What is the current favourite GPS?

[Hot Flatus]

That is what happens if you use a .tcx file

[Sea of vapours]

Do any of these devices recommended here allow you to follow a route but without the navigation function? Effectively just a moving map but with the route that has been downloaded to the device displayed on it.

On a Wahoo Roam - and presumably the other ones - you can turn off 'turn by turn directions', which would leave you with just a map showing your position and the line of the route. The 'line' is actually chevrons, showing the next 3km of the route.

[quixoticgeek]

Do any of these devices recommended here allow you to follow a route but without the navigation function? Effectively just a moving map but with the route that has been downloaded to the device displayed on it.

That is the default way a wahoo works. At least for me. If I understand correctly what you are suggesting.

I get a line on the screen, a you are hear arrow, and the map. I follow the line. If I go off the line, it beeps. That's it. It's all I want from a GPS.

J

[quixoticgeek]

Do any of these devices recommended here allow you to follow a route but without the navigation function? Effectively just a moving map but with the route that has been downloaded to the device displayed on it.

That is the default way a wahoo works. At least for me. If I understand correctly what you are suggesting.

I get a line on the screen, a you are here arrow, and the map. I follow the line. If I go off the line, it beeps. That's it. It's all I want from a GPS.

J

[Russell]

That's all good chaps, thank you.  I must admit that I would struggle with the £500+ for a Garmin Edge 1030 and would have a bit of a struggle with £360 for a Hammerhead Karoo.  The Wahoo Element Roam is cheaper but looks to be quite small - hmm!

[freeflow]

Or you could do some research on one of these


https://www.amazon.co.uk/10000mAh-OUKITEL-K15-Smartphone-Fingerprint-Black/dp/B09J8BQ6QZ/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2FE9IG943O9U1&keywords=mobile+phone+large+battery&qid=1652193229&sprefix=mobile+phone+large+battery%2Caps%2C58&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExUjIwMFVHUEtKVFYzJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNzgwMDE5M1FMV1o5TFJWNzFPSSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwODM5MDU3MTAyS0ZWSEFZSkFLVyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

[hatler]

That's all good chaps, thank you.  I must admit that I would struggle with the £500+ for a Garmin Edge 1030 and would have a bit of a struggle with £360 for a Hammerhead Karoo.  The Wahoo Element Roam is cheaper but looks to be quite small - hmm!

Where are you ?  Happy for you to pop round to SW London to eye up a Roam if you'd like to.

[trundle]

To add to this - I've used a Wahoo for some time, but tried a Garmin Edge 530 very recently.

With middle aged eyes, the Wahoo is much clearer. The moving map is very high contrast, using simple colours and a hatched track. I always feel confident I know where I am, and what turn I need to take next, no matter the light conditions.

The Edge 530 moving map was really disappointing. The colours were not as high contrast as the wahoo, the track was a colour that was too close to the normal road colour, and the auto-brightness was always too dim to conserve battery. I tried the unit in different positions (stem, forward) and at maximum brightness - but there were always light conditions that made it hard to see. For middle aged eyes I suspect the 1030 is better - but it is much more money.

In 5 years I've had two problems with Wahoo units - but the tech support from Wahoo was excellent: Quick responses with good technical knowledge.

I'm coming across as a bit of a fan-boi - but I was really disappointed with the Garmin Edge. Garmin is a great company, and their car, motorbike, and boat units are fantastic: But I couldn't believe how hard the navigation display was to read on the Edge 530.

[hatler]

I am very impressed with the clarity of the Roam, even when viewed in bright mid-Summer sunshine from an adjacent bike.

[Russell]

Or you could do some research on one of these


https://www.amazon.co.uk/10000mAh-OUKITEL-K15-Smartphone-Fingerprint-Black/dp/B09J8BQ6QZ/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2FE9IG943O9U1&keywords=mobile+phone+large+battery&qid=1652193229&sprefix=mobile+phone+large+battery%2Caps%2C58&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExUjIwMFVHUEtKVFYzJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNzgwMDE5M1FMV1o5TFJWNzFPSSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwODM5MDU3MTAyS0ZWSEFZSkFLVyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

A ruggedised phone, yes I have considered one to run OutdoorActive and if the app was just a little better, a little less flakey then that is a route I would seriously consider.

