UKH

Im gonna buy one next week, the full kit with the speed/HR/cadence. I’m venturing further and further afield these days and like the idea of plotting a route at home then following it on the bike. Yes I can do that with my phone etc but the handlebars can become cluttered with lights and the cateye computer I have now. I do record my rides on strava for my own amusement but I’m not competitive at all. This is done by phone but Id prefer not to rely on the phone battery seeing me through a long day.

Yes I know there is loads of info out there and I have been doing my own research however, I value the real world experiences of the UKC collective.

I wear reading glasses but obviously not on the bike. I can barely see some of the smaller digits on the cateye, how does the display on the garmin look for simarly reading glasses wearers? 

Are the speed/cadence sensors easy to swap on to my winter bike or is it best to buy  another set for that bike? how many of these sensors can you pair with the one head unit? (have some open pros with cheap tyres that I use on the rollers, I’d want speed/distance recording while on the rollers too)

Battery life in the real world?

Any other tips and tricks, things to avoid etc etc all welcome

Thanks in anticipation!

Buy a Wahoo. The only thing a Garmin does better is having a map you can move around , the Wahoo zooms in and out of your position. apart from that the Wahoo is better and more reliable in every way.

My 820 will only upload via bluetooth when it feels like it. Utterly unpredictable. 

I have an 820. I also have a wahoo bolt. I bought the wahoo after 2 years of wanting to throw the 820 in the bushes.

I mainly use my bike GPS for following routes - when you select a route you've uploaded on the 820 you'll then be twidlly your thumbs for 10-15 minutes on a100km ride. And given it crashes quite frequently, you'll probably be freezing your tits off on a ride somewhere for the same 10 minutes. It's also quite hard to see the route on the screen - invariably the line it plots is the same colour as a road type so it's hard to work out which is which.

The other things that's rubbish is the battery life. Its meant to be 15 hours, but i found it ran out after 6 hours max - not great if you're doing a 100 mile sportive.

On the other hand the wahoo is amazing. The map is super clear as is the route. The route displays instantly upon selection and the ability set the thing up via your phone is soooo much nicer than the garmin. It all 'just works'. The battery also seems to last forever - the last 100 mile ride i did only used 40% of the battery. And that was with the backlight on.

I could go on for pages about how annoying the 820 is if required and how good the wahoo is. The only thing that i can think of thats annoying is that you can't scroll around the screen on the wahoo. In practice this hasn't really caused an issue when out on a ride - worse case pull out your phone if you come across a road thats closed and you can't follow your nose around it.

PS. LIke earlybird the garmin doesn't always like uploading via wifi. WIth garmin you get the feeling you're the beta tester.

PPS. If anyone wants a garmin 820 with a battery that lasts about 4 hours for 100 quid, give me a yell. After my stunning review i'm sure someone will bite my arm off lol

One final point - the wahoo is also cheaper.

Thanks for the input and the other posters too. I’m pleased I asked here now, this is not what I’d expect of a Garmin. I am open to a Wahoo and others, it just appeared that the 820 fitted what I can justify paying for a device that does what I want, looks like i’ll be spending the weekend looking at alternatives!

Wahoo bolt for me too. Works perfectly with my Garmin HR and Cadence sensors that I picked up cheap. Sensors are dead easy to move - basically on rubber bands on the hub and crank. Also works perfectly with a Bryton HR I picked up cheap. Not sure I have a single bad work for the bolt. Lads I ride with are forever moaning about Garmin.

I've got a Garmin 810. When it works it's great, and when it doesn't....grrr

Main problem I've had is frequent crashes when using it abroad - especially in Belgium. Not sure if the problem comes from the maps I have loaded, but when I contacted Garmin they weren't at all interested in debugging, merely advising me to reset the device. Which of course worked fine until my next trip to Belgium, a year later. Has occasionally crashed in the UK, when following a route, but not recently (tempting fate there!). And I could live with the occasional crash as long as the data was saved, but lost data really annoys me.

Unfortunately maps are the main reason for having a Garmin - from what I have seen of my mates, the wahoo is B&W and not much detail, I like the fact that I can have the OS maps for the whole country. I usually plan my routes, but don't always stick to the plan. But actually navigating on the hoof using the Garmin isn't as easy as it could be, so often you find yourself having to get your phone out and using that instead.

Does seem a bit hit and miss as to whether the auto-upload via bluetooth works - sometimes it does, sometime you have to reboot it first. And the Garmin App is always asking me for permission to connect - why can it store that info. There is so much more that could be done to improve it useability - the App is pretty rubbish - but at the same time it's so much better than the sort of bike computers we were all using just 5 or 6 years ago !  

