Kinomap: Bike, Run, Row

I bought a Peloton and Fitswitch in order to use Kinomap. I have been trying to get into work for almost a month. The Kinomap support documentation is about 30% accurate. The support team doesn’t understand the products that they’re selling or how they interact with other technologies that they advertise compatibility with. They are completely unhelpful in customer, interactions, and even go beyond that to being arrogant with customers who have legitimate questions actually trying to use their product. I even tried reaching out to the CEO of the company and he was snarky and rude and non-responsive. I would stay as far away from the products the technology, the people as you can. I use a wide variety of sports tech, including Garmin, Strava, Slopes for skiing, Life Fitness Golf Pad for golf, and a wide variety of other technologies. In addition, I was a cycling coach for 10 years and have had a career in technology, including as a VP of product management in software and hardware companies. This is the worst customer interaction I’ve ever experienced. I’ll ever wanted to do is to get their product to work. I recommend you stay away.

Kinomap gets a lot right. The variety is genuinely impressive — rowing, biking, and running all in one app, so it covers more of my home gym than any single-sport app would. The native Apple TV app is a big plus too — no mirroring, no phone propped up somewhere, it just runs on the big screen. Stats tracking is easy and reliable, and it pairs with my HRM without any fuss. But I got this specifically for rowing, and that’s where it falls apart. Almost every rowing video I’ve found is shot facing the rower head-on, so you’re staring at their face the entire time instead of seeing the boat move in the direction you’re actually rowing. It’s the reverse of what it should be — if the camera were mounted facing forward, ahead of the rower, you’d get a real sense of moving through the water in the correct direction. Instead it breaks any sense of immersion. On top of that, the stroke-rate synchronization between the video and my actual rowing isn’t reliable enough yet — it drifts in and out of sync in a way that makes the “keep pace with the video” feature more distracting than helpful. Solid app, but the rowing content specifically needs real work.