HydrowGP100 Winner
Hydrow Core Rower
Specs
| Dimensions | 86 x 25 x 47 inches |
| Touchscreen Size | 22 inches |
| Subscription Fee | $0 |
Important products aren’t always good or bad. Often, they fall somewhere in-between, all the while offering perspective on where a particular industry has found itself … and where it might be going.
This is the spirit driving the 12th annual GP100, Gear Patrol‘s mighty, end-of-year roundup collecting the year’s most relevant releases from tech, motoring, style and watches, outdoors and more.
Our team spent months filtering through thousands of new products, going hands-on whenever we could, to identify the innovations and updates that left the biggest marks on their respective industries. And no, not always to a better, let alone conclusive, end.
This year, we also decided to do something we’ve never done in more than a decade of publishing the GP100: rank our winners.
Admittedly, the process wasn’t scientific, or even always fair. That said, our editors were indeed guided by a few basic tenets, including novelty, popularity and impact on culture at large.
You might not agree with our selections. You definitely won’t agree with the order. But maybe, just maybe, you might agree with us on this: products have never been so dynamic, exciting and downright important to our lives.
Below, find our top fitness releases, ranging from the first treadmill made for real runners to shoes with spray-on uppers. To see the winners from other categories, check out the full list.
HydrowGP100 Winner
| Dimensions | 86 x 25 x 47 inches |
| Touchscreen Size | 22 inches |
| Subscription Fee | $0 |
Deep in the COVID-19 pandemic, home fitness products began resembling gym memberships, with bikes and treadmills and interactive screens attaching one big string: a monthly subscription fee.
For some folks, that works. They log in daily, track stats, develop a parasocial relationship with a hot instructor and get shredded.
But just as gyms make bank off dropouts who don’t actually cancel, these products’ brands host loads of “zombie” accounts, subscribers who’ve stopped pedaling but keep paying. On the flip side are people who do the sample workout over and over without ponying up.
Those folks will love Hydrow’s latest product, the “limited edition” Core Rower. It’s just like the Pro Rower but costs $200 less and doesn’t require a membership.
There are no instructors, badges, milestones or other premium features. Instead you (and your family) get unfettered access to 30 self-paced rows, where you stroke through breathtaking waterways and enjoy, Hydrow says, “more meditative workouts.”
Like an analog set of weights and a bench, it requires greater self-motivation — but skipping a day doesn’t cost a dime. And hey, if you later decide you do want a kick in the butt, you can always upgrade to the membership for $44 a month.
CorosGP100 Winner
| Battery Life | Up to 20 days |
| Display Size | 1.3 inches |
| Display | AMOLED always-on |
Coros is no stranger to the GP100. The powerful Pace 3 running watch made the list last year, thanks to its combination of dual-band GPS and a best-in-class battery life — all for a price that undercut the competition by a significant margin.
The Pace Pro has a similar trick up the sleeve: an AMOLED display, boasting a brightness of 1,500 nits. That might sound like a frivolous luxury for a running watch until you try reading one outdoors on a sunny day. Good luck with that glare …
For good measure, Coros also updated the processor, heart rate sensor, GPS antenna and band design on the Pace Pro, which comes in a handful of colors including black, gray and blue.
At $349, the watch is a significant jump from the Pace 3 of yesteryear. However, compared to other brands’ AMOLED watches that clock in at double or even triple the amount, it’s one feels well within reach.
Framed EweGP100 Winner
| Lenses | Photochromic, mirror, rose gold (low-light) |
| Styles | Junya Racer |
| US Retailers | Cynthia Benjamin, Black Optical |
Founded by two designers with backgrounds in fashion, District Vision rushed onto the running scene in 2015 with a collection of stylish sunglasses that could still hang near the front of the pack. The brand hasn’t slowed down yet.
In 2024, it launched the world’s first RX-integrated shield lens technology. That means one’s prescription can be integrated into a curved lens as one piece, not clipped or glued, thus ensuring optical clarity in a package that remains as lightweight as possible.
District VisionThe integration is made possible by a technology dubbed Advanced Free Form and, so far, exclusive to only one of the brand’s styles, the Junya Racer, which weighs in at 24 grams — less than a single ounce.
WahooGP100 Winner
| Size | 72 x 38 x 58 inches |
| Top Speed | 4:00 per mile |
| Weight | 410 pounds |
Here’s the thing about treadmills. Most of them are made for gyms, not runners. They’re big, bulky machines, designed to go all day and take a beating. And if anyone cared to take their AirPods out, they’d realize just how loud they all get.
Meanwhile, the ones made for home use aren’t much better. Here, big screens and cushioned platforms have taken precedence over the thing runners really need: a place to run indoors, sometimes fast, not jump up and down while watching Netflix.
That’s the objective of the Wahoo Kickr Run, which arrived in 2024 as the industry’s first truly novel treadmill in decades. And get this, there’s no screen.
What the Kickr Run does offer is a max speed of 4:00 per mile for interval training and an ultra-quiet belt that won’t wake up the kids. However, its signature feature is something Wahoo calls the RunFree Mode that uses sensors to automatically adjust to the speed of the runner.
Combine that with side-to-side tilting capability, as well as a responsive surface that won’t suck the energy out of one’s stride, and you get a treadmill that mimics the feeling of running outdoors better than anything else out there.
