I have the bolt and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. To answer your questions/points of interest directly:

1. If distance is the most important thing for you I’d recommend getting the speed sensor that goes on your rear hub as the package deal, which should only be a modest increase in price. While the head unit alone will do the trick, from my understanding of how GPS units work the head unit will measure your path, but occasionally check with the speed sensor to address any gps drift that may occur over time and therefore maintain the highest accuracy, especially in areas of poor gps coverage such as tunnels or forested areas. I might be very wrong on this though, and would happily be corrected.

2. Strava beacon doesn’t work with wahoo, however the wahoo app does provide a link which can be shared, so anyone you send it to can view your current location and track. You can choose to make it a permanent link so it never changes, or have it expire within a certain timeframe. It works very well.

3. I’ve never had the bolt drop a ride, however once (very soon after a firmware update) I did have the unit restart during a ride. I waited by the side of the road for it to restart, and it was able to recover and resume my ride without loss of data.

​​​​​​​Hope this helps

AFAIK, the Wahoo Live Track feature works the same as Garmin in that the smartphone app pulls the location data from the device via a BlueTooth connection, with the app then updating the Wahoo/Garmin website(s). From there the track is viewable to whomever you linked. On a Garmin and with Live Track functioning, an e-mail with a Track link is sent to whomevers e-mail you provided.

Obviously for this to work, the phone needs cell data functional, so will use battery to keep that link active. I’ve never noticed that it drains my iPhone noticeably, but maybe on a long multi-hour day.

You are correct! I posted with the assumption that everyone understood that the Bolt and the companion app had to be connected for Live Tracking to work. But since Live Tracking is done in real time, A cellular connection to Wahoo’s server has to be established and that means constant data streaming to the server. In my experimenting with Live Track on my Bolt, I found this unacceptable for my situation.

Before I got my Bolt, I was using my iPhone SE running Cyclemeter as my cycling app. The phone was connected to a Wahoo RFLKT to display my ride data without having to keep the phone’s screen turned on. I also had a Wahoo BlueSC and a Wahoo TICKR connected to the phone. I optimize my phone for battery life turning off notifications for all but a few apps and have only the cycling app running while riding. Each year, I do a cross state ride and used that setup to notify my wife of my location. As I mentioned, I have the app send an email every 20 miles. Using that combination, I was able to ride an entire day (usually 8 hours) without charging my phone along the way.

I purchased my Bolt after my RFLKT finally bit the bullet and started experimenting with the Live Track feature. Same phone, but the BlueSC was replaced by Wahoo RPM speed and cadence sensors. I normally ride 40-60 miles a day so I set up Live Track and did one of my normal 40 mile rides. I did the ride at the approximate speed as the cross state ride and that took about two and a half hours of ride time. At the end of my ride, my iPhone battery had a total of 24% battery life remaining. The next day, I did a 60 mile ride and my phone battery died before I was done. I repeated the 40 mile ride using the Bolt strictly as my computer and Cyclemeter as my tracking option. The companion app was not connected to the Bolt. At the end of that ride, I had 78% battery life remaining. That year, I used the combination of the Bolt and Cyclemeter on my cross state ride. The ride is broken up in two and a half days with the first day being 60 miles and 80 miles for the remaining two days. At the end of my 80 mile days, I had 44% and 46%, respectively, battery life remaining.

Yes, I document silly stuff like this just for S&Gs. And while other users may have received different results, I can only go by my personal experience. With that said, my experience tells me not to use the Live Track feature on very long rides unless you have spare battery chargers that can be recharged at the end of each day and an unlimited data plan for your phone. I do believe that the OP’s 100K rides falls into this category.

I use it on solo rides, it sends a link to my wife’s email. This way she knows where the device is during the period I’m supposed to be riding.

The older Edge Touring models sucked.

the Elemnt/Bolt series are terrific at using a route created on RideWithGPS, then displaying turn-by-turn directions. I personally think the TBT screen as well as maps are superior on Garmin devices, but Wahoos are fine as well.

As note, pretty much no cycling GPS device is good at re-routing you if you get off course.