It's a much bigger unit than the Garmins.

I used a Karoo for a while. It seemed that the engineers designed it never really used navigation on a bicycle.

Android makes it easy to compete with the Karoo.

Garmin made a phone (android, I think) and an android GPS years ago. They weren't sold for long.

Going back several months, I would have agreed with you. IMO, at least how I use nav, they have largely fixed all of that and it works pretty well and the map quality is great. Furthermore, the ability to side load (not HH supported though ... yet) android apps gives even more capability here. I use both Komoot and Osmand and have far better map quality that is available on any bike computer and get audio turn by turn instructions. Audio TbT is a game changer in bike navigation.

If you mean it gives a company like Hammerhead the ability compete, I'd agree. If they get their act together on this with a curated app store and API/SDK, then it makes a ton of software available quickly on the platform. Imagine the utility of having color weather radar overlay on your navigational map. Right now, I have additional nav software, a weather radar app, and a two way walkie talkie app (Zello) on my Karoo in addition to the Karoo software.

Karoo's advantages are: The high res display, the cellular modem (largely unexploited), and the Android OS are their primary advantages from a platform perspective and their ability to successfully exploit these quickly will determine their success. Whether they pull that off or not will become evident here by the end of next cycling season.

I'm very familiar with the Garmin phone both from a personal and professional perspective. They made an android phone with navigation software installed. They tried to market it as a phone and got crushed by Apple and Samsung who were already strong players in the phone business. That's a lot different than a bike computer that can access the internet over the cellular network. So yes, Garmin got clobbered in the Android phone market but no one is attempting to make a phone out of a bike computer with this. An Android based bike computer is not going to be the make or break deal for the Karoo, it's going to be getting functionality at the price with sufficient innovation. That can be a pretty tall order when Garmin has something like 90+% of the bike computer market right now.

I'd like to see the Karoo succeed - the bike computer market could use more competition and to get some innovation jump started to the point where they catch up with the state of the art in consumer electronics and to get prices down. $599 for a bike computer that does what the Garmin 1030 does is kind of over the top and needs to come down with competition.

If you are using other Android apps, you don't strictly need the Karoo (you can use any Android phone).

It gives any of one of the scores of android phone manufacturers the ability to compete (without really doing anything). Especially, if people use standard Android apps.

Just like many other Android phones. The Karoo hardware is nicer for its intended use.

Garmin also had a non-phone GPS device based on Android (which didn't go anywhere).

Sure, I'd like to see Karoo succeed too.

The Wahoo Bolt is $330. It's equivalent to the 520. The list price of the Karoo is $500 (you can get it for $400 on their website). What price do you think these things will go down to?

It's doesn't seem Garmin is having trouble selling the 1030. If that's the case, then the price really doesn't need to "come down".

The market for phones is huge and it appears only Apple and Samsung make money selling them. Bicycle navigation devices is, comparatively, a niche market.

There's also the $250 Garmin Explore. People complained the 1000 was too big. The Karoo is even bigger (I didn't find the size to be a problem).

Well...sort of. The problem with Android...is Google makes maintaining it an utter pain. Sure, anyone can get the code and build it. You can fetch the /master branch right now that is up to date. The problem being, it doesn't "just" compile with a few keystrokes...it takes hundreds of man hours to simply make it build, never mind work well. And every time Google updates Android it breaks things everywhere you patched.


Android is a double edged sword. Better off running straight Linux, from a system building/stability/maintenance point of view. Which is why most all phones sold with Android are abandoned WRT updates shortly after release---you lose money doing the right thing maintaining them.


Which...BTW...is why the Karoo Hammerhead runs an ancient Android based on Marshmallow (AKA almost 4 year old OS, that was abandoned almost 2 years ago). I have no idea if/when they'll update the OS, my money is they won't. Which will become a problem as the OS is too old an API for many Play Store apps to even install on, a problem that will only get worse as time marches on. Karoo's laziness in not maintaining Android versioning is why they have to build their own appstore from the ground up.

You can compete with the Karoo with any Android phone (especially, if what you are doing is using regular Android apps on your Karoo, like JohnJ80 is doing).

(Yes, Android has issues.)

Not any of them...virtually none made have any water resistance cert at all. Only a few new high-end devices have that. And that is before discussing battery life in bike computer use or display usability in direct sunlight.


Which leads to another problem of Android specifically (and most phones generally)...image permanence (LCDs) or burn-in (LEDs). The GUI has lots of static icons, and leaving screens on even middling-term can damage the screen due to the OS layout of always-on interface bits (navbar as well as statusbar).