Where are you ?  Happy for you to pop round to SW London to eye up a Roam if you'd like to.

Thanks for the offer, we are not a million miles from SW London so that is entirely feasible and a very good idea but not until July.

I've just seen a Bryton Rider S800 advertised, for some reason it piqued my interest.

[Canardly]

Is there a  GPS model which has a blue tooth audio output? I have tried a phone using google maps with a Rokpod blue tooth speaker in a jersey pocket and it works really well. My old Extrex Vista graphics are nigh on impossible to read at any speed.

[Lightning Phil]

I've just seen a Bryton Rider S800 advertised, for some reason it piqued my interest.

That interestingly advertises a memory in pixel technology which means only pixels that need to be refreshed get refreshed. Claimed 36 hours when navigating using map and longer on other screens.

[drossall]

That battery life would be more like it!

[Sergeant Pluck]

I am very impressed with the clarity of the Roam, even when viewed in bright mid-Summer sunshine from an adjacent bike.

Did you have the original Elemnt before getting the Roam? If so how big a leap (by the pitiful standards of bike GPSs) was it in terms of legibility for following routes and tracks?

Is there a  GPS model which has a blue tooth audio output? I have tried a phone using google maps with a Rokpod blue tooth speaker in a jersey pocket and it works really well. My old Extrex Vista graphics are nigh on impossible to read at any speed.

It's another area in which these things just haven’t developed. I do still sometimes wonder if phone + powerbank would just be a better solution.

The temptation to just have Google directions or whatever directly into my ears (in my case, through hearing aids) is strong. I do this anyway sometimes (phone in bar bag) and it’s helpful even when following my planned route on the Elemnt forces it to reroute.

There are parallels with hearing aids I think in that recently increased power requirements for HAs have led to a shift from non-rechargeable single use cells to rechargeable. The situation seems to be that trying to eke out limited battery capacity is compromising every bike GPS. Shite screens, funny maps, strange inability to do what other forms of GPSphones  have been doing for years. And can’t even do things like send voice directions via Bluetooth.

I think we’d be better served if Garmin and co provided:
1. head unit with GPS, wifi, bluetooth, mobile data, all the stuff a phone can do + a proper GPS with no dependence on mobile data or any off-device processing. A light slim flat device with a screen on it.
2. separate power bank +/- dynamo charging etc of one’s own choosing, according to planned use / charging availability.

[hatler]

I am very impressed with the clarity of the Roam, even when viewed in bright mid-Summer sunshine from an adjacent bike.

Did you have the original Elemnt before getting the Roam? If so how big a leap (by the pitiful standards of bike GPSs) was it in terms of legibility for following routes and tracks?

No, sorry, we went straight from the SatMap Active 10 (really not very good in direct sunlight) to the Roam.

As offered above, I'm more than happy to show you one of the Roams we have (three at the moment).

[Lightning Phil]

Note there is now a Bolt2 which has elements of colour, on device rerouting, and usb-c charging. I don’t have the device I’ve just seen that it’s been updated from the original version.

[toontra]

Note there is now a Bolt2 which has elements of colour, on device rerouting, and usb-c charging. I don’t have the device I’ve just seen that it’s been updated from the original version.

The V2 has a few extras.  One I discovered by accident on a recent audax* is "summit" - when looking at the elevation profile (on either the climbing page or, in my case, if added to the bottom of the map page) it shows a colour-coded profile of what's ahead - yellow/orange/red/brown in ascending order of gradient.  I found it really handy.

There are also colour-coded fields for HR and power if you use those devices.  You can see at a glance what zone you're in without having to read the actual numbers.  Colour on the map page is also really useful.

* On the same audax I set up a custom alert for each control (using distances on cue sheet).  This was the first audax where i didn't miss an info control 

[Kim]

I think we’d be better served if Garmin and co provided:
1. head unit with GPS, wifi, bluetooth, mobile data, all the stuff a phone can do + a proper GPS with no dependence on mobile data or any off-device processing. A light slim flat device with a screen on it.

