4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
At least it didn't explode in my face, August 6, 2009
A Kid's Review
As a cyclist who wants to track accumulated elevation gain on his rides, the Freestyle Nomad looked promising, considering it's touted as having the capabilities to provide altitude data. To understand exactly how to access this function, I went to the company's web site and downloaded the user manual, something I routinely do prior to any purchase. Unfortunately, the manual was very poorly written and opened up more questions than it answered. So I sent a brief note to the company's customer service department and asked for an explanation of how to track elevation. The answer I got back from the woman was so meandering and convoluted, I sent a polite followup for the sake clarity. When the second response came back as incomprehensible as the first one, I still had no clue how to access the feature. But since I'm a fairly techy person, I decided to just go ahead and buy the watch, and figure it all out for myself.
The good news: I was able to access the altimeter feature. The bad news: it's as inaccurate as the information one is likely to get from Freestyle's customer service representatives. How so? Consider this: I took the watch to my first bike ride, zeroed out the accumulated elevation gain, then put it on my wrist. As I was getting ready for the ride, I glanced down at my wrist and noticed that the watch showed that I had gained 32 feet in elevation. And as I gawked at the watch in disbelief, the accumulated elevation kept ticking upward. Since I was fairly certain I wasn't levitating at the time and that the elevation data I was receiving was so horrendously flawed, I left the watch in the car. When the ride was finished, I discovered that the watch had "gained" 3700 feet in elevation as it sat in my glove compartment.
Thinking that maybe I did something wrong, I poured over the manual again, zeroed out the elevation, then left the watch in my home office. Later that evening it showed that the watch had gained over 6000 feet while sitting on my desk.
Given my previous experience with Freestyle's customer service, I dreaded the response I might get to a question about what I might be doing wrong in setting the watch. But I wasn't prepared for this: the same woman I'd dealt with previously suggested that 1) a fluctuation in weather can cause inaccurate readings, and 2) I needed to adjust the sea level readings for my area. I mentioned to her that 1) the weather didn't fluctuate that day -- and even if it had, that wouldn't account for the watch gaining thousands of feet in elevation while it sat inert; and 2) you don't need to enter sea level readings to track accumulated elevation gain. She apparently didn't know that. I also mentioned to her that the data was so wildly inaccurate, the problem has nothing to do with weather or sea level readings. She responded a third time, this time by sending me a screen capture of something she pulled off of the internet about the effects of weather on altimeter readings. As if ...
By this time, I was getting steamed, and I sent her a note asking for the email address of her supervisor. She responded by telling me that someone would be getting back to me shortly. You can probably guess that I never heard from a supervisor. Instead, I heard from her, telling me to send the watch to the company, an admission, I gathered, that they were finally deciding that I knew what I was talking about and that maybe -- just maybe -- the watch was defective.
In closing, there wasn't one aspect of this purchase that went right -- not the pre-purchase research, not the usage of the product, and not the problem solving. The product is hugely flawed. The information I got from the company was incoherent at times and comically inaccurate at other times. Yes, I could send the watch back to the company for a replacement, but they've convinced me that I'd be nuts to have faith in their ability to determine that the watch isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. To be perfectly honest, every time I look at that watch I think about how frustrating it was to deal with that company. Which is why I returned it instead.
One star for the Freestyle Nomad and for the silly, stubborn gibberish I got from customer service -- but only because there's nothing lower than one star.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Junk, May 17, 2011
Right out of the box it looked great but unfortunately the watch permanently yellows after about a week. It will not clean up either and I tried just about everything.
My "five-year" battery died about six months after purchase and requires you to take it to a watch shop to have it replaced due to the fact a "shunt" needs to be ran in-between the battery leads. The thermometer & compass are not even close to being accurate.
I grew up wearing the Freestyle shark watches but no more after this piece of junk. Save your money on something else. For over a hundred dollars, I expected much more.
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