Photograph by Jeff Harris

The North Face Back-to-Berkeley
PrimaLoft Eco insulation updates these throwbacks. [$110; thenorthface.com]

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When it comes to exercising, I’m a feedback fanatic. Show me my heart rate, pace, and how many more miles I need to run before I’ve burned off yesterday’s overstuffed queso burrito, and I’m set. Problem is, I hate wearing the requisite heart rate monitors and foot pods necessary to track the data. Lately, though, I’ve been working out with the Scosche MyTrek, an iPhone and iPod touch-compatible neoprene/Velcro armband. The rechargeable armband works with a companion app (free) and uses a sensor to record your heart rate, pace, calories burned, and distance without you having to wear sweaty heart-rate straps or sneaker-slapping footpods.

LOVE IT: Five minutes into my first workout, I forgot I was wearing the armband. And even after a seven-mile run, it didn’t need adjustment. As for the software? It’s incredibly easy to use. Partnered with the app, the system quickly synced with my iPhone, and once I entered in the necessary vitals and chose my type of workout, it provided detailed minute-to-minute data. All of this was presented in an easy-to-read format during activities and then logged into a calendar so I could monitor my progress.

LEAVE IT: The voice prompts and sound effects that the MyTrek uses to signify you’re falling out of your target workout zone sound shrill.

[$130; scosche.com]

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The 2012 Passat's base model is down to just over $20 grand, nearly $7,000 less than the 2010 model.

Like Coldplay or U2 hitting the studio, the team at Volkswagen, when creating the new Passat, were in search of a smash. The brand’s goal, as outlined by VW CEO Jonathan Browning, is to triple it sales of all models in the U.S. by 2018, claiming a bigger slice of the American automotive pie and taking the brand mainstream in the process. No minor indie hit would do.

So how will they do it? First, by dropping prices. The redesigned Jetta, VW’s smaller sedan, arrived last year and took a price cut of more than $1,500 versus the previous year’s model to make it more competitive against domestics. But the cut corners were apparent — especially the plastic-y, bare-bones interior.

The Passat gets a price cut that’s even more dramatic. The base model is down to just over $20 grand, nearly $7,000 less than the 2010 model. But unlike the Jetta, the new Passat, now built specifically for the American market at a new factory in Tennessee, doesn’t feel like a downgrade. Instead, it’s an understated ride that feels like a more expensive luxury car.

The Passat is available with a Baskin-Robbinsian array of powertrain choices, including three engines and four transmission options. I drove the up-spec’d 3.6 SEL model, which gets its 280 horses from the smooth VR6 engine paired with the always sublime DSG six-speed automatic transmission. On a mostly urban route the Passat proved to have enough power to chirp its tires off of a standstill, and a suspension tuned tight enough to make the drive engaging — without making me have to avoid Brooklyn’s native potholes.

The real news, though, comes inside. The Passat is bigger — its backseat legroom is epic, offering four inches more than last year’s model, and is the best in its class. And the redesigned cabin, though stripped down, is tastefully teutonic, with supportive seats, soft touch materials and a leather-wrapped steering wheel, and simplistic (though smartly placed) controls. It’s as if the car serves to soothe.

So how will the Passat chart? Time will tell. If enough buyers get past the bland body design and hop inside, VW will have a hit on its hands.

LOVE IT: Limousine–like rear legroom. An interior with a Muji-an sense of simplicity. A loud, Fender-branded soundsystem (via Panasonic) that delivers.

LEAVE IT: An exterior design so risk-averse that it makes a scotch tape dispenser look exciting.

The Specs

2012 Volkswagen Passat

Price: $28,995 as tested (base model from $19,995)

Engine: 3.6-liter VR6

Horsepower: 280

Torque: 258 lb.-ft.