That's basically a phone, though.  Maybe a waterproof phone with custom software, a sensible form factor and a decent mounting system, but the last thing Garmin want to do is develop a piece of software that makes most of their products obsolete.  (Plus, let's be realistic - Garmin don't exactly have a good track record for software.)

That said, once you're powering a device with battery packs or dynamo chargers because it has a non-swappable battery, you're well into might-as-well-use-a-phone territory already.

I suspect the eTrex's AA-powered niche will outlive that of the Edge series, which will be encroached on by rugged phones with long battery life from one end and smart watches from the other.  There's also a good possibility that e-bike consoles will start to gobble up a decent chunk of the cycle GPS market (when you've got hundreds of watt-hours to play with, why not run a full OS and do navigation with voice-prompts, music playing, advanced analysis, etc?)

[chrisbainbridge]

Note there is now a Bolt2 which has elements of colour, on device rerouting, and usb-c charging. I don’t have the device I’ve just seen that it’s been updated from the original version.

The V2 has a few extras.  One I discovered by accident on a recent audax* is "summit" - when looking at the elevation profile (on either the climbing page or, in my case, if added to the bottom of the map page) it shows a colour-coded profile of what's ahead - yellow/orange/red/brown in ascending order of gradient.  I found it really handy.

There are also colour-coded fields for HR and power if you use those devices.  You can see at a glance what zone you're in without having to read the actual numbers.  Colour on the map page is also really useful.

* On the same audax I set up a custom alert for each control (using distances on cue sheet).  This was the first audax where i didn't miss an info control 

I think this was a recent OTA software update.

[cycleman]

The problem with Google maps cycle routing is the tendency to use perfectly bad off road routes when perfectly good lanes are available. Also it likes to send you though the centre of every big town and city it can find. With all the lanes in Kent it preferred to route me down the a2 . The garmin touring at least trys to be more cycle friendly 

[Kim]

Yeah, don't use Google Maps for route planning.  I reckon https://cycle.travel/ has one of the best algorithms for quantifying "nice road to cycle on"^[1], but at this point it's only a website (you can of course download a route from it for your GPS).  https://www.cyclestreets.net/ has an app, which might be reasonable, though it does seem a bit enthusiastic about cyclepaths.


_{[1] It seems to do the right thing with hills, where it'll take you up the sufficiently pretty ones, rather than completely ignoring gradient in a bid to avoid motor traffic, or sending you down horrible dual cabbageways in a bid to avoid climbing.}

[Cudzoziemiec]

Note there is now a Bolt2 which has elements of colour, on device rerouting, and usb-c charging. I don’t have the device I’ve just seen that it’s been updated from the original version.

The V2 has a few extras.  One I discovered by accident on a recent audax* is "summit" - when looking at the elevation profile (on either the climbing page or, in my case, if added to the bottom of the map page) it shows a colour-coded profile of what's ahead - yellow/orange/red/brown in ascending order of gradient.  I found it really handy.

How does it decide what's a summit? I find the summits marked on the Etrex basemap mostly a distraction, as they're often no more than a metre above the next low point.

[toontra]

How does it decide what's a summit?

I presume it draws data from pre-planned routes (I use RWGPS). Very accurate on the couple of times I've tried it so far, although it does miss very short/sharp variations.

[quixoticgeek]

It's another area in which these things just haven’t developed. I do still sometimes wonder if phone + powerbank would just be a better solution.

Why? phones have an awful interface for use on a bike. The moment it rains you're fucked. Same with any touch screen head unit.

J

[Kim]

The moment it rains you're fucked. Same with any touch screen head unit.

To be fair, resistive touchscreens (eg. on the Garmin Dakota) work fine in the wet.  Or if not fine, they work as well as they work in the dry.

I still prefer buttons (though have a glove hate relationship with the awkward joystick of the eTrex).  Not least because the screen doesn't end up looking like it's been used by a toddler.