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Wahoo Elemnt users - ever lost a ride?

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Wahoo Elemnt users - ever lost a ride?

Old 06-16-19, 11:45 PM
  #26  
kissTheApex
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I know this is not the OP asked, but if I was in the market for a new bike computer, I’d be hard pressed to look at the new Stages M50 as well. Nice feature set, decent interaction from the company with the early adopters.

It it would be prudent to wait several months to see if they stand behind their initial interaction with the adopters as well.
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Old 06-17-19, 04:21 AM
  #27  
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The only time ride results didn't upload for me was 3 years ago when I first switched from Garmin to Wahoo Elemnt and Wahoo was frequently updating the software. Didn't really lose the ride - but had to connect the Elemnt to my PC, do a manual .fit file transfer and then a manual upload to Strava.

Never happened again in the years since.
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Old 06-17-19, 07:18 AM
  #28  
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No.

The Strava App for me has lost rides.
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Old 06-17-19, 07:28 AM
  #29  
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Originally Posted by kissTheApex
I know this is not the OP asked, but if I was in the market for a new bike computer, I’d be hard pressed to look at the new Stages M50 as well. Nice feature set, decent interaction from the company with the early adopters.

It it would be prudent to wait several months to see if they stand behind their initial interaction with the adopters as well.
After my first year experience with Garmin on several units, Wahoo, and Hammerhead - there is no way I’d touch a computer in its first year as almost a minimum. Turns out it’s really hard to get a bike computer stable on its own. Add in navigation and it’s that much more difficult again.

I’m an electrical engineer and I kind of like being on the bleeding edge in sort of a perverse way. But that experience is frustrating in the extreme to non-techies and especially first time users. That said, at various points and on various rides I’ve had to exercise serious personal restraint from ripping each of them off of my bike and heaving them. Bike computers in general just aren’t anywhere near typical user expectations in consumer electronics. They’re sort of where “smart phones” were prior to the watershed iPhone - geeky, crappy UI, and spotty UX in general.
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Old 06-17-19, 11:19 AM
  #30  
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Originally Posted by JohnJ80
Bike computers in general just aren’t anywhere near typical user expectations in consumer electronics. They’re sort of where “smart phones” were prior to the watershed iPhone - geeky, crappy UI, and spotty UX in general.
Most cycle computers are very limited computer. Other than the Karoo, they don't seem to have anywhere near the memory or speed of the "watershed iPhone" (which most people would find unacceptable now).

The Karoo is just a modern Android smartphone (with a custom app). (When I tried it last year, the Karoo seemed to have been designed by people who never navigated on a bicycle or used a Garmin.)

It seems that Garmin bases new models on old models. That is, they add features to legacy software to release new models. I suspect that's one reason the newer Garmins can be buggy.

Companies like Hammerhead and Wahoo are starting with a clean slate (without having to deal with old architecture).

I suppose Garmin sees rewriting stuff as too costly or too risky.

Last edited by njkayaker; 06-17-19 at 12:15 PM.
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Old 06-17-19, 11:24 AM
  #31  
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I had my first crash on the bolt last weekend... was about 300km into a 600km ride and locked up so I held the power button and it reset, spent about 5 minutes recovering the ride and then it kept recording. Aside from the lost time during the recovery it seemed to have recovered all the data without a trouble. When I got home and plugged it into the computer there was almost no free space on the device so I deleted ~18 months of fit files and we'll see if it does it again on this weekend's long rides. It seemed to freeze up when I was switching to the elevation screen so I disabled that during the ride and haven't tried enabling it again so maybe there is a new bug in that feature, but I don't really use it all that much since it's not all that useful to me.
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Old 06-17-19, 12:09 PM
  #32  
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Originally Posted by clasher
I had my first crash on the bolt last weekend...
"Bolt" is a weird way to spell "Garmin".
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Old 06-17-19, 12:53 PM
  #33  
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It's hard to tell whether the Wahoos have more or less problems than the Garmins.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!fo...o-ELEMNT-users
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Old 06-17-19, 08:03 PM
  #34  
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Originally Posted by njkayaker
It's hard to tell whether the Wahoos have more or less problems than the Garmins.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!fo...o-ELEMNT-users
What was that link supposed to show related to losing a ride or comparing to the Garmin? I searched that for "lost a ride" There were 4 hits, all of which started with "I have never". I'm sure I could try different searches and someone lost a ride but it certainly seems like an exception. More or less overall issues? Don't know.

