Bike computer recommendations

[aret...@gmail.com]

Hi all!

In preparation for longer rides this summer, I'm finally looking to upgrade from my trusty Wahoo Element Bolt v1 and have been looking at the Garmin 1050 (which I can get at 20% off) as well as the Coros Dura. Obviously these are very different beasts at different price points and folks have different preferences, but I was hoping to get some thoughts from folks who've used either. 

I already have some integration with the Garmin ecosystem (HRM & FR265) but am not locked-in by any means.

Thanks!

Aaron

[Steve Ciccarelli]

Aaron,

I've used a Bolt and briefly owned a Garmin years ago but frankly, I simply use my phone these days.  I really disliked the interface I had to go through to download routes and upload results.  Now I just run RWGPS on my phone and that's it.

I have a powerbank it's plugged into when on the road and I get audio cues and warnings when I'm off route. I can listen to music when I'm not around others and I'm going to carry the thing with me regardless so there's not really any additional weight beyond the mount and power bank.  The only thing I am missing is the current grade I'm climbing, but I can live without that statistic in the moment.  Keeping the screen off but still having audio cues, a 20k mAh power bank can last 400k.  All for about 6oz of weight. I'll be testing one of the newer lightweight 50k power banks on the brevets in April.

I do find I need to be protective of the cable connection when it's raining. I don't have a perfect solution for that yet.

My $0.02.

Steve

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[Bradley Brooks]

I am looking at the Garmin Edge 1050 Solar so I do not have to worry so much about battery running low. However, it is pricy!

[Bill Gobie]

My Roam v2 has been pretty good, more so recently with firmware updates. But frankly if it dies I will probably switch to the RwGPS phone app.

Bill

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[Aaron Bell]

Thanks all! Sounds like I can't really go wrong. I'll stop by an REI and check them out to see which feels best.

Cheers

Aaron

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[Peter Cousseau]

My 2 cents: I’ve really been enjoying my Coros Dura (https://coros.com/dura)

Its spec calls out 120 hr battery life.

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[Kristi Harrington]

I really like my Hammerhead Karoo. IMO its displays is very nice and colorful, and they recently added an app so sending routes to the device from RWGPS is seamless (this feature was previously not available)

Kristi

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 2, 2026, at 7:15 AM, Peter Cousseau <peter.c...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Hahn Rossman]

Aaron-

I really like the Wahoo roam. Using buttons instead of touch screen makes it a lot more reliable in drizzle or wearing gloves. 

Hahn Rossman

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[Paul Murray]

Can't go wrong with a cue sheet printed on waterproof paper!  :D One drawback, it also doesn't have the grade currently climbing either.

[Steve Ciccarelli]

I'll attest to the annoyance of touch screens in the presence of water. If there's a single flaw to the phone/battery combo, it's rain.  What I do in situations like this is I put both in a ziplock (a big one, wrapped over on itself) in my jersey and shut off the screen. I can still hear the audio cues and the alarm if I go off route (and music if I'm playing that), but during such times, I have to stop and pull the phone out if I need functionality beyond that.  Annoying, but not a show stopper.

Steve

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[Steve Ciccarelli]

Back when I started riding brevets (1994), this is all we had. There were drawbacks.  For one thing, when riding on my single, I got absolutely NO audio alarm when I went off route.  Fixed this by switching to a tandem!

Steve

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[Mick Walsh]

Garmin has a lock screen feature for rainy days and you can scroll through screens from your shifter.

On Apr 2, 2026, at 9:09 AM, Hahn Rossman <ha...@alkifoundry.com> wrote:



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[Paul Murray]

Weird thing about the lock screens on Garmin, if you "go off route", example: going through a tunnel, and it asks to recalculate, you have to remove the lock screen to press either Yes or No.  Dumbest piece of programming ever!

[Jeff Dale]

Garmin Edge 130 Plus. Low battery usage, easy to see on sunny days, no touch screen - which i prefer for rainy days, mittens and gloves.

