Simple vs techy—-Wahoo Element Bolt vs Garmin Edge 530

I have had the 530 for almost a year. Works great for me, good battery life, trail forks works nice. My only issue is that it gets disconnected from my phone sometimes during a ride and when that happens i don't see text messages on the screen. By the way, one of the coolest features is seeing text messages on the screen while riding. Other than that, it has been flawless.
 
Paul H said:
The Bolt is much easier to set up with your phone.... like stupid easy.
But it cant do shit without your phone while the Garmin can stand alone w/o a phone.
Pros and cons....
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How so? I always ride with just my bolt unless on the road.
 
Patrick said:
Dave - send it up to me, i'll mess with it.
If i can get it to record cleanly, you can sell it knowing it is working.

also lets me see if i want it, and can compare it to the elemnt....

I don't mind initiating the warranty replacement, if that is an option.
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What’s your address? @muddybike wants it but I don’t want to sell a defective u it. Thanks for the offer!
 
Paul H said:
Other than tracking a ride and pairing a sensor.... try uploading a route or changing settings without your phone.
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well - this isn't exactly true.
if you favorite a route/segment on ridewithgps/strava, it automatically uploads to the wahoo head units.
what other way would it get there?

yes, the phone is needed to config the screens, but it is so much easier with the drag-n-drop interface.
i don't like that it can't route you back home, it has to retrace, or have the phone.
the maps are in there, just not the s/w. it is android, you'd think it would be there somewhere.

It updates itself w/o the phone sometimes - i haven't figured out when.
 
Patrick said:
well - this isn't exactly true.
if you favorite a route/segment on ridewithgps/strava, it automatically uploads to the wahoo head units.
what other way would it get there?
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Dont you need to select it from the Elemnt App first in order for it to show on the Bolt?
 
Paul H said:
Dont you need to select it from the Elemnt App first in order for it to show on the Bolt?
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nope - connect your accounts (from your phone?) then just favorite a route and it will show up on the map->routes page.
assuming you turn it on where wifi is available (phone hotspot! )
 
FWIW, pretty happy with my 830. 3 months, zero freezes. It's not all rainbows and unicorns - accessing my Strava routes has been broken since the big Garmin outage - but pretty good on balance. I have the radar too and love it. goldsbar nailed it: knowing when you can take the lane w/o looking back and knowing when you can come off your pull safely in a group are both awesome.

I am vaguely annoyed that my non-Di2 bicycle has 3 separate things to charge (computer, radar, headlight) plus a PM with a disposable battery. My damn helmet has some kind of incident detection too (another battery!) but I never enabled it. Almost forgot the HRM too. At least that and the PM last for ages.

BTW, a friend recently told me you can download more detailed maps from http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/. Maybe everyone knows this but I had no idea.
 
The stravaiq app has been turned off since you can sync favorite routes from strava through Garmin. I learned this after the outage as well.
 
Reviving this thread ... I've been having a ton of GPS issues with my Edge 520 Plus lately. Pretty much every single ride, it's dropping the signal for a while. It drives me nuts. I can't figure out why - it doesn't seem to be specific to cloudy days, heavy canopy or anything like that. It'll be working one minute in whatever environment I'm in, lose the signal the next, and then it'll start tracking again like 20 minutes later. It doesn't seem to make any difference what environment I'm riding in. I'm about ready to just chuck it altogether. I've heard that the Wahoo has a better signal in general - for those who have used both at some point, do you find that to be the case? I don't care so much about bells and whistles - what I want more than anything is just a strong signal.
 
1speed said:
Reviving this thread ... I've been having a ton of GPS issues with my Edge 520 Plus lately. Pretty much every single ride, it's dropping the signal for a while. It drives me nuts. I can't figure out why - it doesn't seem to be specific to cloudy days, heavy canopy or anything like that. It'll be working one minute in whatever environment I'm in, lose the signal the next, and then it'll start tracking again like 20 minutes later. It doesn't seem to make any difference what environment I'm riding in. I'm about ready to just chuck it altogether. I've heard that the Wahoo has a better signal in general - for those who have used both at some point, do you find that to be the case? I don't care so much about bells and whistles - what I want more than anything is just a strong signal.
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I've never had a signal issue in 3 years (autocorrected to yesterday??) of Wahoo use
 
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You may have a faulty unit in would contact Garmin. If never had signalnissues outside with any of my Garmin units in almost 4 years
 
shrpshtr325 said:
You may have a faulty unit in would contact Garmin. If never had signalnissues outside with any of my Garmin units in almost 4 years
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I never did previously, but now it seems to happen every ride. And nothing about the unit itself seems to be a problem - it holds it's charge, and hen it works., it seems to work well. It kind of seems like it just doesn't have very good satellite coverage.
 
1speed said:
I never did previously, but now it seems to happen every ride. And nothing about the unit itself seems to be a problem - it holds it's charge, and hen it works., it seems to work well. It kind of seems like it just doesn't have very good satellite coverage.
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If it just started happening it certainly sounds like some Internal circuit is acting up, ornsome connection has shaken loose, it's worth a message to tech supoort. It could be something as sim,ple as a loose antenna
 
1speed said:
Reviving this thread ... I've been having a ton of GPS issues with my Edge 520 Plus lately. Pretty much every single ride, it's dropping the signal for a while. It drives me nuts. I can't figure out why - it doesn't seem to be specific to cloudy days, heavy canopy or anything like that. It'll be working one minute in whatever environment I'm in, lose the signal the next, and then it'll start tracking again like 20 minutes later. It doesn't seem to make any difference what environment I'm riding in. I'm about ready to just chuck it altogether. I've heard that the Wahoo has a better signal in general - for those who have used both at some point, do you find that to be the case? I don't care so much about bells and whistles - what I want more than anything is just a strong signal.
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Officially I make poor choices. I sold my wahoo element bolt that worked flawlessly for 3 years in the name of chasing koms. Yup, I said it, I do it and the Garmin gives you an edge there. How so? Not i. The featureds department but it literally gives you seconds. I have done no less than 10 rides with my wahoo and garmin side by side about 15” apart on the bars. Same climbs, same ride, same bike, same day and the garmin consistently gives a time that is 2-8 seconds faster on different climbs. Why? No clue.

Does the garmin have more features? Sure. That’s the polite way to put it. I find the 530 to be so overly complicated I gave up on changing features. Even after @Patrick volunteered to troubleshoot my new device.

The one good thing is battery life but besides this the buttons are a pain to feel, the software navigation isn’t something I want to do on a ride and the live segments sucks. Yea they all work sometimes, but even with updated software and a unit that is synced before every ride most of my starred segments don’t register.

I have a karoo 2 on order and from the couple of reviews I have read it’s pretty awesome...fingers crossed.
 
Well, at least it stopped crashing!

I purchased a replacement battery (not from wahoo) for my Elemnt. A little bigger than stock.
reports have it at lasting 14-15 hours. Current battery lasts 5 after having it for 3 years?..
If you pick-up a used elemnt, and want me to do the swap, let me know.

Can't guarantee there won't be fire tho.

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