Last edited by u235; 06-17-19 at 08:10 PM.
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Old 06-17-19, 08:13 PM
  #35  
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Originally Posted by u235
What was that link supposed to show related to losing a ride or comparing to the Garmin?
You didn't see the earlier posts that weren't "related to losing a ride"?

If you did notice them, what's so special about this post?

Did you know about that forum? It's made up of wahoo users. Maybe, it's a better place to find comments "related to losing a ride".
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Old 06-17-19, 10:45 PM
  #36  
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Originally Posted by njkayaker
It's hard to tell whether the Wahoos have more or less problems than the Garmins.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!fo...o-ELEMNT-users
For me, no question that the Wahoo ELEMNT was considerably more reliable than any of the three Garmins I’ve owned including the latest, the Edge 1000.
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Old 06-19-19, 05:12 PM
  #37  
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I made the switch from Garmin 520 to Wahoo bolt and couldn't be happier.
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Old 06-21-19, 07:33 AM
  #38  
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Originally Posted by dmanthree
Of course, there is a simple solution if you don't want a GPS computer. Just get a "dumb" computer and use Strava on your phone to track rides.
I do want a GPS computer though. Have been using the phone but am starting to do rides where the battery life of the phone w/ GPS on falls into question so separating the two and not having to worry about phone/lifeline battery so much is a driving factor here.


Originally Posted by JohnJ80
FWIW, I think DCRainmaker kind of nailed the Garmin world with this article. Accurate based on my experience, maybe even a little magnanimous. The comments in the article are really illuminating.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/...stability.html

Market and feature leader but - at best - mediocre reliability. I'd say that's pretty accurate.
TBH, that article is why I posted this thread. I've been aware of Garmin reliability issues for some time, but wrote it off as just being operator error or due to the large volume of users. But DCRainmaker seems like a pretty experienced user...

I've actually got a Wahoo Elemnt arriving today. Unfortunately neither of the shops near home can order Wahoo computers since QBP only seems to stock the Wahoo sensors so it's Prime FTW.
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Old 06-21-19, 07:47 AM
  #39  
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Agreed, and that's why I have a Bolt. Hint: if you're going to do a lot of turn-by-turn use, get the larger unit.
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Old 06-21-19, 09:21 AM
  #40  
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I haven't lost a ride but did have multiple occasions when I was doing a climb with live tracking, monitoring my Strava time versus personal best and the display just went poof! It returned to the regular screen as though I didn't have a starred segment.

The fix that worked the best was to unstar the Strava segment, synch, then reverse the process.
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Old 06-21-19, 11:39 AM
  #41  
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I've had it lose one ride (a commute) out of several hundred. But, it was an odd situation where my home wifi was up, but the internet connection was down. Somehow, between it failing to sync with the app, ittrying to upload over wifi that was there but not functional and me restarting things a couple of times, it got dropped.

Otherwise, it's been great like everyone else says.
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Old 06-21-19, 12:13 PM
  #42  
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Not sure what kind of data you need but I really like my magellan cyclo 315, namely because it was like dirt cheap on amazon for like $60 at one point. I should of bought two for when mine craps out. The screen is generous and quite large, and it has all the stuff I want to know, namely distance, speed, and average speed. The Garmin stuff seems too expensive, I'm not spending $200 on a bike computer that has a crappy digital screen. If I'm spending $200 it better have a nice retina screen and quad core processor inside. All these things are slow, and generally have that old gameboy screen look to them, and shock and awe prices to boot. It's ridiculous.
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Old 06-21-19, 02:55 PM
  #43  
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Originally Posted by Caliper
I do want a GPS computer though. Have been using the phone but am starting to do rides where the battery life of the phone w/ GPS on falls into question so separating the two and not having to worry about phone/lifeline battery so much is a driving factor here.




TBH, that article is why I posted this thread. I've been aware of Garmin reliability issues for some time, but wrote it off as just being operator error or due to the large volume of users. But DCRainmaker seems like a pretty experienced user...

