michaelm101

Indeed, I've been into bikes since childhood in the 1960s and 70s and to this day, have not used a cycling computer.

I know when I'm fatigued, I'm pretty good at approximating speed and efficient cadence, and have always been a pretty good judge of distance.

I navigate using maps (was trained in the Thomas Guide at age 5 by my father who insisted I act as navigator in all motor-vehicle trips) and typically study a route on my PC prior to embarking.
I have an iphone handy on all trips.

All this aside, I'm ready to finally take the plunge into the high-tech world of biker computers! Criteria are listed below:

1) Under $100, the less $$ the better. I lose things.
2) No need for unnecessary data like calories, power, apps, etc.
3) Large viewing area.
4) Ability to customize the view & what's on the screen.
5) Ability to mount on other bikes.
6) Navigation where I can see an actual map would be a nice touch.

I think that's it for now. Thanks all, as always, for your excellent, time-saving commentary and suggestions!

Canker

Only thing I can think of that does all of that is the Lezyne Macro Plus for a $100. I have the Super Pro version which is basically the same except the Macro doesn't support ANT+ only bluetooth. Wouldn't say the screen is exactly large though. If you drop the navigation there are all kinds of super cheap options like Coospo and Xoss that you can pick up from amazon for $30-50. There is also they Bryton Rider 320 and Rider 15 both come in under $100, or close enough, and the 320 is decent sized but no navigation.

philbob57

I used a Lezyne Macro for a few years, with the Wahoo BlueSC sensor. The Macro Easy and Macro Plus seem to be the current low end models, but the Easy is out of stock at Lezyne. I stayed away from 'CooSpoo', Xoss, Bryton, and IGPSport because I didn't want to deal with non-native speakers of English if I tried to use phone support (only because my hearing is bad even with hearing aids, and it's especially bad on the phone). Their manuals weren't very informative, IMO. Neither is Lezyne's, but it's a US company. Their email support was great for me. No mapping except bread crumbs, though, and maybe not even that on the Easy.

I now use a Garmin 820 because it does some things I wanted that the Lezyne doesn't do - but I could get 200-300 miles between charges on the Lezyne, and it's 100 tops on the Garmin. The display is in color, and the mapping is cool. I don't need it, but it's cool. The B&W Lezyne screen is more legible in bright sun, IMO.

I found I was not a good judge of speed or distance. I overestimate each of them.

Steve B.

Raise your budget and get a Garmin Edge Explore 2. About $250. Or search for a refurbished series . These models have no power or performance metrics, they give you data and can navigate. Buy some inexpensive Velo Endevour mounts on Amazon. Yiu can easily create new routes on the Connect app or RideWithGPS and download to the device.

michaelm101

Thx! Endeavor mounts I assume, will go on all my bikes and accommodate the Garmin?

I read some reviews and it appears to be 'it.". There's a seller on OfferUp near me who has one of these, advertised as "new" -- $225 obo. What's your opinion?

Steve B.

Yes, the Velo Endeavor mounts are Garmin quarter lock mounts. These are what is known as an "out front" mount, in that they install on the h-bar to one side of the stem and place the Edge "out front" of the bar. Garmin also provided a basic quarter turn mount that can install on the bar or stem using heavy duty rubber band. You usually get one out front as part of the kit. Then buy additional for each bike or use the basic models,

For $25 get new as it will have a warranty.

michaelm101

Thx! I'm not getting any pertinent results for "Velo Endeavor" on Amazon...
A touring biker friend swears by his Garmin Explore 1, is there a big difference between this and the 2?

Steve B.

Any Garmin compatible mount will work.

You should Google for differences, battery life went up to 16 hrs. from 12, they improved the software, not sure what else.

Iride01 

If you cheap out on the GPS cyclometer, then you might purchase something that will be hit and miss whether it lasts a long time or dies in sixty days. Lower price stuff doesn't mean it's all crap. Some days they produce good units that last and other days bad units that don't. But none get pulled from the inventory to be sold.

Which one will you get? You won't know till it does or doesn't have issues that can't be resolved.

My first Garmin Edge 500 from circa 2010 still works and has good battery life. My older Garmin handhelds and marine chart plotters from 2005 and before still work.

prj71

Under $100 it's doubtful you will find any unit that will have navigation with a map. If you do, it will be junk.

