I just purchased a Bryton Rider 310 and thought I'd share my experiences. There's a lot of stuff that the printed and online manuals don't cover, so I hope that my experiences will be useful for others.

Bluetooth accessories

Yes, the 310 can talk Bluetooth, but that doesn't mean you can use BT accessories. You can't. Sadly, my BT heart rate monitor doesn't (can't) work with it. Neither does another HRM that I assumed was ANT+, which pairs with a Kathmandu fitness watch. BT is only used to pair the 310 to the Bryton smartphone app.

Pairing with other ANT+ accessories

No drama there: my Giant Ridesense sensors which combine speed and cadence (on Giant TCR Advanced) paired easily and faultlessly.

The Bryton smartphone app

This wasn't easy to get going and I thought I had a faulty unit.

I first tried to search for "Bryton" on the Google Play store, for my Moto G (Android). This came up with "Bryton mobile app 2016" which I installed with high hopes. It allowed me to authenticate via Facebook and Strava and looked like it would automatically upload my rides to Strava.

The problems started when I tried to pair BT between the 310 and the phone. After entering the Pairing screen on the 310, I went into the Bluetooth setup on the phone, and sure enough there was a device called "Rider_unpaired". Unfortunately no matter what I tried to do, the phone would not pair with this device, and kept complaining about an incorrect PIN or authentication.

The "Bryton mobile app 2016" wasn't any help either: there was no preferences or options panel for selecting a Bluetooth device.

This was a complete dead end.

Next I checked out a screen I had seen in the 310's Bluetooth functions: "QR code". I had tried to scan that from the "Bryton mobile app 2016" app, thinking that it was providing a quick way to enter my 310's UUID (16 digit serial number also found on the back of the device). However the QR scan always failed and I had to enter the UUID manually.

On a whim I decided to scan the QR code with a generic QR scanner, just to see what it contained. It came up with a URL rather than the UUID. http://static.brytonsport.com/upload...s/Shanghai.apk

So here was a different app. I uninstalled "Bryton mobile app 2016", set my phone preferences to allow non Google Play Store apps, then downloaded the apk with the phone browser and executed it to install the app.

This new app looks quite different from the first one. It's called "Bryton Sports App". One of the preferences allows you to pair the Bryton 310, and this time it worked!

Unfortunately this version of the app does not sync up to Strava, but does allow you to upload (sync) any rides on the 310 up to the Bryton web site.
- tap on the Preferences icon
- tap on "Sync with Device". It will display a list of rides that are on the 310 but NOT on the Bryton web site. Select any that you want to upload and tap "Save", and it grabs them from the 310 and saves them in the app AND uploads them to the Bryton web site.

Once rides are on the Bryton web site, you can push them up to Strava:
- Go to the My Data menu and click on "My Collection". You'll see a list of uploaded rides.
- Click in the checkbox next to the ride you want to send to Strava
- Just above the list click on the button for "Upload to Strava". It will ask you to authorize to Strava (seems like it doesn't remember the authorization between sessions so you need to do this every time). After authorizing, you need to select the ride to upload AGAIN and click on the Strava button AGAIN. This time you get a confirmation panel: click on "Upload" and it will finally send it to the Strava web site.

Alternative to the 310 to phone to Bryton website to Strava upload method:

By connecting the 310 to your Mac/PC with USB cable, the 310 memory gets mounted to the computer as a USB drive. The root level of the drive contains all the stored rides, as ".fit" files. You can upload these directly to Strava as manual uploads.

Synchronisation between the Bryton app and web site

If you use "Sync with Device" in the phone app, any rides you select will be transferred by BT from the 310 to the phone app, AND will be uploaded to the Bryton web site providing you have a data connection.

If you delete a ride from the Bryton web site then refresh the phone app (swipe down in the main screen), the ride will be deleted from the phone app as well. If the ride is still on the 310 (but you have deleted it from the app and Bryton site) then sometimes it can still be available for syncing, and sometimes not – I can't work out what governs this.

Phone notifications

One of the selling points of the 310 is that once the phone app is installed and paired with BT, the phone will send notifications to the 310 regarding incoming phone calls and possibly other things.

I tested this and was delighted to see the phone number and name of the caller appearing on the 310's screen when I received a phone call. I haven't tested incoming SMS messages so I'm not sure yet if it will display the entire message or just the sender.

Mac Software

I installed the Mac software called Bryton Update Tool from the Bryton web site. This software requires the 310 to be connected to the Mac via USB. It has 3 functions:
- Update software (the OS on the 310)
- Update GPS data (not sure what this is actually used for, perhaps frequencies and locations of GPS satellites? It can't be for mapping because the 310 doesn't do mapping)
- Install Bryton Workout (installs some ".fit" files on the device which I assume are pre-packaged workouts)

The other desktop software available on the Bryton site is "Bryton Bridge 2" which doesn't work with the 310. For other types of devices it appears to provide a way to transfer route/workout files back into the device. I assume that this is unnecessary on the 310 since you can simply drag them onto the mounted USB device once you have connected the USB cable.

Cool features

I'm looking forward to using the following features:

- gradient
- max altitude and altitude gain
- barometric altitude (after relying on Strava/Android's altitude calculations for too long)
- training programmes and FTHR test that are built-in to the device
- being able to easily move the device between bikes
- notifications (geeky I know)
- the auto backlight

So far, despite the hassles I had setting up the software, I think I am going to be very happy with this unit. It cost just $NZ 170, far less than a Garmin 520. The main advantage for me in having the Garmin 520 would be for live Strava segments. Apart from that, this Bryton Rider 310 gives excellent functionality, good battery life (30 hours or so), and is supposed to cope much better with wet weather than the Garmin.

If anyone has any questions I'll try to answer them.
Cheers,
Stephen