I've actually got a Wahoo Elemnt arriving today. Unfortunately neither of the shops near home can order Wahoo computers since QBP only seems to stock the Wahoo sensors so it's Prime FTW.
I follow the Garmin Edge 1030 Facebook page and I’d have to say that it is not trending in Garmin’s favor at this point. It seems like things were much better for users until several recent updates which have been pretty upsetting for a lot of users. It statt d off buggy and got worse is the takeaway I get. Definitely not rainbows and unicorns. No puppies either.
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Old 06-21-19, 03:18 PM
  #44  
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Originally Posted by dmanthree
Agreed, and that's why I have a Bolt. Hint: if you're going to do a lot of turn-by-turn use, get the larger unit.
Turn-by-turn is acceptable, but weak. The turn display continues long after the turn is made, which prevents the next turn from appearing. Also, if you miss the turn, it doesn't redirect you back on course. Plus, the map is not particularly easy to read.

I love the unit (I have a Bolt), but this is one area that needs improvement.
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Old 06-21-19, 04:50 PM
  #45  
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I don’t use turn by turn much, but when I do, it sometimes can be frustrating. Luckily, most of the time I use it in conjunction with organized rides. It is more of a way to reinforce that I am on the correct route. When I do my own routes, I don’t do a lot of turns one after another because it seems to mess with the system.
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Old 06-22-19, 08:47 PM
  #46  
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I lost a century ride on my Element once. Battery went dry after 5 hours. The software thought that the ride was "in progress" and wouldn't download/delete the data.

I complained to Wahoo's support and the next update fixed the issue.

I don't use turn by turn and wi-fi on long rides in order to keep the battery alive.
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Old 06-23-19, 08:21 AM
  #47  
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I haven't lost a ride on my Bolt, but the two times I've used it, I've had to start the ride twice. The first time after turning it on and starting a ride, most of the fields just said N/A. Turning off and turning on and starting a new ride solves it. Then when I upload to the app on my phone, it uploads two rides (the first of which is like 20 seconds before I restarted it), so then I have to delete the junk ride.
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Old 10-29-19, 09:01 AM
  #48  
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Wahoo Elemnt or wait?

Should I buy the Wahoo Elemnt before they are phased out or build up cash and go for the Elemnt Roam? Or, scratch both and just go for the Bolt? Liking the Elemnt due to the larger screen and thinking/hoping that Wahoo will continue to support the original Elemnt for a long time to come. I don't need the maps that the Roam offers but I do like the color contrast knowing that the unit is not full color. All in all the Elemnt is a stretch in the price for me but I would hate knowing that I could have had the larger unit but settled for the smaller for a difference in $50. Please give thoughts as I had only been using the Wahoo app with the Wahoo Blue SC speed and cadence sensor and have never had a dedicated cycling computer.
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Old 10-29-19, 02:03 PM
  #49  
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Owned a Roam for a couple of months now. I've not lost any rides, but on semi-rare occasions (maybe one in fifteen rides) it takes a little longer for it to upload to Strava. Usually when I end the ride on the Roam, my watch/phone informs me my Strava segment is ready to view within like a minute. But every once in a while it will take 15 minutes or more. And one time I thought I had lost the ride, but it uploaded after the next day's ride (along with that current ride).
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Old 11-22-20, 03:59 AM
  #50  
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Lost ride

Originally Posted by Caliper
So I'm close to buying my first modern bike computer. Yeah, behind the times, have just been using phone-based Strava for years but now want to watch some numbers while riding.
I have been weighing Wahoo vs Garmin for a while and the one thing that keeps hanging me up is people talking about their Garmin crashing/rebooting/etc midride or while uploading and losing ride data. Strava has only messed up one ride for me ever, so >99% reliability and I'm having a hard time with the chance of this happening.

Of course, there are far more Garmin users out there so maybe I just haven't heard of the Wahoo issues?

Thus, I'm curious about Wahoo users (specifically the Elemnt, but Bolt and Roam users also) if you have ever had Wahoo lose or otherwise mangle your ride data? Can I expect Wahoo to save and successfully upload my ride data 99.9% of the time?
I have just had a ride fail to load into history. And therefore not into Strava etc. Strange though it loaded a summary into my “week” as it was the only ride. So no rides detail in the last 10 days but in the “last week” the ELEMNT shows I rode 90.4km and climbed 666m etc. Pending response. First issue in a couple of years. I am a fan.
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