pennpaul

I currently have a Lezyne Super Enhanced GPS which I bought in the US. I lived in the Middle East for 2 years and am now back in the US. I didn't have to download any map updates, etc. I planned by route in Komoot, RideWithGPS, or the Lezyne webpage and they just worked on the Lezyne anywhere I have used it.

I now want to upgrade to a Wahoo Bolt but I'm not sure how maps are handled there. I'm going to buy it in the US but then we're moving overseas (not the Middle East) at the end of summer. If I prep the maps on Komoot (I bought access to all regions), will I need to separately enable maps outside the US for the Wahoo? 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). Is it the same for Wahoo or not?

Thanks,
Paul

jadocs

I'd have to double check when I get home, but I'm almost positive you can select your region in Wahoo settings. I seem to recall a few times where there was an update to my selected region. No cost associated.

Koyote

pennpaul : I'm just curious: why is moving to a Wahoo Bolt an "upgrade" over the Lezyne unit? What is it you are looking to gain?

I'm curious because I have the Lezyne, and would love a great excuse to spend some money on a new computer.

pennpaul

To be honest, I'm not convinced I need to upgrade, but I've generally found the turn-by-turn and the map screen on the Lezyne to be lacking. I've not read great things about the Bolt's abilities in that department either, but the map screen is already better than the Lezyne's. The live tracking feature on the Lezyne is great and it gave me peace of mind riding in the ME to have that feature for my wife (just in case). The Bolt has it, too, but it only provides a dot without any history of where you've been. I also like that the Bolt syncs with Komoot in both directions--downloading maps to the Bolt and uploading completed rides to Komoot. To get maps onto my Lezyne, I need to plan the route in Komoot, export to GPX, import to Lezyne's gpsroot website, and then it shows up in the Lezyne app--too many steps. I also like to have my completed rides appear in Komoot so it's the reverse operation as above with the Lezyne.

I am basically using the Lezyne to just record my ride (which it does well),and show my HR, cadence, and speed. For "navigation" I would try to memorize the planned route in case I went off course, stop, and refer to Google maps on my phone. It's not such a big deal in the US, but where I used to live and where I'm going to live, that could mean having to backtrack up some big hills or ending up in a not so safe area. Considering, though, that I bought the Lezyne to help with navigation, and it's pretty disappointing at it, I want to move on.

To be honest if I could find a reliable phone mount, that would be my ideal solution. However, my Pixel 2's battery is not so great after 2 years and I'm not ready to spring for a new phone yet.

I've also considered the Hammerhead Karoo. Komoot integration seems a little wonky but I do see that they now have live tracking which they did not have back in December 2019 when I first checked it out. I'm not in a real rush so if the Karoo works that out, it would be a strong contender for me.

Paul

Koyote

Thanks, pennpaul . Seems like your "take" on it is the same as mine: The Wahoo would offer some small advantages in a few areas, and introduce a few question marks. 'Course, the Lezyne has two distinct advantages: tremendous battery life, and the fact that it's already been paid for.

John_V 

The Bolt comes with preloaded maps, by region. No need to purchase anything. I don't know where overseas you are moving to but this is a list of the regions that are covered: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, Oceania, North America, South America and the U.S. We have been to Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Australia and I have taken the Bolt with me in each of these countries. Unless I needed specific turn by turn navigation (used that in Sicily), I didn't have to download any maps.

JohnJ80

Wahoo comes with maps - although its a reach to call them that. No street name etc... It's strength is not in it's ability to do navigation. If that's what you want it for, there are better choices.

J.

adamrice 

The new-ish Wahoo Bolt Roam does have named streets, and does turn-by-turn directions and re-routing when if you go off course..

