TakingMyTime

I just received another advertisement email from them and they are still using the term "Pre-Order". I thought everything had been resolved and they were shipping?

pesty

They are still going with the pre-order pricing until they have production ramped up enough to be able to ship orders on demand. Currently they are still trying to fill pre-orders. Not sure how far they are along, last I heard I think they were currently filling orders up to September.

Marcus_Ti

Paypal expressly forbids transactions for preorders. Goods must be delivered within 45 days of payment.

Normally you would be SOL after 9 months...but they violated PayPal's own TOS

pesty

At this point, it’s kinda moot for me as I was able to get a RMA and have shipped it off. But, might be good to know for the next person who wants to return theirs.

pesty

For anyone following my plight... I received my refund via PayPal within 18 hours of HH receiving the device.

So they are honoring their return/refund policy pretty quickly.

JohnJ80

I should be getting mine in April. Pretty excited for that. I know there is the early adopter risk, but if they get the second milestone out on their roadmap, I'll be pretty happy. I'm very much looking forward to the graphical indicators for metrics like cadence and power.

I have messed around with their mapping app/dashboard and it looks decent. Best of all, it does rapid and seamless import from web apps like RideWithGPS that I use extensively. For the touring and adventure riding that we do, this looks to me like a great computer.

I've ridden a Garmin for many years since the 305 with the latest being an Edge 1000. My wife (now passed down to my son) has an 810. Both my wife and I switched over to the Wahoo ELEMNT a couple of years ago and have been pretty happy with those for our general riding. For the touring and major adventure riding we're doing now, better mapping is desirable. For example, we have some week long tours planned for this year in the midwest plus a tour above the Arctic circle in Norway this summer. For those, having a better mapping and routing solution than the Wahoo units offer is a good thing.

With respect to the Garmin units, they are decent but the whole configuration thing is really a pain. And I'm not a real fan of touch screens on bike computers in general as the sole user interface. We'll see how well the button/screen thing works on the Karoo, but it looks like it ought to be ok. I very much do like the idea how you can log into a unit and all your settings sync from the cloud. That's a great idea from Karoo.

J.

pesty

@JohnJ80

So a few things you might want to keep in mind, as of this moment, there are no graphical indicators for metrics. It's supposed to be coming, but I wouldn't expect to see it soon.

Regarding the maps... the text is very small, so if you're using it for navigation, plan on not being able to read roads or street names without stopping or slowing significantly and squinting at the screen. Doesn't sound like this will be a major issue for the kind of riding you'll be doing, but that was a big negative for me when I received mine. More importantly for what you will be doing, battery life appears to me less than my X years old Garmin 810. If you will be doing very long rides, over 5-6 hours, I would plan on being able to charge it while riding. It does appear to charge during activity, so just a matter of hooking up a sufficiently powered battery or dynamo.

The other thing to keep in mind is that you may want to purchase a SIM for it if you will be planning or changing routes away from a WiFi source. The other option would be WiFi hotspot, but that kills phone batteries pretty quickly. It currently will not create routes without network, even from offline saved maps.

Regarding the touch screen... works about the same as any other iOS or Android device. Sucks when you have gloves on, sweat on the screen can be a major problem (stopped two of my activities, tried to delete one of them). Currently no way to adjust or move the map view without using the touch screen, and you can't change fields on the screen by long press on the field like you can with Garmin.

I'm not trying to be negative... just trying to help you avoid any false expectations as one early adopter to another.

WhyFi

Wow - 5-6 hours is pretty poor.

pesty

It could probably do more than that... but I wouldn't expect more than 6-8. Others are reporting less than quoted battery life on the DC Rainmaker site as well. I bought my 810 used about 2-3 years ago and saw significantly more battery drain on the Karoo running them in parallel. I'd have to look it up, because I posted it somewhere, but I think the Karoo was something like 8-12% more battery drain after 90-120 minutes.

5-6 hours seems to be about the point I'd start worrying about it getting low and wanting to charge it. For me that's typically at about 20-30% left.

EDIT:
It was a few pages up, it lost 19% over 2h 5m, medium brightness, no CPU intensive functions (IE: navigation). So 20% in a little over 2 hours, and you have to figure if you're doing navigation it's going to be higher. I'd say 6-8 hours and you have a dead battery would be a fair estimate.

WhyFi

To me, that all means that it's flirting with the charge-it-every-ride territory, which doesn't sound appealing.

JohnJ80

Good input. I'm a veteran technologist of the high tech industry so the early adopter thing is nothing new and is familiar. We'll see how it works when I get it - I should be able to give it a good wringing out. As they say in my industry (semiconductor) - if you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

The UI analog metrics display is an important thing for me. As DCRainmaker says, their ability to succeed absolutely depends on them meeting their software roadmap releases and pulling off the continual significant improvement like Wahoo did. That all said, what Wahoo did successfully is not easy nor routine. Hammerhead has their work cut out for them and not a lot of margin for getting it right. Expectations are high and Wahoo has set a high bar with respect to improvements in software on a rapid basis.

I'm going to see how it goes without the sim card first. Adding the card is not a big deal for me and I also will have a phone along that can be used as a hotspot. We've done that successfully before and it doesn't really impact battery life much but it is a hassle. As always, with this stuff, the devil is in the detail and it's going to depend on how good a job Hammerhead has done in getting the map downloads to work well. I agree with DCRainmaker is the seamless download of maps is something they should all be doing instead of the silly charge for maps thing that has been an issue before. Maps are living and breathing things in a constant state of flux and that ought to be reflected in the manner in which they are pushed to the device.

