Cycling Computer Reliability
 

I have both a Wahoo Bolt and Roam (we ride a tandem, and I use the Roam and my better half uses the Bolt).

The reliability of the Bolt is fine, but the Roam has been unacceptable. It frequently doesn't pick up, present and/or record signals. I've been through Wahoo's troubleshooting procedure with very mixed success.

I asked the Perplexity AI and it told me folks find Garmin and Wahoo buggy.

Anyone have any recommendations for a simple (I don't need color, maps or routes) and most importantly reliable cycling computer?

Depends on the Garmin. My 810 was crap, the 1030 and 1040 have been pretty good, the 1040 maybe the best they’ve made. I see lots of people in FB complaining about the 1050, many with mid ride crashes, many with elevation data errors. Never seen a Wahoo complaint.

(staying out of this discussion, as I'm still using an Avocet 45 with the battery door held on with gaffer's tape...)

If the one that is not working well is the one that the stoker uses, could it be that being in between two bodies is blocking some of the satellite signals? Or, if you are talking about a wheel sensor, perhaps it is located too far away from the wheel sender?

Yet you felt compelled to post?

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I've done a lot of troubleshooting with different ancillaries and the fault is in the Roam. Not looking for technical help, but thoughts on the most reliable other units.

With your work at the bike collective, what do you see in terms of reliability of cycling computers?

I've had two Garmin Edges. A Edge 500 I got in 2009 or 2010, that worked trouble free and was still working very well when it was replaced by a Edge 530 in mid 2020. And the Edge 530 is working very well today.

You seem to be saying you have issues with sensors being recognized when you start up. Are you ensuring that all your sensors are woken up before you start the timer or recording of your rides? Most sensors will pair even during the ride, but for some reason if my Di2 isn't woke and connected prior to pushing the timer, then it won't connect until I stop the timer and sometimes I have to save or cancel the activity and start a new one. It's seldom a issue, so I haven't looked for a solution. Other than I make it a habit to activate Di2 and all my sensors just before I power up or wake up my Edge 530.

As for not wanting anything fancy. Realize that you don't have to use the fancy features. But buying a brand that is a decently priced device that allows for quality assurance will keep you from having to hope that the cheap device you get will not be one of the bad devices that slipped through the poor quality controls the cheap brand had to use to keep their prices low.

Even buying a $80 device every other year will have been the same or more than I've spent on my two moderately priced Garmin's.

Yours is about twice as old as my Cateye Strava Cadence. Aside from having to change the battery every other year (no reset on the odometer function), it measures speed, cadence, and distance in heat, rain, and cold, through tunnels, under heavy tree canopy and near bluffs that block out large parts of the sky, with no problems.

Just a suggestion: people complaining about "cycling computer reliability" might let the rest of the forum know what they want to measure, and why. Is there a reason you need a GPS?

The customer pool at the co-op is generally such that even a wired cyclecomputer is a novelty, and advanced GPS-based ones are almost nonexistent. I could ask members of my riding club for their opinions, though.

It never made sense to me why people do not simply use their smartphone.
You already carry it with you and the Strava app works perfectly.
I hung an auxiliary battery off my bar to keep my stem-mounted iPhone fully charged.
It enables me to keep the screen on very bright every ride over four hours.
And, get this, never a hiccup in over 50k miles usage. :ride:

Is use of a smart phone even qualifying for being more sensible? I think it's more just a matter of preference.

I'm sure some of us that use a dedicated device think that is sensible. But actually it's only sensible if that is your preference. :thumb:

It's a subject that's pretty much been beaten to death.

Phone disadvantages:
- Not always waterproof, if you find yourself riding in the rain, which forces you to buy a not that cheap waterproof case. I think this is slowly not becoming as much an issue as recent phones have become more water resistant.
- Battery life, definitely one of the major issues, phones just don't last anywhere near as long, forcing you to add an aux. battery and some form of bag to store the battery.
- Screen visibility. Phone generally are not meant to be viewed in bright sunlight for a few hours. Dedicated GPS and regular cycling device screens are better at this.
- Need to configure the screen to stay on
- Durability. I prefer my phone in my back pocket, where it's safe and out of the way, so I know it'll be available and functional in need.

If you have a smartphone with a relatively good and reliable battery, it might make a lot of sense. On the other hand, I've discovered the hard way that aftermarket phone batteries are never nearly as good as OEM, trying to recharge on the fly can get interesting, and the family & business budget isn't quite extravagant enough to support a new phone for everyone every other year. On my current iPhone 11, I've mostly discontinued using RWGPS as it can drain the battery in a hurry. I suppose I should upgrade prior to El Tour in November, but we'll see how incoming revenue goes.