JohnJ80

..... and is grossly overpriced at $379 for the limited navigation it does and the low resolution display. DC Rainmaker pretty well panned it. He’s belief is that is should be priced at $299 or about $80 less.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/05/...th-review.html

Now, don’t get me wrong - I have a Wahoo ELEMNT and think it does well and is bulletproof. Plus, I’ve always been a Wahoo fan. But the competition has moved on pretty smartly and I think Wahoo unfortunately missed the mark with the ROAM and is now way behind. It does too little and does it not well enough at too high a price point.

I think the Garmin 530, 830, Karoo Hammerhead, and maybe the Sigma ROX all beat it pretty handily. That’s too bad because a solid competitor to Garmin is a very good thing and Wahoo had been taking it to them previously until this stumble.

adamrice 

Point taken. Of course, the Karoo is completely sold out right now, and Garmins have their own widely documented problems. I guess that leaves the Sigma, which is conceptually similar to the Karoo, as an Android device. I'll admit I have mixed feelings about that—on the one hand, sure, why not base a bike computer on a sophisticated mobile OS that people can develop apps for? On the other, do I want the administrative overhead of managing basically another complex device?

JohnJ80

Not sure what I’d do if I had to make the decision today. If that, as much as dislike Garmin, I’d probably go the 530 route. Next choice would probably be the Wahoo Bolt. Right now, I’m using a Karoo and I like it a lot but I think they are stuck with the production issues in China due to the virus pandemic. That’s going to hit *all* of them shortly if it hasn’t already. Electronics production is pretty well stopped right now. Garmin makes all their units in Taiwan in their own factory so they’ll probably be ok presuming the Taiwanese government controls their borders appropriately.

I do think the the ROAM was a miss though. And, in general, if I wanted to do any navigation at all, the Wahoo offerings would not be my first choice.

frogmorton

I love my bolt. But the maps are rather crude. It works well enough for me the couple times a year I need the navigation. If I really needed beautiful maps every day I would look for something else.

pennpaul

Knowing that the Karoo was less than $300 during BF but is back up to almost $400 hurts. I did read their update log for 2019 and they do seem to be adding features as they claimed they would--like live tracking.. If they get Komoot sync working, that would be a huge boon for me.

The maps on it look great as well as most everything else with it. However, what's your thought on not having any audio on it? At least when I make a wrong turn on the Lezyne, it beeps at me (and also beeps for upcoming turns).

John_V 

I must be missing something here. The point to having GPS navigation on a bike computer is to get you form point A to point B; usually in areas that you are not familiar with or when needing to follow a predetermined route. If you know where you're going, you don't need GPS navigation. If you download and follow a predetermined route to get you to your destination, what difference does it make if the map shows the names of surrounding streets? You're not going to ride on them. And if you get off course in an unfamiliar area, knowing the street names isn't going to help you much since you don't know where you're at to begin with. I've downloaded ride routes, to my Bolt, of places I've never been to and have never gotten lost or failed to reach my destination.

My wife and I took a trip to Italy in 2018. At the end of the trip, we decided to spend a week in Sicily and visit he towns where my grandparents were born. Before leaving, I created several routes with RWGPS of the roads we needed to take to get us to the various towns as well as navigate the streets through the towns. The Bolt had the maps preloaded of the entire island and actually worked better than the GPS system in the renal car (since it was all in Italian). Outside of the poorly (almost never marked) roads, we only missed a few turns but never got lost. We used the Bolt again, last year in Australia, for our walking excursions and it worked great for that too. We just followed the route, turned where it told us to turn, and all was well. So, I still fail to see how knowing surrounding street names would have been a big plus.

njkayaker

The Sigma is highly locked-down. What sort of "administrative overhead" would you have with it?

Steve B.

Hammerhead also has the annoying habit of stating “The Karoo will be going to $500 soon, so buy now while it’s cheap”, etc..,. I’m not buying at $500 much less $400 as I think it’s worth maybe $300, more like $250. They’ve had a lot of hype on this unit going on a few years, while rolling out features at a glacier pace, so no thank you.

Steve B.

