General Cycling Discussion - Speedometers on a Bike?

Are these things accurate? (Speed, Miles, Calories burn.)

I guess it depends on how you adjust the settings and which brand you buy. My guess would be you get what you pay for in this area.

The speed and miles of speedometers (generally called computers or cyclocomputers) are pretty close, as long as it has been adjusted properly for the wheel size and tire size.

I think that "calories burned" is only a guess, and does not figure in accurately hills and rider weight, wind resistance and speed, efficiency of the bike, etc.

Ok Thanks. Any recomendations?

Ok Thanks. Any recomendations?

Depends on what you want the computer to do.

If you want the basics - speed, average speed, trip odometer, total odometer, top speed, etc. I just bought a Cateye MITY 3 from Nashbar.com on sale for about $15.00.

From there you can get just about as fancy as you want - cadence, wireless, downloadable to your computer, with a heart rate monitor, etc. And the cost goes up.

Will you be doing 'serious' training, including keeping meticulous logs? If yes, invest in a computer with average and current speed, trip distance and trip time, and odmeter function to track total mileage over a season. Some training programs rely heavily on heart rate zones, so a HRM (heart rate monitor) would come in handy. Shimano Flight Deck has a virtual cadence function, if you do cadence training, but it's pricey. If you just want to know how far and fast, the simplest and cheapest is the ticket.

Thanks.:)

One other feature that is nice, the secondary display scanning through all the functions staying on each one in turn for a few seconds. I once had a Cateye one that did that.

I bought a BELL speedometer it has speed, distance, calories burn, time and trip timer and cummulative timer.
Paid $12 for it and it pretty accurtae as far as speed and
distance and time of course.;) Thanks for the info.