I’m a fairly casual cyclist doing mostly road/gravel cycling with random spurts of MTB trown in the mix. I’ve been using Garmin forerunner watch as my stats gatherer, but recently I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a dedicated cycling computer.
So my question to you, the gurus of the cycling world is, what would be the best option for me? My budget is around 300€ and I’d like it to have navigation capabilities. The two main candidates I’ve been looking at are Garmin edge 530 and Wahoo Elemnt Bolt v2.
I really like the look of the Wahoo, but I’m pretty deep into the Garmin ecosystem due to my previous watches being Garmin’s.
So what cycling computers do you guys use and what are your recommendations?
I’ve had the 530 and edge explore 2. I find both to have extremely poor UI with deep hidden menus illogical menus, spotty connection, and can take eons to upload to strava. Other people swear by them. They’re wrong of course.
Fortnine on YouTube recently did a video on using a rugged android phone as a motorcycle computer. It could work well for bikes too. After watching that I looked into it, and there are quite a few options available at all different sizes, many under $200.
Maybe you or someone here can tell me why it’s a bad idea on a bike
I find that the battery on phones is way worse than a dedicated unit. My phone can do 3-4 hours of navigation before the battery starts to get worryingly low. My Lezyne Mega XL that I paid ~£50 for manages something like 30 hours.
I was going to just say an old android phone, too. It has all the computing power of any garmin, a gps that’s probably good enough, a huge app catalogue, can be super cheap, and you don’t have to deal with whatever crappy ui garmin designs. I guess it all depends on use case…
I was going to replace my old bike computer (which got stolen) with a new Garmin, but ultimately decided against it.
I instead got a waterproof bike mount for my phone and use Osmand to track my rides (there’s tons of other more user-friendly apps to use). Battery life is nowhere near as good as my old bike computer which used to last several days on a single charge - my phone goes down by around 10% for each hour of riding with the screen on, and in hot weather it shows an overheating warning (refuses to charge for a while after).
I don’t think I’d go out of my way to get another bike computer though, perfectly fine with using my phone. I planned to use an old rugged phone instead of my current one… but ended up bricking it 😳😅
The only issue with a phone is that it might damage the camera. The camera has a stabilizing motor mechanism in it and this could potentially be damaged through all the vibration. The camera will be constantly trying to adjust the mechanism and that might burn it out or something.
I find wahoo more intuitive than garmin. I settled for the bolt v2. Also the wahoo community is very alive, generating up to date and custom maps build from open street maps. Very cool
Just sprung for a bolt v2 since it’s on sale today and I’m still using an old edge 500 that has seen better days. My wife has a bolt v1 and I think it’s great, the app integration is nice, the screen is really easy to see etc. From what I can tell the v2 ad 530 are pretty similar, there are many videos about it. I tried a hammerhead karoo 2 and returned it, the screen is just too hard to read in sunlight.
I use strava and non of the garmin stuff for stats, so go that route if you switch to the bolt.
While I am really happy with my Garmin Forerunner 955, I would not say the same about my Edge 830. The hardware is fine, battery life is great, screen looks good, feels solid. But the whole software part of it feels like it is straight from 2005. Slow, intuitive, the menu structure is a mess.
If you want something that ‘just works’, go for the Wahoo. If you want intergration with Garmin Connect, you could upload the .fit files via USB.
That’s definitely Garmin for you. I’ve had forerunners and edge computers since fr205. Good hardware but shitty software. Still, I’ve tried others like wahoo and always ended up with Garmin again. Currently on an edge 1040 and a fr965, 15 years later and I still get lost in the menus.
Went with the Wahoo at the end and couldn’t be happier. Everything seems to work great including navigation and connection with my hr monitor. Integration with Connect is also super easy, Wahoo automatically uploads the ride to dropbox from where I can upload it to Connect.
