cycling
15. Januar, 21:39 Uhr
**Background:** I was a bike commuter/recreational cyclist most of my life, but stopped riding when I began working from home a few years back, ironically upon moving to Portland, OR- one of the most bike-friendly cities on Earth. I realized during the pandemic how much I missed riding, and have started training for my first century (unsupported). I'm mostly training indoors on a dumb trainer, and as I get closer to my goal, am increasing my outdoor rides.
Given how out of shape I was/am, a significant portion of my training is based around heart rate zones. I picked up a speed/cadence combo sensor and a heart rate monitor, and was using them with my Garmin watch, but it's a bit hard to read when mounted on a handlebar, and loses more than 10% battery per hour, which doesn't leave a ton of buffer when you're as slow as me and trying to put in lots of miles. So I tried a bunch of different stuff until I found something I like.
I think that makes me more or less representative of the budget computer shopper. Interested in more data than you get from an oldschool wired speed + distance sensor, but not really in the market for Strava Live notifications, advanced analytics, or the latest, best training prompts and navigation options. I neither have nor want a power meter, or smart tail lights, or radar. Indoors, my interval training is mostly spin bike workouts, and outdoors I don't need a lot of prompting to work on my heart rate goals.
**GADGETS:** All of the devices I checked out picked up and kept GPS signal fairly quickly, though reviews on this vary. Also, onboard navigation is more or less straight out the window. The very few options that purport to offer navigation at these price points are doing breadcrumb trails that are IMO useless. By contrast, there are myriad mobile navigation apps that will provide turn-by-turn audio prompts. I managed to get around without computer navigation for decades and am mostly on familiar roads and bike paths, so feel good about this call. If you want decent navigation on the computer itself it's worth paying the extra money for a real on-board mapping device. Otherwise, I've summarized some phone-based nav options. I also didn't test phone notifications, this simply isn't something I want on a ride, and I already get them on my watch if I don't remember to set do not disturb. That said, I am a little curious whether any of the nav apps can send turns as regular notifications to kind of fake that functionality. Need to experiment.
**Xoss G+ (\~$40):** Manufacturer Xing Zhe is apparently a Strava competitor that's very popular in China. Their first computer, the Sprint, looked good on paper but got really poor reviews. The G+ is supposed to be a bit simpler. It has preset data fields, which show everything I care about and are easy to page through. The device is easy to set up, paired quickly and easily to my generic sensors, and worked well. Use on the bike is intuitive, mostly because there isn't much to do other than start, stop, and page through screens. Mount is Garmin-compatible, it comes with a rubber band mount which is a little annoying because the release pressure is high enough that the rubber bands twist while trying to get it out. The backlight options are limited, I believe it's on, off, or 10 seconds from button press. The app doesn't do much except let you connect to Strava/TrainingPeaks and theoretically update firmware. Strava sync worked perfectly every time. The beep is practically inaudible. I would have ended my search here except that it doesn't support indoor training! ~~Speed and~~ distance ~~are~~ is *only* calculated via GPS, even when paired with sensors. On the trainer with auto-pause enabled, it shows ~~zero speed,~~ zero distance, zero elapsed time.
**Bryton Rider 15 (\~$75):** Bryton has a little bit of attention for having paid a pro team to use a couple of their devices, while still focusing primarily on the budget side of the market. The Rider 15 is their second-cheapest model, and is advertised as "your first GPS computer." The data fields are customizable-ish, you have your choice of multiple screens in a 3-field or 4-field layout, but you can only put certain data in certain fields, e.g. in a 4-field layout HR & cadence (or average/max of those) must be at the top, and speed (or max speed) must be in the middle. Setup and sensor pairing was easy. I found myself initiating Strava sync from the phone, but not sure if that was my own impatience or a connectivity issue. All of the reviews talk about the weird button placement, with the power/start/stop button and menu button on the back of the device, but I didn't find it to be an issue. What was tricky was that it purports to auto-sense the start/end of a ride, but what it did for me when starting to move without initiating a ride was flash something along the lines of "Riding?" and then flash some random message ("128 hours"). I lost one ride before figuring out which button I needed to press to confirm ride start (the power button), although in Bryton's defense there is an icon on the screen when it's recording. Came with a rubber band mount, that worked fine, and also worked in my generic Garmin type mount. For some reason I couldn't get the backlight to turn off no matter where I was or what time of day it was, but battery life was still good. The app is basic, offering screen configuration, and some data metrics on past rides (all in one hard-to-read composite graph) although not much in the way of trends other than how much you've ridden total. The data captured is solid, though, includes temperature, incline and elevation, and can be viewed through Strava, Golden Cheetah, or Garmin (with separate app, more on this later). If the display options are to your liking, may be a good choice, however I decided I wanted to be able to see time, distance, heart rate zone and cadence all on one screen.