You need to step up to the $200 - $250 range for those features. The Garmin Edge Explore suggested above is a good one and so is the Garmin Edge 530

t2p

Is a phone required (while riding the bike) for these to operate ? ; do you need to carry a phone with you ... ?

prj71

No and no.

None of the Garmin cycling computers requires being connected to a phone. The only functions that require a paired phone connection are live tracking and call/text notifications. Nothing else requires any sort of external connection.

adamrice 

We might be able to give better recommendations if we know how you want to use a bike computer. Do you want to have detailed records of rides for post-ride analysis and for comparing performance between rides? Do you want to monitor your heart rate while you're riding? Just to gather data to satisfy your curiosity?

Cateye offers a pretty complete range of what I think of as "old school" bike computers, meaning they rely on a wheel-rotation counter for their primary input, and some of these are fairly sophisticated, with customizable displays.

There are a lot of bike computers now that rely on GPS as their primary input ("new school"?), including cheaper ones from Lezyne and Bryton (and who-knows-what on AliExpress). These will generate a GPX/FIT/TCX file that is a second-by-second record of your bike ride showing where you were and when, along with any associated sensor data (heart rate, power, cadence, etc). You can download these files to your phone or computer, send them to online services like Strava, etc. As far as I can tell, you need to spend more than $100 to get a customizable display on one of these. Looks like the cheapest Bryton with that feature is $129; Garmin's Edge 130 is $200. Note that GPS-oriented computers can work with a wheel-rotation counter, which can partly fill in the blanks if you ever find yourself with poor GPS reception.

There are also a bunch of bike-computer apps you can load on your iphone, which is what I do. I use both Cyclemeter and Ride with GPS, which have different strengths and weaknesses. Cyclemeter has a feature-limited free mode (otherwise it requires an annual subscription) and provides a good approximation of a bike computer.

michaelm101

Thank you for your detailed reply. I've decided to go with the Garmin Edge Explore 2 - Navigation is a chief concern, distance traveled, then spd, avg spd, perhaps cadence...

I'm in relatively good shape--a lifelong tennis player/coach and am aware of my body.

Is the heart rate stat there for riders with heart conditions, etc?

adamrice 

Heart rate is a useful performance metric. Modern training principles are focused more on power, but heart rate can be used as a stand-in to some extent.

So, for example, if I'm going on a really long ride, I want to be careful not to burn all my matches, so I try to keep my heart rate in Zone 2 as much as possible. But if I'm riding an interval session, maybe I want to keep my heart rate during the "on" intervals in Zone 4. You can also assign a "training stress score" to each workout that measures both its duration and intensity; ideally this is based on power, but HR can be used instead.

Tourist in MSN

Heart rate? I have been using a heart rate monitor for years. Do not have any heart problems, but I do not want to get any either, so when climbing hills I often glance at it to see if it is higher than I want it to be. Am now 69, so I am getting to an age where I want to be careful. I consider the heart rate monitor to be like the tach on a car, I have an auto transmission so do not use the tach for anything but I like to know how fast the engine is turning over. Mine is a separate heart rate monitor (chest strap type and wrist watch), not a function on my GPS.

Wiggle

I'm just 37 but hoping to do the same for my next tour. I can be bad for being too "sprinty" and then burning out fast so quite interested in using HR to help keep a relative pace. I've been training on an indoor spin bike that can display HR and power (probably not real accurate but at least useful for comparing for progress) and I find I can keep my HR at about 130 pretty much indefinitely. This corresponds to my Zone 2 according to Zwift anyway. Once I get up to 150-160 I need to limit those to shorter efforts or I'll burn out.

To reply to the OP:
I just got the Edge Explore 2 and it seems like it should do everything you need, obviously at a higher cost than you initially targeted though.

Weather hasn't been good enough for cycling (by my standards ) since I bought it so haven't been able to test beyond a spin around the block. But I've been pleased with how much you can customize your data screens. New to the Edge computers so I'm sure this is all old news but thought it was great to have a denser screen with more metrics (including HR, cadence and grade) and a simpler one for more casual riding where it shows only speed, distance and time of day.

Wiggle

From what I can tell there are some features you get with the phone pairing. These include notifications, weather forecasts, crash detection features, group ride stuff...

Entirely functional without and honestly the idea of getting phone notifications on a bike sounds very distracting and unnecessary to me. Maybe if you can filter that down to just messages/calls from a couple of select contacts though it could be good.