Originally Posted by
noglider
Spid, I felt the same way, but I'm an obsessive bike collector. I have six or eight bikes and keep switching from bike to bike. (I don't even remember how many I have.) A $20 computer on each one gets expensive, and it makes aggregating the statistics cumbersome. I finally realized that one computer that I don't even have to mount on the handlebar costs the same or less. I don't have to calibrate it to my wheel sizes, either. Please take a good look at the $100 GPS units.
Until recently, I could not fathom why anyone would buy one of these. Now I have an inkling of why people buy the upper models.
Just to clarify, when I said "current smart phone offering" I meant that I wasn't going to spend $$$ to get a new latest-generation smart phone. I still might buy a new lower-end smart phone that's a couple generations back in technology, provided it does what I want it to. Those are running around $100 now, but they don't have Bluetooth LE at that price from what I've seen so far. My motivation in looking at this is to be able to collect and analyze training data, so I would need the ancillary "stuff," which needs to be dedicated to each bike (except obviously the HR monitor is the same for all bikes). I would likely put a speed/cadence sensor on whatever bike is on the trainer, and another on which of my other two single bikes will get used the most during a given season for longer rides. (Maybe I would buy three speed/cadence sensors eventually to avoid having to switch them around.)