Strava: Run, Bike, Hike 4+

This app is great, and is amazing for tracking weekly mileage, shoe mileage, and other people’s runs. It’s also great for looking back and seeing how past activities felt. However, the design of it could use some improvements. First is the discrepancies between the browser and app. The app now has dark mode but why not the browser version? The browser has a different look and has entirely different ways of seeing data that aren’t in the app or some data that can’t be seen. Most importantly, why doesn’t the app have correct distance? The best thing would be to take the best parts of each and combine them together to be more similar. A change I didn’t like was that to see your own profile you have to click into a different tab which is annoying, overall design and layout could be improved. Also some random bugs, when importing from Apple Watch it miscalculates the elevation which should be fixed. Again, absolutely great app but these changes would make it seem more polished and user friendly.

I've been using Strava for years now, and it's served me pretty well. For a free user, it has all basic functionalities and a little more: tracking, mile splits, and even some social functions. However, as of late (or just always as it appears from earlier reviews, the app has become increasingly in your face with the demands to get premium. You would think that having had this app for so long, I'd encounter new features, but aside from challenges, whatever new ones are there are premium features, and some old features become premium only. I don't really need any of the features locked behind premium that much because the app has all the basic functionalities I want from a fitness app, and it does a way better job tracking than my Fitbit, but it's just so obvious how much getting users to subscribe is the app's priority. Recently, there was another update to the profile section, so when I go there I see a page that just shows blurred out premium features. I have to tap my profile picture again to see what was previously on the premium tab, like my activities and statistics. Having premium features' previews underneath my activities is fine, but putting a page that is literally useless for me is just overly intrusive. I wish the features that weren't premium would come back at least if Strava decides all new updates are solely for the premium plan.

To be clear, I am reviewing the free version.

This works pretty well but has some areas for improvement. They put out app updates way too often (once recently three days in a row), which is inconvenient for me as a user and makes me think they issue glitchy updates or their development efforts aren’t very well coordinated. Mileage accuracy is highly questionable — I often ride with my partner who has the same phone and carrier as I do, yet our mileage can be as much as 10% different. From a usability perspective, a couple of the tabs could be combined for more efficient navigation; I suspect they don’t do much usability/layout research. On the plus side, I love the feature that figures out who else I was riding with (but I don’t love that it combines my ride maps with theirs when the rides didn’t exactly match). The step-counter for walking is highly accurate…better than my iPhone’s native counter…which I figured out by actually counting my own steps, then comparing my count to Strava’s(!). The ability to “add media” (share photos & videos) is great and I’m pleasantly surprised it’s available on the free version since those media must hog a lot of server memory.

Overall I would recommend the free version to bikers or walkers, but I won’t be subscribing until the mileage accuracy is better, because that’s the most important feature to me personally.