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[Mike Sturgill]

If a consideration for displaying Custom Cues from RWGPS is of concern, then there are pretty major differences in the way each of the devices displays (or do not display) them. For reference, every "Control" cue in RWGPS is a custom cue. RR tracks, food, and other informational cues are also custom. Custom cues are required by RUSA in order to get any route approved. Note that a POI is different than a Custom cue. As a route designer, I spend a lot of time trying to optimize the verbiage of these custom cues for the following reasons:

Wahoo: truncates custom cues to first ~30 characters.
Garmin: does not automatically display the custom cues when in turn-by-turn mode. The rider needs to switch to the "Course Points" page to see the Custom cues. When on that page, Garmin truncates after the first 10-15 characters, depending on the model.
Karoo: The last I checked, they do not display custom cues at all. All of their cues are self generated. 
RWGPS app: Displays and verbally speaks the entire cue, if you have a paid subscription. 

For anyone designing routes, I encourage you to limit the verbosity in any custom cues and place all the most important information at the very start of the cue since the rest is generally truncated for most GPS users.

-Mike
RBA: AZ

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[don person]

The current Roam (3) lets you use either/both buttons and touch screen. If you are use to the original Roam the interface can be confounding at first. Have otherwise been happy with the 3

shiggy Don Person
Dead Center WA

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[Steve Ciccarelli]

Mike,

An exceptional point and I feel your pain.  As a ride leader and series director for the local bike club, I maintain a library of non-rando routes and have experienced these headaches myself, often by getting a comment from a rider, "My xxx-device didn't indicate that cue so I went off course."  Thankfully, most of those routes are 50k or shorter and ridden as a group (frequent regroups) so not often an issue unless someone solo-rides the route or has a mechanical. 

It's great that you've cataloged these issues and I'm saving this email as a route creation checklist!

Steve

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[Bill Gobie]

+1 what to Mike said, except in my experience in addition to truncating cues, Wahoos randomly "summarize," ie garble, them and can render them useless. At least the devices display an icon indicating the type of cue, so controls can be noticed regardless of the text presented. It would be nice if the "Turn left" etc preambles could be turned off in RwGPS to conserve characters. The turn direction, etc, is already part of the cue type and (most?) gps units use that to indicate turn direction. Manually editing every cue is just not something most route creators want to do.

It is possible to manually load RwGPS files onto Wahoos, in which case the entire cue is presented as written. However, long cues are rendered with smaller characters; the longer the cue the more likely you will see a line of single pixel dots.

Bill

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[Mike Sturgill]

I've owned the original Wahoo Elemnt and now the Roam v2. I have never experienced a "garbled" cue in over 100k miles of use. 

When syncing a route using the built-in "Sync ride" option on the Roam, the sync process removes MANY words from the RWGPS cues. I have never been able to find documentation stating what the specific rules are that are used. If someone has that info, I would really like to see it. That info would help greatly to use appropriate verbiage to eliminate some of the verbosity. Regarding the "Turn Left" text, that is definitely removed with the aforementioned sync method. For example, a cue that says "Turn left onto 1st St" will show up in the Wahoo Turn-by-turn as "1st St" with an arrow pointing left and the top LEDs streaming from right to left to indicate the left turn. So, the word "onto" is used when syncing to remove unnecessary characters (in a Wahoo device).

I have read about the manual loading of Wahoo devices to maintain the full cues. I tried every single manual load method that I could find and it never gave me cues that were any different than the Sync method. Please tell me how to do that with specific instructions. I would like to test it. 

This discussion has strayed from the OP's question, so feel free to take this offline if you'd like.

Thanks,
-Mike

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[don person]

When I create routes in RwGPS I edit all the cues to make them as clear and simple as possible.

No need to start them all with “turn…” when “right onto…” works

shiggy Don Person
Dead Center WA

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