Hi everyone. I'm an ex-roadie, getting serious again and looking to add cadence, heart rate (and eventually power) to my ride data. Talk about confusing choices!
I'm ditching my Cateye Strada with HRM; probably the most unreliable device I've ever used (heart rate has never worked properly). But what to replace it with? Having spent hours looking through forums and customer reviews, here are the choices so far: Wahoo Rflkt (not +) is on it's way; I figure I have 30 days to test it in my setup. Also, a Wahoo Tickr heart rate monitor; this seems to have almost 100% positive reviews and has Ant+ and BLE, so should be pretty universal whatever setup I end up with.
The more confusing choices right now are the speed and cadence sensors. I know this may change if I end up returning the Rflkt! The options appear to be: Wahoo Blue SC combined speed and cadence, Wahoo's magnetless individual sensors or Garmin's individual magnetless sensors. Cost wise, there isn't much between them, but customer reviews are incredibly variable for all of the aforementioned units! Phone is a Samsung S6 Edge (I have a spare iPhone 5S I could use too).
My aims are: show real-time live data as I'm riding, heart-rate, cadence and speed, plus be able to get max and average of these as I'm riding. Then at the end of a ride, be able to upload my workout to Strava (happy to pay for Premium, if required) and have Strava show: data from my speed sensor (I experience a few GPS dropouts on some of my regular routes), data from my heart rate monitor and also be able to get accurate climbing elevation data, if possible. My Samsung Galaxy S6 has a barometric altimeter built-in and a temperature sensor.
My questions are:
- Which speed/cadence sensors to choose and why?
- Which phone app to choose and why?
- Can any phone app utilise the Samsung's built-in altimeter? If yes, which?
- If the Rflkt proves unworkable, is the Cateye Padrone+ a viable alternative? Has anyone switched from one to the other?
- Should I just mount the iPhone 5S on my stem and use that?
- Should I save up for a Garmin 520 instead?
I apologise in advance for the number of questions, but I don't have unlimited funds to keep buying and ditching stuff if it doesn't work.
Grateful for any information/experience/observations!
Thanks all.