Clarity in the map can be useful at times. Hit a detour ?, need to find a way around ?, a color map is easier to read than B&W, having some street names as well as obvious things like that’s a stream (blue), vs. a street, is very useful, for the same reason I would not ever buy a car GPS that was B&W and had no street names. That’s been my experiences with having color maps on a Garmin vs. B&W on a Bolt. YMMV.

njkayaker

Their business is not likely sustainable selling the unit at $250-300 since the market for these devices is small. Many cellphone manufacturers don't make money with a much bigger market.

I suspect that their recognition is still low, especially compared to Garmin. Without better recognition, they probably wouldn't be able to sell enough units at $500.

When I tried the Karoo 2 (3?) years ago, it wasn't so great. My impression was that they had never used a Garmin or any sort of navigation on the bike. Presumably, it's better now. The screen seems much better than the Garmins.

No audible alerts (which seems like a basic feature) and Hammerhead's original response was that you were wrong to want it.

adamrice 

Just for fun, I went to adafruit.com to try to spec out the parts you'd need to build a bike computer—a processor, a screen, a barometer, a GPS receiver, etc. With their modules (as opposed to individual components), at retail, I think the hardware would be in the range of $100–150. Obviously if you were buying individual components in bulk, they'd be a small fraction of the cost.

It's no surprise that the real costs would be in the engineering and development work behind these, contract manufacturing, plus some licensing costs for map data, software etc. I have idly wondered about the feasibility of an open-source bike computer running embedded Linux.

njkayaker

People could have created an open source Android app. They could have forked OsmAnd. And avoid dealing with hardware entirely. BT sensors avoids needing to deal with Ant+.

That hasn’t happened.

pennpaul

I like to know my speed, how far I've gone, % gradient I'm on, and sometimes my cadence and HR but don't really need any of the training features, etc so a lot of the extra features have no appeal to me.

I wasn't even aware of the Sigma ROX until someone mentioned it in this thread. I really like some of the mapping features I've seen with it. Draw a circle and it plans a route. That seems awesome. POI is big bonus, too. It looks like a really nice unit. I almost wish you could buy your own Android phone and load their skin on it.

I'm going to explore finding an inexpensive smartphone with removable batteries and just run Komoot off it in offline mode to provide navigation. I have a top tube bag I can stuff extra batteries or battery pack into when I go out for longer rides but most of my rides are less than 4hrs.

JohnJ80

You missed much in what I wrote or at least mischaracterized it.

I said that there are much better navigational choices than the Wahoo products not that the Wahoo products couldn’t be used for navigation. I have many, many, many hours in using the ELEMNT and I have navigated many miles with it. It’s at the very bottom of navigational capabilities in bike computers.

We have many RWGPS routes we’ve made and followed and I’d estimate that we probably wind up staying on those preset routes without deviation maybe half the time at best. There are always better views, incorrect maps, construction and other reasons to deviate. So, having road names, is pretty handy and useful .... and something I found on virtually every other bike computer made.

While I like the Wahoo computers for data recording and like their reliability and durability, navigation is not their strong suit.

This statement:

is just absurd on it’s face. I suppose when you use paper maps you want ones that don’t have street names? Sorry, that doesn’t wash.

John_V 

I don't see how that is an absurd statement. I download a route to my Bolt, select the route and follow it. If the route takes me along Main St for 5 miles, why would I care that Elm St is 4 blocks to my right when I'm following the route down Main St. And If I were using a paper map and had the route highlighted on it and it took me along Main St., I still don't need to know that Elm St is 4 blocks to my right. If the Bolt tells me to turn right in 500 yards onto Front Street, I just need to see the street sign that says Front Street (if a street sign exists). For detours and construction, I do what I do when driving my car - follow the signs. In the very few instances that I may need to know street names, I can use my phone as I always have it with me. Having street names around a predetermined route is feature not a necessity.

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.

drewguy

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