0-60mph: 6.4 sec

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“Damn it! The car’s still on.” I uttered the words while nearly walking away from a running M35h, a hybrid sedan (Infiniti’s first) that has a gas engine which shuts off during some city driving and when at a standstill, becoming nearly silent in the process. This makes it easy to forget when the car is actually on, and it’s how I found myself nearly abandoning it at an I-95 rest stop during a recent test drive. But quietness is not what this car’s all about: Unlike the slew of stultifying, dull hybrids on the market, Infiniti uses this car’s electric motor and lithium-ion battery to work in tandem with its V6 engine to boost power to a combined 360hp—and make a claimed 32 miles per gallon highway mileage in the process (I averaged 31mpg on a 400 mile drive.) The idea is V6 efficiency with V8 power; a hybrid that’s less about hypermiling and more about hauling ass — without wasting too much gas. It’s a smooth ride — the powertrain uses a two clutch-system that’s nearly shudder-free even when switching between the electric motor and gas engine, or combining the two. In “Sport” mode the throttle response is punchy and immediate. The M35h may have an on off button instead of keyed inition, and it may hum quieter than a Dyson. But it’s not appliance. The thing’s alive.

LOVE IT: Torch-bearing tech makes this the most fun four-seat hybrid in the world.

LEAVE IT: Hard to argue the value proposition of the M Hybrid’s $6,000 upcharge vs. its comparable gas-powered sibling, the M37.

The Specs

2012 Infiniti M35h

Price: from $53,700

Engine: 3.5-liter V6; 50kW electric motor

Horsepower: 360

0-60mph: 5.2 sec

Top speed: 155mph (electronically limited)

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Motoring Picture Library/Alamy

MGB
“For $5K–$10K, you’ll get the same driving experience as a $60,000 Austin-Healey,” says British sportscar specialist Peter Cosmides. The MGB was produced from 1962–1980, but you want a late ’70s model with an eardrum-saving overdrive e-gear.

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Strava gives users the chance to bask in and share vast fields of data about their own progress and performance.

The medical community has made a cottage industry of comparing exercise to addiction. But nothing has yet been made of what’s emerging as a powerful cross addiction: information about exercise. For bicyclists and runners, there’s no more mighty gateway to this obsession than Strava, an ingeniously conceived app (for iPhone and Android) that gives users the chance to bask in and share vast fields of data about their own progress and performance. There is, perhaps, no healthier form of narcissism.

Strava is by no means the only fitness app that uses a smartphone’s GPS capabilities, but it stands out from the pack in two significant ways. First of all, it works: Until I discovered Strava, I sampled quite a few other biking apps, but none of them stuck because they tended to be glitchy. The thing that really got me hooked on Strava was the social networking. The app is free, as is unlimited use of its basic tracking and mapping functions. But for $6 a month (or $59/year), Strava gives you access to a powerful set of filters and analytical tools, which let you see how you stack up against other runners and riders of your same age, weight, and gender who are grinding around the same courses and up the same hills as you are. When paired with a cadence sensor and heart monitor (like the feature-packed Garmin Edge 800), it can also generate a full physiological report, which you can then post for all other users to see.

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This article originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of Men’s Journal.

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As a city dweller, a set of comfortable in-ear headphones are the only thing standing between me and the noisy cast of characters that populate my morning runs and subway rides. So recently, I’ve been listening to music with Klipsch’s Image S3s — a pair of single driver, in-ear headphones that feature circular, silicone tips slightly angled for a better fit. Available in gray, pink, red, and green, they’re some of the most affordable  — and aurally pleasurable — ’phones I’ve ever tried.

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LOVE IT: The S3s fit snugly without any suction, reproducing crisp highs and lows with little distortion and deep bass. Their scant weight (just 11 grams) minimizes ear fatigue, and a longer-than-normal cable reaches your back-pocketed phone or MP3 player with plenty of slack.

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LEAVE IT:  The oval-shaped ear tips aren’t as noise isolating as Klipsch claims — outside sounds seeped in throughout testing, even while my music was playing loudly. And while handy, that extra long cable tended to tangle easily.

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[$50; klipsch.com]

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