Between Hammerhead (presuming they pull this off) and Wahoo, there has been a serious throw down aimed at Garmin. Remains to see if they will step up their game and get caught up. So far, they have been seemingly trying to drag other products (lights, apps, etc...) instead of keeping up on the computer and it's operating system.

J.

njkayaker

The newer Garmins come with maps based on OSM. The updates for those are free and occur about 2 times a year. (It appears that the last map update for the Garmins was in October.)

The OSM data is free. The process to extract and compile the data into *.img files is not hard to automate (there are a few websites that do this to provide free OSM maps).

I'm assuming Hammerhead would be doing the same.

(I'm also assuming that the Karoo uses maps on the device.)

(Other sources for map data cost money or they are not available outside of the company that owns the data.)

njkayaker

The Garmins are designed to be power efficient. (The Garmins are also very small, which limits the size of the battery).

The Karoo is based on a cellphone (it appears).

I'd expect that, with the same battery size, the Karoo would have a much shorter runtime.

pesty

Based on size and weight, the Karoo probably has +3x the battery the 810 has, but I agree, it’s not exactly apples to apples. As you said, and I’m paraphrasing here; The Garmin was designed to be power efficient, the Karoo is essentially a microphone-less, speakerless cell phone.

njkayaker

The battery in the 810 is 1000 mAh. The battery in an iPhone 5 is 1570 mAh.

It seems that the battery in the Karoo should be larger. I doubt it's anywhere near 3 times bigger (the case isn't big enough, I suspect).

With different battery sizes, it would be hard to guess which would run longer.

I was mostly pointing out the design goals (of the Garmin).

It doesn't seem the Karoo can make noise at all. That doesn't seem like a good thing at all.

JohnJ80

Unfortunately though, at this point Garmin has become a follower (and not even a fast follower) in a market they essentially created/dominated. All of these newer entrants are demonstrating some significant subset of features that are substantially better than Garmin’s. Garmin appears to be concentrating on increasing sales of their support products without keeping up on the computer end. That strikes me as a dangerous game to play.

motosonic

I like the approach Hammerhead took with the Karoo versus what I have seen from garmin in the past. The Hammerhead is upgradeable and will get many software updates in the future and I like that about it.. that it's not going to be limited by it's software and will constantly evolve. Garmin likes to make products and then replace them with a better one in a year or so.. So, a year after you spend a small fortune you need to spend another small fortune for the better features because you have to buy another device. I'm willing to give Hammerhead a chance.

datlas 

FYI one of my friends and fellow cyclists just joined the Hammerhead Karoo team. He is a really good software guy, so not shilling but I suspect you may see better software from them in the future.

I am wondering if he will be able to get me an inside discount...stay tuned.

ksryder

Not disagreeing with you, but it's helpful to remember that cycling computers make up a very, very small percentage of Garmin's overall business. I know some folks who work for them (their headquarters is just a few miles down the road) and first off, Garmin is a very conservative company as far as releasing new products is concerned. Second, cycling computers make up a small percentage of their outdoor activities division (which includes things like dog training collars). The outdoor division is also a small percentage -- I think he said something like 15% or so.

Their biggest seller is, surprisingly, car navigation. I assumed it would be aviation and maritime, which are also big sellers, but apparently consumer car nav systems are still number one.

Bottom line is that I'm not surprised that cycling computers don't get top priority.

Seattle Forrest

What features does Wahoo have that are better than Garmin's? I thought the Wahoo units just read mph from your phone and put it on an auxiliary display?

pesty

I may be overestimating it’s battery size, but based on size and weight, it is likely a significant difference. To give you an idea, DC Rainmaker weight it at arround 185g... that’s more than my iPhone 6s inside a lifeproof case. iPhone 6s is listed at 146g, the case is listed at 35g. It’s only about 10g lighter than the 6s Plus which has a 2750mAh battery, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see 2000+ in the Karoo.

njkayaker

Wahoo's offering is at about the level of the 520 (the Bolt have better maps). It doesn't provide the features of the 1000/1030.

The Karoo doesn't appear to do anything at the moment (even for navigation). It might have promise but it's not "leading" anything.

ksryder

That was the old RFLKT computer, which they no longer make. The ELEMNT and the Bolt are stand-alone computers now, you just use the phone to set them up.

The feature list is similar to Garmin, depending on model, but the implementation is what is superior. It's super easy to set up and modify screens and settings on the Wahoo and my experience at least has been that the Wahoo is without the reliability problems some people report with Garmin. (I've never had a Garmin so I can't say from first hand experience on that point.)

ETA: I worded that poorly. My experience is that the Wahoo is reliable. I can't comment on Garmin's reliability other than anecdotal information.

pesty

The Element “Mini” uses the phone for GPS, but the Element and Element Bold both have onboard GPS. From the reviews I’ve ready, they are easier to read in bright sunlight and are easier to configure and setup as it’s done via smartphone app, not on device. Most reviews I’ve read give the Element (and bolt) the edge over Garmin with the exception of navigation. That’s where Garmin appears to be the hands down winner. I’m trying to decide between the 820 and the Element and that’s the delima I’m looking at right now.

njkayaker

The newer Edges appear to be improvements on earlier hardware and software. What they release is constrained by that legacy.

Wahoo and Hammerhead started "from scratch" (and aren't limited by legacy hardware/software).