Bike computer recommendations
 

Just purchased a new roadbike, getting back in shape and wanted to try some new cardio. I want to keep my heart rate up & moniter cadence. Any recommendations for a decently priced computer that I can install at home?

Get a Cateye Astrale 8 and a cheap HRM. That will give you everything you want for $50-60. A single computer that does all that will set you back more.

Just get the Garmin Edge 500. You can get it for around $220 from ProBikeKit on sale. It does everything you want plus all the GPS tracking. You can have 5 pages of 6 data points each.

You're going to pay $100 anyway for anything that has HR and cadence so might as well double it and get the Edge. I love mine and I rode for 3 months with just the Strada Wireless. It was like night and day going to the Edge.

That's exactly what I use: Cateye Astrale 8 on the right side of the bars and a bar-mounted Sigma PC-14 HRM on the left. Works great and all for under $100! :thumb:

My vote is Garmin too. I have a forerunner 305. They can be had on ebay or craigslist for 150 or so and you can track loads of info. I also use Training Peaks to upload the info to. For instance I can tell you how many miles I have on my bike, on my chain, and on my tires too, along with how many hours in each HR zone for the year, quarter, month or last ride. I haven't begone to use all the functions yet. It will also keep track of running data, like pace distance, total time, and on and on. Good luck

Ditto...

I have a Garmin Edge 305 and love it way more than my clunky Cateye Strada + Polar HRM combo I was running before...

I am very happy with my Polar CS500. Gives me all the data I'll ever need, has an easy to read large screen and long battery life.


At a somewhat lower price point I would look at Sigma computers.

Where would be the best website to order it from. These computers i should be able to install myself correct?

They are all very easy to install. You just have to put in the size of your wheel, add the cadence/speed sensors and that's it basically. You can buy them online from any large bike store or even from Amazon. Just check the price for the specific model that you are interested in.

Try to get a computer with ANT+ (Garmin, some other companies) or W.I.N.D. (Polar) data transmission. These are new generation digital data transmission technologies and much less sensitive to disturbances from power lines or your other electronic devices on your bike (lights, mp3 player, etc.). Such computers are slightly more expensive than simple analog computers. Still, I live in a very industrial neighborhood and benefit a lot from the disturbance-free heart rate transmission. In case you live in the countryside, they might make less of a difference for you...

cateyes strada, simple wireless cyclo comp....it works very well, no complaints...

He wants HR and Cadence. I had the Strada Wireless and it did neither. Perhaps they have one that has them but it's going to be $100+. My advice to him is to get the Edge 500 because it does a lot of things that he doesn't even know he wants/needs yet. I track everything with Garmin Training Center and upload it to Garmin Connect. All the nice graphs of cadence versus time versus temperature versus elevation, etc. It's comprehensive but I'm a numbers guy. If you just want to look at your HR and Cadence then maybe one of the more simple solutions will work.

Not a fan of the separate HR Monitor and Computer solution.

Why would you ever buy the bike-only Edge computers (like the 500) vs. the bike + run friendly Forerunners (like the 305). Do the Edge models perform functions that the Forerunners don't?

I'm not. :D The only thing that HR was telling me was that I hurt at 190 bpm... well, duh. :p

OP, get whatever you want. If you want lots of data, you can get it. If you're like me and find that you don't need all that data, you can cut back, too. Don't worry if you end up with a couple shoeboxes of unused bike accessories, because I'll bet everyone else here already has some.

I may give my Blackburn Neuro one more shot. The primary reason I got it was because it was immune to interference from my Dinotte headlight (my Strada Wireless only worked if I had the light set on High), and I figured that HR and cadence would be nice to see. I found that I could predict my cadence reading pretty closely -- being a musician helps a lot -- and it only took a few rides to see which level of pain equaled which heart rate. My main disappointment was that the batteries ran down sooner than I would have liked. I'm sick of changing batteries.

+1 on the Edge 500. Get one slightly used on eBay for around $160-$170.

[QUOTE=Accordion;11604783]He wants HR and Cadence. I had the Strada Wireless and it did neither. QUOTE]

your right...

isnt MAC developing an iphone cycling app, monitoring thru blue tooth?

A bunch of app developers are, including ones that work with ANT+ devices. I've seen news about an Apple patent for an app of their own, but I don't think it would do anything that isn't already on the market.

So Barricks, your sayin that the computer got interference from your headlight? That's crazy. Is that a GPS model or mainly magnetic?

The light gets its medium and low brightnesses by interrupting the current going to the LED (all LEDs do this, btw). If you waved the light around, you would see a very fast strobe effect. Somehow, the circuitry makes enough radio frequency noise to interfere with the radio band that the Strada Wireless used, and it basically jammed the signal from the speed sensor. On full brightness, the power is uninterrupted, so there's no extra RF noise being created.

The Neuro uses a different frequency band (2.4 GHz) and is digital, so it's pretty immune to interference.

My road bike has a Flight Deck on it now, but if I change computers again, I'll probably go back to the wired Cateye Strada that I got the first time. All I really want to know now is mileage and time of day.