On the road, I generally wear mine on my hip, which has worked OK for accessibility. I learned not to do so on the trail, after I took a fall to the side and ended up with an iPhone with a noticeable curve in the body (fortunately it still worked and the screen didn't shatter). I have used handlebar mounts with some success, most notably on larger events where the backup phone goes on the bars and runs the tracking and music, and the primary phone is on my body for communication and note-taking.

Those Avocet computers were great! I think I have a couple somewhere.

Not only that, the cheap Chinese ones work pretty well. I even tried some that cost $3. They work! But get the wired ones, not the wireless ones.

Steve B. is right about the disadvantages of using a smartphone. But that's what I use anyway. Another disadvantage is that touching the screen is very unreliable when riding a bike. Maybe one day I'll get a modern GPS for the bike, but not now. I have too many gadgets already.

someone asked about the reliability of bike computers above.

I run a bike coop and see dozens of bike computers on incoming donated bikes every year. 100% of them have dead batteries in the head. I remove the computers and install new batteries and resell them for $10. I do remind customers that "there's an app for that". Cateye seems to be the most reliable/durable. Flimsy wires torn off seems to be the main issue on the cheaper/no name brands. Very few are totally dead. I was surprised recently that one newer Specialized Speed Zone Sport wireless model sending unit still had a good battery. That is counter to my experience with the wifes preference for 1990s Specialized Speed Zones that ate expensive batteries, would sometimes reset while riding under high voltage power lines and had false claims about trip distances during her PBP training. This one has a threadless top nut mount so it's a bit newer but it looks like they figured out the battery drain issue on the transmitters.

I have installed many of these on my own bikes for testing. My favorite is a red Schwinn computer on my RWB Schwinn Prelude that records to 0.001 miles. That's less than 1 wheel revolution so it looks like its doing some interpolating. 5280 feet per mile, 5.28 feet or 63 inches per .001 mile. A typical 700 c wheel is 2100cm or about 82 inches circumference.

Another odd one is a Vetta C200 wireless that has an antenna post sticking out the bottom side.

The old Cateye Solar was a dud when new. It used a solar rechargeable button battery that was a failure.

The earliest Avocets were rather buggy and had few features. Auto was not one of them so you had to remember to start/stop it during breaks to get more accurate data. They uses what was basically a cassette tape recorder head and a ring magnet with reversing polarity. The signal was a combo of voltage and frequency instead of the standard on/off from a magnetic reed switch that was used on normal bike computers. I still get a couple Avocets each year but most are trashed.

There are some models that allow you to input actual wheel diameters from 1 to 9999 while others have a range limited to typical bicycle wheels or a preprogramed selection of tire sizes.

This may sound strange, but since there is an app for that, why do people buy computers for $10?

And this is a bit of a tangent, but does your coop need money? I know little about financing of bike coops, but I'm pretty sure that my bike coop has no shortage of cash and would have nowhere to put it if extra cash came in. It's a strange and improbable thing that a non-profit can't use money.

Speaking of reliability of these computers, I've bought computers NEW for as little as $3, and they work reliably. They're the old kind where you run a wire to a sensor on the fork.

I used a Cateye Solar in the 1980s that I rigged with an external dry-cell pack using Ns or 123s (can't remember which). I liked it when I had it. And this was only a few years after I lusted after a Pacer 2000 - and the young lady whose bike it was on. :) But neither of those worked out. At least the Solar lasted for a number of years.

By the time Avocet came out with the 40 and 45, they were reasonably reliable. I mentioned earlier I still use an Avocet 45 as my primary cyclocomputer (for the past 30 years or so), moving the head unit from bike to bike and resetting it to that bike's calibrated wheel circumference (determined with a measured closed course and refined if needed with long checkrides alongside RWGPS). The circumference calibration steps of 0.04" allow for remarkably precise calibration (but not necessarily always accurate, depending on tire pressure and sensor offset from the wheel magnet ring). That being said, sub-0.5% (1/200) accuracy is routine. I used to really like the cadence function, but now that I have decades more riding experience I can "feel" a rough cadence number (within 3-5 rpm) without needing the display. As each unit eventually starts failing after about 10 years or more of service, I switch to the next backup unit I've hoarded away after obtaining at bike swaps and yard sales. However, one design flaw is the battery cover clips are fragile, and on my current 45 it's held on with gaffer's tape - inelegant but functional.