I think it's fair to say that if the phone mfgs had wanted to compete in the bike computer space, they would have by now. They sort of nibbled around the edges when some of them incorporated ANT+ connectivity, but that hasn't really gone anywhere in a big way to date. There are some bike computer apps on phones and have been for a long time, but it is not a thrust for the phone guys.
A Karoo right now is probably about a $275 value if you compare feature sets. What I have been surprised about though is how big of a deal the high res display is for users. In corresponding with people in the various Karoo user groups, they place a higher premium on the display than I would have thought. So I probably discounted the display too much. They seem to be selling them fairly well at $399. Garmin has given them a lot of room by setting the 1030's price at $600.

I also own an Edge 1000 and a Wahoo Elemnt. Of the three computers I have, I prefer the Karoo. But I prefer the Elemnt over the Edge 1000. The Elemnt is bullet proof operationally and I like the higher contrast display but it is a pretty basic presentation of the data. Wahoo's navigation without street names on the map is kind of marginal, IMO.
In my view, that's because there isn't any really serious competition right now. Garmin has something like 92-95% market share, IIRC. So they are much more than dominant, they pretty much own the market. That means their only real competitor is themselves. They have *lots* of margin in the 1030 - given real competition they would bring it down fast to compete and to put the other guy out of the market. The 1030 is much better than the 1000 which is really pretty dated now and has kind of a muddy contrast on the display.

I've spent some time looking at the 1030. My LBS wants me to take one and use it for a while, which I will probably do. Turn-offs for me now are the screen, the comparatively slow touchscreen responsiveness, the UI, the crappy piezo electric buzzer (hard to believe they still are using them), the low res maps, and it's overall looks (white?).

The price is an issue for me - I can afford it but I just don't see the value proposition at $599. Maybe at about $400 I'd be interested. Given that I'm kind of a gadget junky, and that I'm balking at the price, sort of says to me that they are missing large swaths of their target market by pricing it where guys like me aren't interested. Either that or they missed on the feature set. I would have wanted to see a better display and a better use of that display (better mapping etc...) for starters.

Totally true. The total bike computer annual volume is probably a bad 4 hours (or less) in the cell phone market - literally.

I thought size would be an issue too and it's not. I do not understand why anyone would buy the $250 Explore. I don't find much appealing in it.

It wouldn't be phone manufacturers: the bike computer space is too small.

t would be app writers. Keep in mind that you are saying a advantage of the Karoo is standard Android apps.

I'm not sure why any phones included ANT+. There's a licencing fee to use it (which adds to the cost). BLE makes the ANT+ stuff moot/irrelevant.

The bike computer market is too small for the phone guys.

The thing that Karoo is competing against is "free" (free apps on a phone people already have).

If you use maps, a larger, high-resolution screen is very useful.

They'd have to drop the prices of all their units. It seems they might have dropped prices on some of the units to counter the Wahoo.

So, Garmin has 92-95% market share. If the market is mostly saturated, then them reducing prices without serious competition doesn't make sense.

Hammerhead thinks that you are wrong for wanting the unit to make noise.

The price is an issue for many people. If one is patient, one can get the 1030 for significantly less than $600.

In any case, Garmin isn't selling the 1030 to you. Garmin seems to be selling "enough" of them at $600. Reducing the price to $400 might not actually make more money for them.

If one is interested in navigation (and not any of the "performance" stuff), the Explore appears to be a very reasonable unit.

That you happen not to find it appealing doesn't really mean much. Companies can't please everybody. Garmin might know more about how to run a company than you (or I).

I like the display. I like that you can replace the mount (unfortunately, it appears to really need that). I don't like that you can't use custom maps (outside of using another app). There are a few other navigation features it lacks too. One shouldn't have to go through Karoo's website to load routes (maybe, they changed that).

Bike computer apps on cell phones are nothing new and haven't seemed to make much of a financial dent in the bike computer business. There is a lot of value in bike specific hardware. Just because you're running Android doesn't make you a phone.... or a bike computer for that matter.

Yes, exactly. Garmin would have to drop the price of their units but not necessarily all of them. Just at price points where they have a competitor. That's precisely what they did when Wahoo entered the market and started get some volume. They dropped pricing on units above and below them but, for example, didn't drop the price of the high end 1030.

