I am using a wahoo elemnt bolt v2 myself and a happy camper so far. My wife occasionally joins me for bike trips. Currently she’s got an old-fashioned bike computer without navigation just for speed and distance. Its wheel-magnet sensor as well as the computer itself need new batteries so often and the process of changing those batteries is a huge annoyance every single time. And I am usually responsible for it. So I thought, I just just try to get a USB charged alternative for her. I started looking at Sigma Rox and Wahoo computers on used marketplaces in Switzerland. So far no luck, people try to sell them >100$. I think I should widen my horizon in order to discover a used device that actually sells at a fair price. But I don’t know a thing about Garmin models etc.
Which older models by Garmin (or other brands) are worth searching for and might be found for a price well under 100$ ?
Have you had a look at the Chinese units like a Magene C506 or Geoid CC600?
My wife has the Geoid and prefers it to her Garmin Edge130+. You can find them on Temu or AliExpress for less than €80 (sometimes €40 for the Geoid) and they have good colour screens, long lasting batteries and are quite easy to use. They are identical units just branded differently
Their nav is not great but then there aren’t many options under $100 that have decent nav. I have also heard good things about the iGPSSport units but have never tried one.
Bryton? I ran those for a few years, and they were great if you don’t want navigation.
If you want Navigation, stick with Garmin, Wahoo or Karoo. Garmin Explore 2 is good budget Garmin option.
The obvious answer (everyone is thinking it) is to very generously give her your bolt and buy an upgrade for yourself. Appreciate that’s a different budget though.
Both my Garmins batteries recently died and the price under Garmin’s “we don’t repair but exchange” program was the same as buying a new Garmin online, which is really taking the piss as a battery costs 20 bucks. So I bought new batteries but the Garmins were purposely designed to make battery changing as difficult as possible and the connectors didn’t work properly. Not having PCB soldering equipment, I decided not to support Garmin shareholders with a chf300-600 investment. Instead I’ve ordered an IGPSport BSC300T for just under chf80 on Aliexpress during Black Friday. Supposedly it is similar to a Garmin 830 but without on-device navigation calculation. The Magene 606 is pretty similar with larger screen, but some minor issues around nav. There are other models in the IGP and Magene ranges from basic lcd up to Garmin big screen models.
I didn’t buy a radar to go with it, but from what I can tell, the IGPSport Mini and Magene are the only Chinese radars to get close to Garmin’s and now Wahoo’s. While Garmin’s radars have class leading functionality, the effort is pretty lazy as it still uses USB mini connectors.
A detailed and objective review of Aliexpress bike computers from Ronan would be good, as the likes of DCRainmaker haven’t covered them. Could be they are rubbish, but I imagine that they are great value if you just need the core features. Will report back if people are interested.
Lezyne is another option.
I too would be wary of older used devices, because of failing batteries. I just had to stop using my original Wahoo ELEMNT because it wouldn’t hold a charge; yes, I found info on replacing the battery myself, but it looked fiddly and the batteries are anonymous, and I didn’t want to do that with a device I charge at home.
Thank you all, that’s very helpful for me! I’ll need some time to digest and pursue those cues.
I was going to recommend the minimalist but still very useful Garmin Edge 130, but I’m kinda shocked to see that it retails for $199. If you see one used, that might be good.
If you weren’t on the other side of the world I’d offer you my old Garmin 500 that’s been in a box for a while, works well, old USB port is a bit of a trouble, and it’s fairly slow to find satellites, but otherwise a great unit.
I’ve been using the Edge 130 for about three years, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to navigate with it. There’s no map, and you basically just follow a line with very low resolution (meaning it connects points that can be quite far apart). In the end, the deciding factor for buying something bigger was the battery life, which didn’t even last two hours in winter. So it’s maybe not the best option to buy used.
However, it could be quite suitable for tracking in warmer conditions.