**Stages L10 ($75):** This one is a bit of an anomaly, in that it's a minor upgrade to the original Stages Dash, circa 2013. As a power meter company, they mostly put it out to take advantage of the increased data throughput of Bluetooth, which ANT systems couldn't match. It was only recently marked down from $150, and the company is very clearly discontinuing it, with little mention anywhere in their marketing materials. /u/dcrainmaker has reviewed it positively and recommended it as a budget purchase in the Winter 2020/2021 buyer guide. In theory, it's a no-brainer: nearly infinite configurability with up to 16 data fields, a super-advanced website powered by Today's Plan that lets you do far more analysis and planning than I could even wrap my head around, uploading workouts to the device that will then prompt you as you ride, all kinds of cool features... My problem was mostly that I couldn't get any of it to work properly. To set it up you need to access the website, the PC software, and, if you want it to sync wirelessly, the mobile app. At first, it was forgetting all of my settings and sensors every time I sync'ed. After multiple factory resets, deleting my account and starting over, I somehow got the sensors to stick but never managed to convince it I wasn't 156 pounds and living in the Alaska time zone. Oftentimes the mobile app and website would simply show blank or default options and would refuse to be changed. The PC app thrashes the hard drive constantly when it's running, even if you tell it to ignore hard disks, endlessly looking for workout files. At times it used up to 20% of my computer's resources. After a ride it would successfully sync to the mobile app and Strava about once every ten rides, at which point Strava would report all those rides as having happened at the time of the sync. The rest of the time it would do nothing, or freeze, requiring hard reset. I wanted to like this thing so bad, but never got those issues resolved. When I finally heard back from Stages, ten days after my support request, they said to try resetting through the website each time it misbehaved and that "it's a glitch for now." In googling, I found an old tech support board where these issues were reported back in 2019, with no resolution, so I'm not convinced that updates will be forthcoming. Separately, Stages uses a proprietary mount that is stiff as hell, and there are no generic options available- if you want something other than their stumpy out front mount, you'll need to buy it from them for $40. This thing could have been amazing, but the pieces just didn't work together for me. Perhaps of note, it does offer breadcrumb navigation, but only on a dedicated screen, so if you like looking at an arrow on a line, that's, y'know, here and does seem to work. It doesn't tell you how to get to a route or how to get back if you're off it, just an arrow showing you, and the line where you should be.
If this is the longest review, it's because I tried every damn option on all four necessary platforms, because I really, really wanted to like it and hope it could work, somehow, for someone. For me I didn't and it didn't.
**Bryton Rider 320 (\~$120):** At this point I was thinking I might just stick with a phone app or my Garmin watch, but two things changed my mind, and I ended up buying and keeping this. First, it offers *most* of the screen configurability of the Stages unit with the simplicity of use/sync of the Rider 15. I don't need the extreme analysis of Today's Plan, and am happy looking at my progress on Strava or whatever, but was thinking about maybe paying the extra bucks to just get a Garmin unit so I could centralize all of my fitness activity (watch + computer) in Garmin Connect. But second, it turns out there are apps that will sync the Bryton data to Garmin seamlessly, so it appears as just another ride! The Bryton app still leaves a lot to be desired, but now I don't need it for anything but initial setup and sync. So I have a computer that shows the information I want, how I want, the information appears in Garmin Connect and Strava, and if I decide at some point to get fancier with my analysis, I can always fire up Golden Cheetah.
**Also considered:** After the Xoss disappointment, I reached out to both CooSpo and CycPlus, and both confirmed that their devices don't work on indoor trainers. The LeZyne options in this general price range seem to exist in a weird purgatory where if I really cared about the features they offered, I'd kick in a few extra bucks for the Garmin 520 Plus, but otherwise I'd rather save some money. The Bryton Rider 420 isn't much more expensive ($150), and offers breadcrumb and turn-by-turn nav. The Garmin 130 is a little more expensive than that ($189) does pretty much all the same things, with the added bonus of being part of the much more popular and better-supported Garmin ecosystem.