The market isn't saturated, it's growing. Saturation would mean that every bike everywhere has a bike computer attached and there are no "empty" handlebars. It is Garmin that is the main producer right now, that's all. Health and Fitness products are one of the fastest growing product segments for Garmin according to them and cycling is a big piece of that for them. Growth makes more room for competitors and makes it harder to defend - another facet of potential success for a disruptor.

"Thought" not "thinks" - past tense. They recently enabled the bluetooth audio and microphone profiles in the Karoo and have been adding audio sounds to various system warnings. This gives you the option of a small clip on the jersey BT speaker, a headset, an AirPod etc... I actually find this much more useful since the alerts from the little crappy piezoelectric speakers are often lost in traffic noise. And it will be exceptionally useful when for turn by turn verbal instructions. I'd prefer a BT speaker, small enough, that clips on my jersey top over the piezo speakers. Amazon has lots of them and I have several that work great.

I'd also bet that v2.0 will have a speaker.

Not $400 but I have seen them briefly at close to $500 but typically around $550. I still take issue with that value proposition. At $400, I'd probably own one. $500? Already turned that deal down.

I'm sure they are holding the margin up there so they can use pricing as a weapon later. It's a lot better to make 1000 units at $1000 each than to make 1,000,000 units at $1 each presuming the same overall margin. Knowing how Garmin thinks after having worked with them, I'm very sure they are optimizing all of those pieces now.

Put it in a case.

The fancy bicycle computer market is small. Maybe, it's mostly already saturated.

The "growth" is going to be people who are going to be reluctant to spend $400 for a device that is basically the phone they already have.

No. Most of those empty handlebars are being used by people who don't want a computer on it. One might be able to reduce the price of your fancy bike computer to get some of them to buy one but you'd probably lose money doing it (like most of the scores of phone manufacturers).

The Karoo is fairly specialized hardware compared to normal Android smartphone. $275 is fairly cheap for a normal Android smartphone and most smartphone companies don't make money. I doubt Karoo would be able to stay in business selling them at that price.

They don't need to be "selling them fairly well". They need to be making a profit selling them.

That they ever thought is rather arrogant. It's nice to have the option of using BT but not everybody wants to do that. The Garmins have some ability to use the phone (through their app) for turn announcements.

I had to laugh when I read the topic. Santa Claus brought me the same computer and I've spent more time studying the manual and pushing buttons than I have riding. Finally getting things somewhat figured out and I really like all the bells and whistles.
You'll get it, we just need to screw up a few rides first.

At $400, it might not be worth it to them. The much-less-capable Wahoo is $330. Selling the 1030 at $400 would be dumb.

This (mostly).

I have to wonder if Hammerhead lost a huge amount of the market by taking so long to get the product to the customers, after a prolonged marketing campaign, followed by very lengthy and still ongoing process to get the units working and with a decent feature set. They started shipping last February ? and are still not offering a device that does what some ancient Garmin units are capable of. I think they've made some really dumb decisions, 3G cell as one, no BT to a smartphone as 2, which is a game changer when you need to use cell service, not Wii to save a track or download a new route. I question the process of creating routes on the device, that's been a bone of contention with many devices. I think the option of using maps from other developers like RWGPS, Strava, is a terrific feature and important to a lot of users who go to a big screen device specifically because they can well display a map.

Garmin is able to sell the 1030 for $550 because at the upper end of the feature set, they still beat a Karoo, which seems to still be in beta testing mode.

I suspect "fitness markets" growth is entirely due to "wearables" like smart watches, rather than bike computers. Especially since Wahoo has been stealing their user base more and more.


Their fitness bands and smart watches are class leading fitness devices, in the same manner their bike computers were for years....at least for now.

Overall, it has to be true. This is what Hammerhead is doing selling the Karoo at $400, which you think should be $275.

One sees "precipitous drops" from the prices of newly-introduced technology. None of the technology being used in these devices is newly-introduced.


How they explained not including sound was arrogant. And, given that it's an obvious feature, it doesn't make much sense as a mistake.

Having to rely on BT for audio is bad too.

It might not be saturated yet but that might not be far-off. No one knows if that growth is sustainable. They sell a wide range of "bike computers". We are talking about the market for high-end bike computers.

In any case, the market is likely much, much smaller than the number of "handlebars".

It often gets to this with you where you twist what is said, put words in people's mouth and ascribe characteristics to them that you cannot possibly know. That's happening here too. So, it's time to end this - or at least I'm done playing. PM me if you want to take this up further.

J.