a1penguin

Garmin and Wahoo offer similar features, similar price points, similar quality. Close call. It depends on what features matter to you. https://dcrainmaker.com has in depth reviews and feature comparisons and tables of what models offer what features. I think it comes down to what features matter most to you and which brand offers the best of the features you want.

supercharger

I agree

ionlydrinkbud

Hunterdog

After a number of calls to Garmin support, GS has told me that there is a problem with LiveTrack on the 520 connecting, or staying connected, with iPhones. They claim that a fix for the Garmin Connect app will be coming out soon. They suggested using Cyclemeter, or similar app, for tracking until their fix is ready.

John_V 

athrowawaynic

I think I'm about to return my Bolt.

I didn't realize this about cycling GPS, but they're not really meant for navigation. They're just positional trackers.

I thought they were like nav systems in cars. Input destination, follow the route.

Get lost? No problem.

Want to change destinations? No problem.

Need to turn around and go home? No problem.

But they're not like that at all. Those are all problems. You have to plan the route, upload, download, reload, etc. You have to bring your phone with you anyway. I think where battery life is a concern, I might be better off getting $250 worth of battery packs.

Marcus_Ti

The high-end ones are self-routing. AKA the Edge 800/1000 series. But you pay big money for them. Also the battery life is poor comparatively.

athrowawaynic

So much snake oil in bicycling.

Steve B.

No you don't have to bring along a phone. With Garmins you don't even need a smartphone, unless you don't want Live Track, or the ability to upload your completed ride to a tracking website. As well, you can re-route back to the start, they do allow a retrace of the route.

The issues with a bike computer trying to do what a car navigation unit will do is an issue of what route is appropriate for a bike ?. It's easy with a car, as ALL roads are likely to be good for a car (unless it's a railroad track or mt. gravel road covered in snow pack), you just need to pick whatever options the unit gives you. With a bike some additional intelligence is required for the unit to know what roads are appropriate, and that's a much harder thing to design, even Google sucks at it, so I wouldn't expect this of a bike unit.

But the units do excel at allowing you to pre-plan a route, then navigate you in areas that you are unfamiliar with and the process to do that is really easy, as is getting the route to the device.

But your call as to what functions are worth it to you.

athrowawaynic

Certainly all of that is now obvious in hindsight.

Maybe just a bit rueful because I imagined it to be more freeing than it actually is.

Of course, even that is moot. I don't have the time I imagined myself having for this hobby. I'm constrained to the same 20-40 mile loops out my front door. And that's fine--it just doesn't require GPS navigation.

Marcus_Ti

So if you don't require GPS navigation...why are you lamenting and returning the Bolt because it isn't self-routing?

athrowawaynic

Because I spent $250 on it, when I could have spent half that?

Or less?

Or nothing at all, since I can run Strava from my phone/watch (and if I want to see real time speed without burning through phone battery, I can figure out how to mount the magnet for my Avocet 30)...

zacster

I've only used the GPS once since I got my Bolt, and that was only to see how it worked. I did a 40 mile or so loop through the streets of Brooklyn and Queens, going into areas I don't usually go, but am still familiar enough with that I could navigate by sight. What I found is that for the shorter turn by turn I needed in the city it was just too confusing to use. All too often the turn would be indicated when I was already in the intersection, and it wasn't always clear which street to take. It would beep either too far away or too close, and I took one wrong turn even though I thought it was wrong when I got to it. Also, since I created the route myself, I already knew from the map where to go. I said in another thread that I have the map of NYC imprinted on my brain anyway.

That said, I still will use it when I get to unfamiliar areas to follow routes that I've downloaded. I'll be in Copenhagen and Oslo next week and I'll try it there. Which brings to mind another great use. I can take an entire bike monitoring system with me on travels that will fit in the palm of my hand. And I can grab my Assioma power meter pedals too. (and this just reminded me to charge the pedals right now)

Steve B.

Marcus_Ti

Processor speed isn't the limiter. It really isn't. As far as narrow street navigation, it will always be a problem. You have minimal line-of-sight to the sky therefore estimated-probable-error is high due to lack of satellites....and in narrow medieval alley-way environs the error in position is larger than the distance between "streets"...making position routing/tracking problematic. It isn't a computing power limit problem, it is a geometry problem.

Bike GPS units are held back due to needing to maximize battery life....maximizing battery life means minimizing power draw which means using as low-a-power CPU as can do the job. I ranted on my Edge1000 because even after the battery-saving measures its battery life sucked and was never even half-of-rated-sticker life IRL. They can make today a wizzo-fast CPU and put it in an Edge--but you'll only get an hour of battery life.


It needs noted that most of the measures that have drastically improved smartphone battery life over the last decade didn't directly come from hardware like new amazing batteries....it came from software measures to minimize usage and throttle things down. Having more computationally powerful CPUs did help, to be fair, because a 2.5gHZ maximum-clock 8-core CPU phone can spend 99% of its time either in Deep Sleep on in 1-core mode clocked down to 1/10 of rated maximum. As opposed to older chips that needed to spend 100% of CPU time at 100% power to do anything.

JohnJ80

I've been using GPS based bike computers, generally at the state of the art when they came out, since about the Garmin 305 and non GPS bike computers for decades before that. Every single one, and even to this day, I wind up turning off the turn by turn navigation instructions and rerouting.

In almost any ride I do, I wind up deviating from a ride for a bit at some point, and it just gets plain annoying while the little bike computer goes nuts recalculating or warning me that I'm off the route. I much prefer having the route shown on the map and I can find my way to it and how to stay on it. Having a field that one can have on a screen that says "distance to next turn" (or equivalent) is more useful. Then when I get close to that point, I start watching the map.

So, for me, and I realize that YMMV, but I just don't find TbT to be all that useful in actual practice.

J.

zacster

The New Yorker took a business trip to the suburbs of Chicago a year or two ago and my colleagues insisted on turning on the GPS every time we got in the car. But even in unfamiliar Chicagoland I was able to navigate just fine without it, and once I looked at a map it was just easy to get around. The car GPS just drives me crazy. The area is flat, the streets run N/S or E/W and are all perpendicular, how hard could it be? To me it is only useful in a truly unfamiliar place, and on a bike taking a quick break to consult a map is no biggie. All that said, I still really like my Bolt.

Leisesturm

It is also related to the dumbed down data from the antiquated constellation of 24 satellites that the DOD measles out to civilian entities. As I understand it the Chinese are working on a second generation GPS system that will have dozens more satellites in orbit allowing civilian access to better on the ground accuracy than even our military has presently. I doubt we will be invited to register on the official subscriber list. Since we have pretty much locked ourselves out of near earth orbit for the remainder of this generation don't expect GPS performance to improve significantly in our lifetime. Most of the accuracy of today's systems already involves interpolation (enhancement) of the 33' accuracy of the civilian approved resolution of the GPS system.

Equinox

So, quick question. For the 520; if I create a course on Garmin connect and load it on to the 520 will it show me where the turns are?

jfan

I don't think routes created in Garmin Connect give you the turn by turn directions. If you create the route in "ridewithgps.com" it will. I create and store all my routes there and it's fairly easy to upload them to the 520. There's a tutorial right on the site. It plays well with Garmin Connect and Strava also, the ride data automatically populates both.

I also have the "Openstreetmaps" for my area installed on the device.

Steve B.

woodcraft

I've had a Bolt for couple of months now.

Can't get the iphone app to not crash despite all manner of upgrade, reinstall,

& service contacts. Works for basic functions but can't upload routes, etc.

Still have the Garmin 500- was trying to get a moderate upgrade.

John_V