate these things you should do this on a track where you know the measured distance and it is flat. But oh well, I’m a rebel like that.

After calibrating, I took it out on my seven mile long run. It did get ahead of my actual distance by a mile or so. I wasn’t too concerned as that has been my experience with non-gps devices and that whole not calibrating on the track but on hills.

I then took it with me to the gym on Monday, where I really wanted to use this. I did a great job. It matched the treadmill up until I took a walk break and didn’t swing my damn arm. The watch registered zero speed while I was walking but I wasn’t swinging my arm enough. That’s hard to do on a treadmill without looking like a dork.

Overall, I would say this is a good watch for shorter distances but make sure you keep your arms moving but not so much for longer distances. Perhaps I will actually get a track and re-calibrate and then re-check the accuracy on a long run.