I have a Bryton Rider 460. A hundred and eighty dollars Australian which is bugger all in every other currency (why I don’t know). Download maps from all the major map making thingies (Komoot etc), battery life hmm 40 hours or so, utterly reliable but not a Garmin, but I don’t care. Like a Nokia 3120 or a NAD 3120 for that matter. Basic and works.
I have a Lezyne Meg XL that you can have for the cost of shipping from Düsseldorf. It had 40ish hour battery life when I last used it, but it’s been a few years. Navigation is a bit fiddly but overall it works.
Hi @gerbils That’s a lovely offer! I 'll try to get in touch with you through the options in this forum. Cheers!
Pleased with my CHF 75 igpsport computer now after using it for a few weeks. For my use cases of basic rides, navigation, workouts indoors and out it is just as good as a chf 300+ Garmin Edge 8xx or 5xx.
There are a couple of things it does better and a few areas where it is not as good.
Worse
- creating routes on strava - extra step to pull the routes into igp’s app then push to the head unit. However uploads to Strava and TrainingPeaks automatically just fine.
- Limited ability to zoom out on the map (but seeing the whole of the country on a tiny screen of limited value)
- Touchscreen doesn’t work with my winter gloves (it has buttons you can use instead)
- Garmin clone connector works fine with Garmin mounts but loose on the mount that came with my Specialized bike.
- No ambient light sensor, but practically this is unimportant as no issue seeing the screen and no need to save battery as it lasts 2x+ longer than my longest ride ever
Different
- Navigation - calcs the route on the phone rather than on the head unit. Means no annoying calculating XX%. Then if you go off route you get a red arrow back to the route. Also possible to confuse the nav as it has no navigate to start feature. But on the other hand can change routes multiple times within one ride, which isn’t possible on Garmin.
Better
- Less than a a quarter of the price of the equivalent Garmin.
- usb c
- Longer battery life
- Faster startup, gps, responsive touchscreen , finding sensors
- Nav just tells you off course pretty fast, then does not recalculate continuously
- Better implementation of screen setup. Rather than choosing a layout and pressing items on the computer, which is super fiddly on Garmin, you do this in the igps phone app and can drag, drop, swap, and change stuff much more easily then sync to head unit.
- Visualizations: has some cool speedo/ mini area charts that show last 5 mins of data plus max and avg.
Interesting. I didn’t know or anyway didn’t remember about igpsport. I see they even have some pro sponsorships. I wonder why they don’t rate in the dialogue here and in the EC discord at all - only Garmin, Wahoo, Karoo, and now occasionally Coros.
I admittedly own a Magene C606, and it’s terrible to deal with. Firmware is befuddled to use, syncing routes was a nightmare, management app was a pain, and even configuring their first party rear light was a pain. I couldn’t even get it to pause and resume reliably when taking the ferry/metro without the gpx file tweaking out. I am sure there is great potential in the hardware, but the firmware is half baked. Navigation is useless.
I don’t recommend Karoo 2, mostly due to the hardware being utter shit and the charging port overheating issue (you can find cases in the Karoo subreddit and official forum of the device nearly melting down).
If my cycling computer is kaput and i need a basic means to record the ride, i just run opentracks (a free open source activity tracker on android, downloadable via fdroid) that spits out .gpx files after I end the ride.
Would one of you be comfortable using your phone, or a cheap phone bought for the purpose? You can use RideWithGPS, Strava, or some other app to make it a decent bike computer, and you don’t need cell service if you download maps and apps with WiFi.
For my part: while I have friends who ride with an iPhone on their handlebar, it’s not something I’d want to do, even with a good mount. For me, the issue is not the software - there are various options, as you write - it’s the hardware. iPhones/smartphones are big; relatively fragile; the battery capacity really isn’t designed for the screen to be on constantly; and the screen can be hard to read, depending on the light conditions. None of those things are true of my Coros Dura, nor of my prior OG Wahoo ELEMNT.
Agree. A phone wouldn’t be my first choice, but for occasional use as stated it might be a reasonable option.
FWIW, I have an Edge Explore 2 which works well if you want mapping and don’t care about the added features of the 550/850/1050.