**APPS:** Realistically, if you're not going on insane length rides, Bluetooth sensors and a handlebar phone mount, possibly with a supplemental battery power bank along for the ride, is an option to seriously consider, as is what I'm doing- a cheap computer paired with phone nav. I tried close to a dozen mobile apps, and didn't really note the immediate rejects, but here are the ones that stood out:
**Wahoo:** You don't need anything Wahoo to run the Wahoo Fitness app, which lets you configure your display screens however you want, has a map showing where you are, lets you set up multiple profiles for different activities (indoor/outdoor) or different bikes, and an easy to use interface to launch a music player. It has easy to read per-ride analysis, and just sort of does all the things you expect it to in ways you would think, including syncing to a zillion services, Strava Live, even MyFitnessPal which nothing else seems to support directly. The only thing to be aware of is while it can pair to a generic HRM, you have to click the button to connect a "Wahoo Tickr" to get to that option. If there's a way to incorporate routes or workouts, I haven't found it yet. The only major downside is that it uses a bright white screen and there is no dimming or auto-off feature, so battery drain is quite high.
**Velodash:** This one is still a bit rough around the edges, and is the rider app component of a system intended for races and group rides. Apparently the company has done some big rides in Asia, and seems to be actively trying to develop it further. It has a nice UI and easy to use mapping software with real navigation, although it didn't always make the best automatic choices about bike-friendly roads vs. highways. Ride analysis is simple and clear. An auto-dim feature helps reduce battery burn.At first I did have an issue where the speed wasn't reported correctly for my tire size, but that seems to have been corrected. The biggest downsides are that it doesn't sync with anything else, and it's clearly intended for social and group use, but few people are using it in America, so there's not much in the way of shared routes (although it will import GPX files easily). Oh, they don't appear to have any support for private rides/geofenced privacy.
**CatEye:** Boy, this app sucks. To look at it, it seems like it can/should handle sensors, analysis, sync, and navigation, but it just crashes constantly, they invented their own UI that could not be less usable, and it would randomly throw errors in what I assume was Mandarin and then just crash. I feel great pity for people running CatEye computers who don't have a choice but to use it, and the reviews in the app store suggest they feel the same way.
**Komoot:** Awesome navigation app that will try to pick routes for you based not only on the fact that you're riding a bike, but what style of riding you're doing. Turn-by-turn audio prompts are clear. Free maps for your geographic region, and reasonably priced world maps. I don't think it actually connects to or displays any kind of external data like speed, heart rate, etc., or syncs outbound with anything else, though. I currently use this or Google Maps to get me where I'm going, while using the computer for actual tracking and display. Will work with external GPX files although every one I sent it complained had to be "corrected" before use.
**RideWithGPS:** Another great navigation app, this one \*does\* connect to Bluetooth sensors, syncs with other apps, shows good breakdowns of past workouts, and is generally highly usable. Not a lot of data field customization, and like the Wahoo app doesn't have much in the way of screen/battery management. The major downside here is that there is a weird overlapping constellation of stuff you can do for free in the app, stuff you can do for free on the website, and stuff you have to pay either six or ten dollars a month for. Even they don't seem to be clear on what's what, e.g. indoor training workout analysis is supposed to be a premium feature, but I have no problem seeing the breakdowns for indoor rides I did using other platforms that synced back to RideWithGPS. If I were going to use a phone as my computer, $50/year wouldn't be a bad deal for a good display and bike-specific turn-by-turn navigation. Even if you're not using it on rides, it's a great platform for finding, creating, and exporting routes.
**SECRET SAUCE: Third-Party sync apps.** Once upon a time, I had my various fitness apps syncing to Endomondo, which I never actually used, but which glued them all together and got everything to show up everywhere else. Endomondo is now dead, but there are a bunch more options that can perform this function. I get the sense that some of these may be violating various API TOS terms, and so it may be a situation where the best option changes over time. Current options include Tapiriik (Currently no upload to Garmin), SyncMyTracks, and FitnessSync.
So, that's some stuff I looked into. If I'd taken the time I spent working on this doing my actual job, I would have billed enough to buy an Edge 1030 *and* a decent used bike to mount it to. But maybe this will be of interest to someone, and I work for myself, so no worries. I'm sure there are more factors and things I got wrong, but I found the right choice for my taste, and had fun exploring. I don't often buy things for myself, and I'm pretty sure my bike is now ready to take me all the way through this century ride and onward to whatever comes next.
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