Oh yeah, it uniquely measures speed in minutes per mile, not miles per hour. You know, the way real runners do.
NikeGP100 Winner
| Heel-to-Toe Drop | 8mm |
| Stack Height | 40mm |
| Weight | 7.6 ounces (men’s US size 10) |
These days, super shoes are a dime a dozen. So how do you convince everyday runners that your kicks are the real deal?
Two world records certainly help.
That’s about as convincing a case as Nike can make in regards to the Alphafly 3, the brand’s $285 super shoe that broke both the men’s and women’s marathon time records and released to consumers in early 2024. It’s also readily available, as opposed to other brands’ offerings that are rarer than a first-edition Charizard.
No wonder the Alphafly was the year’s top running shoe at global marathons, according to Strava’s latest Year in Sport report.
NikeLike versions one and two, the third-generation Alphafly includes a pair of Air Zoom units in the forefoot, a thick layer of ZoomX (Nike’s top-of-the-line foam) and full-length carbon-fiber plate. Nike also equipped the Alphafly 3 with a new Atomknit upper and rocker profile that’s continuously rounded, all the while making the shoe 15 percent lighter.
Admittedly, the changes result in a running shoe that’s more iterative than revolutionary. But the performances it empowered are proof enough that even small changes can break big barriers. Sometimes, more than once.
HypericeGP100 Winner
| Battery Life | Four hours |
| Weight | 3.2 pounds (each boot) |
Compression boots, otherwise known as pneumatic compression sleeves, have taken over gyms, physical therapy offices and many a marathon pop up.
But beyond their sky-high price tags, one thing about them has halted widespread adoption of these air-filling boots designed to flush metabolic waste from athletes’ lower limbs: they’re clunky, with users tethered to pumps and outlets via hoses, cables and ancillary control units. That makes them hard to move around the house, let alone pack for a race or sporting event away from home.
HypericeThe new Normatec Elites, meanwhile, come with battery-powered control units affixed to each leg, eliminating the need for a burdensome hose. What’s more, each side can sync up with the other, ensuring a symmetrical massage.
Like the category-leading Normatec 3 Legs, the Elites boast seven compression levels, with the option to target a specific area via ZoneBoost technology. But their four-hour battery life and unfettered form factor promise enhanced portability and ease of use.
NikeGP100 Winner
| Capacity | 31 liters |
| Dimensions | 12 x 21 x 9 inches |
| Materials | Polyester |
Though it has increasingly become associated with fashion, Nike is, first and foremost, an athletic brand. The Portland-based company has gone to great lengths to codify that fact through consistent fitness- and sport-related innovation. Its most significant release of the year takes an even more comprehensive, inclusive approach.
Developed, prototyped and tested over years for Nike’s Paralympic athletes (and debuted at this year’s Paralympic Games), the Nike Elite EasyOn Backpack’s design hinges on customizing not just what it carries but how.
NikeFor instance, the straps can be worn over the shoulders like a traditional backpack but they can also be swapped for wheelchair-compatible ones or a single sling. Moreover, patented clasps toward the bag’s top widen or narrow the fit, making it compatible with all body sizes and shapes.
Even the way it opens — a peel-top magnetic enclosure and full clamshell opening — was built with that same aim toward inclusivity in mind.
NikeBrent Radewald, Nike’s lead equipment designer, says, “Universal design helps all athletes perform at their best. If we can create a better bag for our adaptive athletes, we create a better product for every athlete.”
On that matter, it’s easy to agree.
OnGP100 Winner
| Stack Height | 39.5mm |
| Heel-to-Toe Drop | 4mm |
| Weight | 170 grams (six grams) |
When Hellen Obiri broke away from the pack during this year’s Boston Marathon, few spectators questioned whether the defending the champ would win the world’s most prestigious race.
Instead, the only thing anyone could ask was, “What the hell are those shoes?”
They turned out to be an unreleased version of the year’s most intriguing model, the On Cloudboom Strike LS, which feature a laceless upper sprayed-on by robots. It’s just as cool as it sounds.
OnBut to appreciate them fully is to recognize the thing they’re destined to replace. Traditional uppers are engineering marvels. Hundreds of materials come together across complex steps that range from yarn extrusion to gluing everything in place.
That said, more steps mean more waste, more overseas manufacturing and, as far as runners are concerned, more weight on their feet. In other words, slower times.
OnBy comparison, these LS uppers, short for LightSpray, are made using an automated manufacturing process developed by On. Robotic arms spray the upper onto a mold with single piece of synthetic monofilament — similar to how a spider weaves its web. Then, the upper attaches to the midsole with a patent-pending thermal bonding technique.
The whole process, which can be done anywhere in the world, takes three minutes from start to finish and cuts down the carbon emissions up to 75 percent, the company claims. One shoe weighs just 170 grams (six grams).
To date, super shoes have largely been defined by foams and plates. There are likely still gains to be made in these areas, but they’re marginal at most — with every major brand on a race to the bottom.
Even if spray-on uppers aren’t the final frontier, they’ve at least given the industry somewhere else to run.
You’ve reached the end of this portion of the GP100, a countdown of the year’s most significant releases. Check out the collection page to see what else made the list or browse last year’s winners.
