I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Endomondo and CardioTrainer fitness apps for the past several years, so I’ve had a little experience with them.
First, both are “freemium” apps. You can download them to be used for tracking workouts, but both are primarily designed as “workout” logging devices. They allow manually documenting and approximating of many styles of workouts. However they primarily shine as GPS trackers that use the distance traveled and your body weight to calculate your level of exertion. Both are good at what they do. But both have functions and features that are locked unless you pay a premium.
I’ve personally not paid the premium on either of them, so I can’t speak to the value of the extra features. I’ll only be talking about the free versions.
I discovered CardioTrainer while doing internet searches. Endomondo came recommended because I had bought a Jabra Sport Wireless bluetooth headset and the company documentation indicated special functionality that would work with the headset.
This will not be an in-depth feature by feature deep dive. This is a high level very subjective viewpoint.
Basics – Both lock on GPS signals, both track your basic information like speed/pace, distance, duration of workout, and both provide the capability for countdowns prior to the start of the workout.
In the basics they are comparable and accurate.
Where they differentiate? Many of the added features you may have to pay a premium for in Endomondo are available in the CardioTrainer free.
The added features of the Jabra Sport Bluetooth didn’t work consistently with Endomondo and really didn’t add anything to the experience. Things like music pause and some other simple audio controls. In fact Endomondo starts up an app when I use the Jabra Sport headset, that lock up any of the music streaming services I use. It attempts to push you to GooglePlay. Endomondo would stop tracking mysteriously at times. I had more than a few two and three mile runs that only logged a mile. It’s audio prompts to tell you elapsed mileage and speed/pace were locked to one mile intervals, so I would have to wait a long time to hear or not hear whether it was working. Not a resounding vote for me to consider investing in the upgrade.
I worked around some of the issues related to the headset software with a wired headset, but the app still wasn’t as reliable as I hoped. So why did I pay good money for the bluetooth? To force me to music services I didn’t want? Another hopeful function was that it was supposed to link up to a calorie /diet app I use called “MyFitnessPal”, but it never worked for me.
Working with CardioTrainer, it just worked. It allowed so much more control over the audio prompts, which when you’re running helps immensely. It hasn’t failed on me and works with every head set I own with no adverse affects. It doesn’t interrupt any of my streaming music apps. It also provides for workout scheduling notifications and calorie tracking through the week as part of the free version.
Behind CardioTrainer is a calorie /diet tracking app looking for you to upgrade to premium. So there is no interaction between CardioTrainer and “MyFitnessPal”. Oh well, it does a great job for what it does and it does it well.
All in all, I prefer CardioTrainer.
21 Buzzards 