I had 820 for some time. It's so shit for navigation. Map is lagging and controls are very poor. If you plotted a route and sticking to it it may do the job. Unless it starts to struggle to render map as you cycle. Happens very often in cities with a lot of features on the map. It looks like you cycle out of the map to white canvas while it tries to render it. It you want to looks around by dragging map, to find a cafe for example, it takes couple of seconds to move map, another dozen to render and so on and on.

Another bad thing is battery life. With navigation you normally get 4 - 6 hours of it.

After using it for couple of months and few thousands of kilometers I went back to navigate with my phone. Same battery life, but at least big screen and responsive interface.

Sorry to side-track the thread a bit, but quick question for the Bolt folks: What do you upload/download your rides to? Do you still use the Garmin web site?

I have a Garmin Edge 25 (teeny thing, no maps) and was wondering about a Bolt, but it'd be a pain to get all my rides (and runs) out of Garmin Connect and into something else.

You can link your Wahoo to various sites. Mine is linked to Ride with GPS and strava. All I have to do is press sync and it uploads any routes made in strava or ride with gps automatically, it will also delete any you've removed.  It also automatically uploads rides when it's on it's known wifi or you can do it anytime with the app via 4g.  I've never had a 'bad' download with Wahoo and have navigated rides up to 1000km with no issues whatsoever.

Got both a Garmin and the Wahoo. Agree with others the Wahoo is much better/more reliable than the Garmin. I bought the Elemnt because it has a larger screen and is easier for the 63 year old me to see. I think the font size varies with how many fields you put on a screen. However, I can easily read the default.

Adjusting what fields go on the screen is very easy using the app. Much better than the Garmin touch screen. The buttons are quite stiff, but that's an advantage as they don't get accidentally pressed in your pocket/rucksack.

Thanks for those thoughts, I’m switching the object of my desire now after reading many reviews on the 820 vs element. Wouldn’t have done it without this thread, Think I was blinded by hype, I mean, Colour screen vs B&W? Has to be the colour screen right? not so it seems!

Yep - the b&w screen is much clearer and easier to see in bright sunlight than the garmin.

Another very happy Elemnt bolt user here. 

Only thing I'd add is that IMO the map function on the Bolt is brilliant. Don't need colours or topographical features you just need the route and the road layout. And it does that. You zoom in and out as needed with the arrow keys. 

Do you ever go off-road?

I have a Garmin 800 and I had a. Wahoo Elemnt. 

The wahoo was rubbish  The app killed my phone battery whether I was using the unit or not, from easily 2 days to around 7 hours. Deleted the app, back to 2 days.

The map is useless if you deviate from your route, when you zoom out you lose all detail and you can't pan around so you can't find your way back to your route again. Also no contours and navigation features, most off road paths missing, just pointless. Gradients take several minutes to update, it still shows me going uphill when I've completed the climb, gone down the other side and I'm on the flat. Useless. 

Yes, it's easy to set up but that's all that's going for it. I bought it expecting to sell the Garmin. But if you actually want to navigate with it - the whole point of a GPS computer, then the Garmin is so much better. 

After all that, if you do decide you’d still like an 820… https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/for_sale+wanted/garmin_820_99-691549

Might be a good opportunity to try one out without paying full price.

Can anyone who owns a Bolt say whether the sensor bundle is worth it? As a newbie/punter do I really need to know my cadence? I have read the GPS can handle your speed pretty well so no need for the hub sensor, and I have never taken any notice of my heart rate before after years of running, does it really offer much on the bike?

The GPS does speed but if there's really thick cloud, dense woodland or even tall buildings the GPS can drop out momentarily and affect readings. Controlling heart rate is easier on a bike and you may find the heart rate monitor more useful than when running. I probably look at cadence as much as I look at speed or heart rate, certainly on long climbs it's good to get into a rythym and spin along at a good sustainable cadence. Of course we don't need any of these things to go for a bike ride so your shout but don't dismiss yourself as a newbie - you don't stay one for long.

Thx for that, I guess I will go for the bundle, in for a penny, in for £50...

On both the 820 and bolt I found the GPS speed correct over distance, but instantaneously wrong when under trees or next to large buildings.  This can be quite annoying as you can be pushing yourself, look down and go ''oh I pretty certain I'm going faster than that" meaning you don't trust it. Suffice to say I started off with the speed sensor for one of my bikes and now I also have one on my commuter. The cadence sensor is less useful but k guess worth having if you are targeting your cadence. 

I find the cadence read out really helpful, for years i’ve been grinding away too slowly. Speed will work for me when on the rollers in the garage 

Wahoo elemnt bolt arrived from Wiggle today! 

Thanks to all for helping me make the choice 

Can you please do a review once you have had a chance to use it in anger?

Lookin to get a 2nd GPS and would like to move away from garmin if I can, this looks possible.

Thanks 

certainly will! There are actually loads of reviews on youtube as I’ve watched many myself but I’ll post my thoughts too.

Got a couple of routes in mind for next week that’ll test the gps capabilities of the bolt so looking forward to using it