Originally Posted by drewguy

If I want to find a place to eat when I bike through a town, I'd pull out my phone.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

That's the whole problem with the "find it on my phone" thing: not the easiest thing to any navigation of even minor consequence if there is any distance involved. Fairly basic navigation function found in most bike computers. That's to the point where the Wahoo navigation is just about as low as you can go and still call it navigation - I would hesitate to use the word "basic" to describe it. "Barest of bare bones" is more accurate.

J.

Originally Posted by Steve B.

John, I agree with about all you’ve typed, except, it’s certainly possible to navigate with a phone. If you wonder how, go watch Darren Alff on his YT channel The Bicycle Touring Pro. He has been bike touring well on 20 years now, pretty much all year or 6 mos. of each, never once used a dedicated GPS, does all his navigation with an Android smartphone. This includes some extremely remote areas in northern Sweden, Finland and Norway as well as the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

I wouldn’t do this, not what I call (and what you describe) a great solution. I much prefer my Garmin 1030, but somehow people do get away with it !

Originally Posted by pennpaul

Thanks for all the useful back and forth. I did make a decision earlier this week and jumped at a Sigma ROX 12 kit on sale for $299 (with HRM and cadence/speed sensor). I also sold by Lezyne on eBay so the overall hit wasn't too bad.

I think the ROX gets me everything I'm looking for (the nice maps, POI, komoot integration, audible turns) EXCEPT live tracking which seems to be lacking in the Karoo, too--maybe they haven't figured out how to pair an Android bike computer to a phone. That seems like it should be doable with BT. I don't know. Anyway, I already use the tracking feature in Google Maps so that will have to suffice. It's supposed to be delivered this coming Monday. I'm looking forward to it.

Paul

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

live tracking is available in the Karoo in an update about a month ago.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

Well, here's an actual example. I was on a weekend tour with my son in Door County, WI. Got off the ferry on Washington Island and had to get to the campground. Well, no cellular service of consequence, so I found it in the POI (Point of Interest) list in my bike computer and I navigated to that. It was about 4-5 miles away and not something you can just ride with your phone in your hand and get to. So two problems - (1) no cellular and (2) had to handhold thing thing.

Originally Posted by pennpaul

I think I read that Garmin units are setup by region so if you go outside the US, you'd have to buy those maps (like their original GPS units for cars).

Originally Posted by unterhausen

does Garmin do anything to the OSM maps? My experience with maps that people sell is they are really out of date, but maybe Garmin is better at that.

Originally Posted by unterhausen

Garmin charges a nominal fee for the OSM maps.

Originally Posted by unterhausen

I recently got a free update to the maps on my 830. Never had any reason to complain. I don't rely on POI at all, I should probably look at them.

Originally Posted by pennpaul

Good. Then there's hope for the ROX.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

not following you here - they’re unrelated.

Check the Sigma updates schedule, but I think update schedule is fairly long intervals. That might give you some insight into when to expect new features.

Originally Posted by pennpaul

They're both (karoo and Rox) Android based devices so the lack of live tracking wasn't because of that. Anyway, the live tracking works through Google maps so I'm good.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

for that matter, Wahoo is android based too. No bearing on feature support.

I agree live tracking is better handled outside the bike computer. Solutions like that are very low power like Find my Friends (on iOS) are better than what you get on a bike computer.

Originally Posted by Steve B.

If Garmin could ever get off their collective butts and fix LiveTrack, it is a very good system. You enable it ON in the Mobile app and when you start a ride it automatically notifies whomever via e-mail that you are out on the bike. Or that the GPS is going somewhere. No futzing with the smartphone to start another app and I generally only want to be tracked when I'm on the bike. If Garmin were really on the ball they would give you an option to send a tracking link out of your phone as a text message to somebody. Like my wife, who gets inundated by e-mails and never notices my LiveTrack notification.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

with Find My Friends you grant access for a period of time to others and they can follow you. No emails, texts required, doesn’t require the bike computer and doesn’t require that start anything. Very low friction. We have everyone in our family on it with permanent access granted. No power is used until someone requests your location so no hit on battery either.

The problem with tracking using a bike computer is that it is one more connection and one more thing to go wrong at a time when you need it all to work right. Bike computer to phone connection often are unreliable - especially so with Garmin at least I’m my experience.

Originally Posted by JohnJ80

We have very different ideas about what useful navigation is. It is possible to navigate with a wahoo product but it is at the very low end of what bike navigation is and in comparison to available choices. Map information is severely lacking including street names, resolution and quality of the map compared to most other available products in the bike computer business. And yes, I do consider street names to be a key part of navigation.

To your point, you'd care about Elm street if you were riding along and maybe you talked to someone who suggested a stop at place on Elm street. Or, maybe, you're riding along and there's a construction project that has the route torn up and the sign says that the bike route continues on Elm street with no other signage (actual case for us). Or you're on an all day ride and you enter a town and you want something to eat and you decide to cycle off to coffee shop but you don't want to disturb the route in the computer so you go to the displayed POI which also gives the street.

Maybe you're different than us in that you rigidly follow a preplanned route with no deviations. Our experience riding all over the US and in Europe is that we hardly ever follow a route without deviations. So our choice is a more complete navigation product than the Wahoo Element/Bolt/Roam. FWIW, we both have Elemnts and have used them extensively. We also own Garmin Edge 1000 and two Hammerhead Karoo's. Of those, the Wahoo is the distant last choice for navigation and not the product that we would recommend if that's an important function in your bike computer usage - for that we'd pick something different and more complete. You may feel differently.

J.

Originally Posted by Ridefreemc

Would you recommend the best unit for navigation? I don't care about Strava syncing and other features like HRM or power output. I'm just trying to easily create routes (ride with GPS for example) and go places. I never do well trying to rely on the phone.

Originally Posted by Steve B.

Garmin Edge Explore. It’s almost the size of the 1030, bigger than the 830, priced at the 530 ($250). Doesn’t have the training or power functionality of the other models, but shares the maps on a good sized screen. There is as well an app you can add to the device in the iQ section (kind of Garmins version of apps for a smartphone), called RouteCourse (free). It can access using the BlueTooth connection to a smartphone that has the Garmin Connect Mobile App, and allows an very easy download of a route you’ve created in RWGPS.

Navigation on Garmin is very good, with excellent Turn By Turn directions as well as a very good map.

Originally Posted by Steve B.

Presumably (I admit to having never used FMF) you have to have *some* user input to setup the time window to be tracked ?. Maybe you can leave this for certain times you *might* be on a bike ?, or and if you are riding at a time outside any you've established you now need to enable that slot ?. Or you just leave it as "8AM to 6PM M-Sun" ?, in order to eliminate any user input.

LiveTrack on Garmin actually better meets your requirement of reducing that additional potential need for user input. If you are using your Garmin to track every ride, than LT is always going to activate, no user selection needed once you do the initial setup of Enable and an e-mail address, things you have to set up with FMF in any event.

A bit of a silly discussion except it's useful to know there are apps like FMF for when you do want to be tracked and when Garmin is doing it's silly BS and cannot enable LT. Maybe they'll really get this fixed someday.

Originally Posted by Ridefreemc

Would you recommend the best unit for navigation? I don't care about Strava syncing and other features like HRM or power output. I'm just trying to easily create routes (ride with GPS for example) and go places. I never do well trying to rely on the phone.