There is a huge variation of what people use for a reason. A few years ago I finally asked a roadie what Strava is. He said it is like a social media system for cyclists. I said I do a lot of bike touring, why do I not hear of that from others. He said, "I said it is for cyclists". So, apparently it has nothing to offer to someone like me. By doing two to five week long bike tours with my camping gear, I apparently am not a real "cyclist." Please do not try to explain why I need it. Since am not a roadie I do not care to learn about the social media that I am missing out on.

I carry a phone for emergency use on bike rides where I am not on a bike tour, but it is turned off unless I need it. It is a spare phone I have with a $10 a month sim card. I turned it on a couple months ago to update the software and check the battery status, but otherwise it is turned off waiting for an emergency. On bike tours, I bring my regular phone instead. They are not high end phones, last year I finally retired my seven year old phones, bought new ones for about $200 each.

Every bike tour I have done for the past eight years, I was self sufficient for electrical needs using my dynohub. If I had my phone on all the time, I am reasonably confident that I would need so much electrical power that I would have to rent motel rooms a couple times a week for access to an outlet. Last summer that was 16 consecutive days without plugging into an outlet. I had my phone on twice a day for several minutes to check e-mail, get weather forecasts and occasional phone calls to let family know that I was still alive. With my GPS, on my last tour I had several basemaps for the parts of two countries that I was in. GPS was turned on while rolling, otherwise turned off. About a third to half of the power I produced from my dynohub went into my GPS batteries. Rest of the power was used for lighting and charging other batteries.

Last summer on a brevet that I rode, there was a new rider trying to use her phone for navigation and her phone bracket to mount it on her handlebar was not working well, her phone landed on the pavement a couple times. Fortunately, did not break. She finished the brevet by using a hair elastic holding her phone to the bracket. It was fortunate for her that I use the extra thick hair elastics as a parking brake to hold my front brake lever to my handlebar, thus had what she needed to make her phone stay on the bike to finish the ride.

Tourist in MSN, I enjoy reading your stories. They spark my imagination.

You don't need Strava, just as you don't need bikeforums. They are both social media. If talking about bikes and bike riding on BF is more satisfying than seeing people's GPS tracks, then do that. I know you know this. It's roadcrankr who might be unaware of the variety of how people ride and what they need.

These gadgets and services are helpful to some people but not everyone, obviously. I listened to the audiobook Coffee First, Then the World read by the author. Jenny Graham broke the women's world record for cycling around the planet. She used a phone on her handlebars and secured it with a Quad Lock mount. It failed near the end of the trip but it survived longer than any other would have lasted. Since I don't use a bike computer, I realized, the hard way, that a good phone mount is a good investment for me.

Did Jenny Graham break the record before or after Lael Wilcox?

I am a retired geological engineer, I worked with maps every day for my professional career before I retired. I bought my first personal GPS in 2001, I have lost count of how many GPS units I have bought over the decades. I often used my own GPS for work too, they did not provide one. When you had to have good maps and location equipment for your job, you have a different attitude on that sort of stuff than the attitude from a weekend roadie.

There have been a couple times when I put my phone in the clear map case on top of my handlebar bag, I do not recall why I did that but I recall doing it. I remember in bright sun not being able to see anything on it. Point being that I have used the phone as a backup to the GPS.

According to this link, only two of the riders that responded to the survey used phones for navigation on the Great Divide race this year, that is twice as many as used paper maps. Over 100 used GPS. I am actually shocked that so few used their phone since everyone would have carried a phone too. They probably were reluctant to use their phone in rain and snow.
https://bikepacking.com/bikes/rigs-o...r-divide-stats

If you enjoyed my story on my parking brake that saved the day for that phone user on a brevet, in brake mode my parking brake looks like this, two extra thick hair elastics:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...53756d12d4.jpg

No idea why a few of you fought back against me for using an iPhone and Strava.
The OP asked for alternatives or a solution to his Bolt and Wahoo problem, so I offered something.
Then you all started talking small Cateye-type units and long touring and such. Weird.
The OP's GPS units run around $400 and not this chintzy three buck stuff you guys talked about.
Moreover, Strava allows privacy settings and free versions to enable people to opt out of anything close to social media crud.
And, yes, many of my friends, near and far, share our rides and accomplishments. Almost nobody discusses politics or other nonsense.
Get with the times, fellas. Don't knock it until you tried it.:love:

I think it’s been beaten to death the debate over a smartphone vs. a dedicated GPS cycling unit. Nobody was knocking your own personal choice, merely re-stating (endlessly) why dedicated units have advantages. I tried using my early iPhone, couldn't see the screen and the separate mount was expansive. I am much happier with a Garmin. I would chance a bet that there are likely more folks using smartphones, mostly as that’s what they have and some of the free software works just fine for them. So be it, enjoy what you use,