Sprint timing systems: a buyer's guide
A stopwatch can be off by a quarter of a second or more. A sprint timer gets you to hundredths. The right kind for you depends on whether you're timing a team or yourself, and whether one time per rep is enough or you want every split. The prices below are from 2026.
Why not a stopwatch
Hand timing starts late and stops early. In a study of Division II football players, hand-timed 40s came out 0.31 s faster than electronic times, and two timers on the same rep differed by up to 0.19 s. When the improvement you're chasing is a tenth, that error swamps it. More on hand vs electronic timing.
The five types
Timing gates
A beam across the lane at each mark, from $149.99 for SKLZ's start-and-finish set to $1,359 and up for Brower. Gates time anyone who runs through, so they suit teams and agility drills, and each extra split costs another gate. How timing gates work.
Laser timers
Gates that use a laser and a reflector, sold on Amazon from about $150. They time a 40 if you align them with care. Laser timers for sprints.
Chip systems
Freelap puts a chip on the athlete and a transmitter at every mark, from $535. Chips work on bends and suit squads where each athlete has a chip. Freelap vs Sprintbrick.
Phone apps
The phone's camera watches a line, or records video you mark by hand afterward. Apps are cheap, but you need one phone for each line you want timed. Sprint timer apps.
GPS vests
A GPS vest tracks match load and peak speed over long efforts. It isn't precise enough to time a 10 m split. GPS vs timing gates.
How Sprintbrick works
Sprintbrick doesn't fit any of the five. You wear a sensor on your lower back, and a receiver about 2 m behind the start measures the distance to it 100 times a second with ultra-wideband radio. The app turns that into your start, splits at 10, 20, 30 and 40 yards and every 10 m out to 100 m, your top speed, your fastest flying 10, 20 and 30 m and a speed chart.
We test it against OVR gates. Every Sprintbrick segment after the first 10 m came within 50 ms of the gates, 30 out of 30. Times that include the start agree less well: in our latest session, the first 10 m read 0.04 to 0.09 s slower than the gates, and we're working on it. The OVR comparison has every number.
Sprintbrick times one wearer at a time, running in a straight line away from the receiver, out to about 80 m. That rules it out for team testing days and agility drills.
Which one to buy
| You are | Look at |
|---|---|
| A coach testing a whole team | Gates (Dashr, Brower, OVR) or Freelap chips |
| A coach who needs agility or shuttle times | Gates |
| A 200 or 400 m coach timing on the bend | Freelap |
| An athlete training alone who wants splits and top speed | Sprintbrick |
| A parent or athlete who wants one 40 time | SKLZ Speed Gates Pro or a laser timer |
| A team tracking match running load | GPS vests |
Prices for every system are in the full comparison.