Just took it out for its maiden voyage, a 6km jaunt around the neighbourhood.

the good -

I like the unit itself. screen is large, bright and clear. much easier for my 50 year old eyes than my 910xt, which was my old "head unit".
collected all my data, I didn't notice any dropouts in the power file (although my ride did include a lot of coasting, 70m of altitude in just 6k)
I had my phone in my pocket. as soon as I pressed the button on the head unit to end ride and save it was uploaded to the internets.
up to 16 fields per page is a LOT of data. I don't need that much, the main page has 9 fields and that's more than enough.
the mount is very secure. first couple of tries were quite difficult to put the unit into the mount, seems to be a bit easier now.
being able to mount the unit in landscape or portrait mode is really cool. Buttons are much better in landscape than portrait, but if you're the type to just leave it on one screen for the whole ride, then portrait would work well.
easy to change ride modes before your ride. there are some out of the box ones (ride, commute, portrait, and indoor), I disabled the 2 that I won't use and kept "ride" and "indoor". I may end up disabling indoor as well, since I'll be mostly using zwift inside. It would be useful for say a "training" vs "racing" screen, or "TT/tri" vs "road race" vs "gravel", if that's something that you'd want to see different things on your head unit for.


the bad
unit has zero charge on arrival. not really a big deal, except I'm impatient.
establishing a GPS lock for the first ride took "forever". Be forewarned. I turned it on and left it outside for about a half hour beforehand. I had to tell it to keep trying a few times, but eventually it found a signal.....but....
I don't see any screens that will indicate the quality of the GPS signal. Heading out on my ride was a leap of faith that GPS was working. Possible that I've missed something, somewhere.
it seems to disassociate sensors from ride profiles. that's only an issue starting out, but you can't associate the sensor after the ride has started. gotta pause, discard the ride or save it, go into the sensors menu, then reassociate the sensors (HR and power, in my case). I'm pairing under ANT, not sure if Bluetooth is different.

I'm going to see if these issues (particularly GPS lock and pairing) get any better on subsequent rides. I'll give it a couple of weeks. If they don't, I'll return this and go with the M50.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

My second ride on the L10 went much better. GPS lock was almost instant, I have the data fields almost to my liking. I figured out that there’s an icon on the Home Screen that shows if the GPS lock is good. Still had to re-pair HRM and Power meter before the ride started, but that was only a few seconds of inconvenience. Very readable, the mount is nice and secure.

Looking at the GPS track after the ride, all seems good. Has me riding on the street, not 15m off to the side, etc. Speed seems about right at any given point in the ride.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Hi Jason, I was wondering if you did more testing over the past month? Are you still happy with the unit. I am considering purchasing one and would be curious to know your further impressions.

I really only get to use it on weekends, and that's when I'm not busy taking the kids to hockey, birthday parties, swimming lessons etc etc..... So I think I have a half dozen or so rides with it now. No issues. The only slight inconvenience is having to re-pair sensors before each ride. It might be something that I'm doing wrong, I'm not sure.

I haven't tried using the navigation features yet, but I will be testing that at some point before I use it in a race.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Thanks. I ended up getting a L50 from MEC. I will be testing it over the next few weeks and decide if I want to keep it. Happy riding out East!

thanks!

the L50 is, as I understand it, a significantly better unit than the L10. the price on the L10 was what drew me to it, and I can accept a few quirks and inconveniences for the price difference vs, really, just about anything else.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Has any progress been made on this front? I don't want to pay for Premium link since I already have enough subscriptions, but I'd like to be able to use the courses on my L10. I generally like the device except for not being able to use that. GPS lock is usually pretty quick, good battery life, etc.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I don’t know if Premium link and the ability to create/edit/import courses is standard now, but I’ve just contacted Stages support in the past, requested access, and they provide it for me. I’ve cited DCRainmaker’s review that mentions Premium features being available to Dash users. I’ve lost access to Premium a few times, but a quick email to Stages has restored it for several months at a time.

Not ideal for sure, but I’ve been able to set up and use navigation this way since I bought my M50. The last time I emailed them about Premium support was probably over 6 months ago and I still have it, so maybe it is perpetual at this point.

thanks, I'll pursue that option. I usually don't need navigation, but it's nice to have that option when I'm riding out of my usual area.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I submitted a support ticket on Friday, and logged into link account this morning and noticed that premium access has been restored. very impressed (ahead of their stated response times) and good timing as I'm going to be on vacation in New Brunswick next week and need to find some new routes.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Are you (and above poster) saying that Dash is supposed to have Premium Link forever? I thought mine (bought 1.5 years ago) came with 3 months, and I recently signed up again to try out premium because I was curious about the features.

brando wrote:

Are you (and above poster) saying that Dash is supposed to have Premium Link forever? I thought mine (bought 1.5 years ago) came with 3 months, and I recently signed up again to try out premium because I was curious about the features.

Yep, that's what I'm saying.

Per DCRainmaker's review: "And finally, one minor caveat – at present here in March 2020, the route creation feature is considered a ‘Premium’ function of Stages Link. However, going into April, they’re getting rid of the paid version and users will have everything that was part of Premium expect for the training plan generator. Stages says that if you’re a Stages user and simply want Premium, to contact support and they’ll add it to your account immediately for free (versus waiting till April). I’ve seen that manifest itself in the comments section already – so good to see!"


Also check out replies Jim from Stages makes in the comments, such as:
"Were still working on some agreements with Todays Plan to make this happen, since they run our website, its actually rather complex. In the meantime, please contact support@stagescycling.com and we will validate you premium access while you wait."

So it's not ideal, and certainly taking much longer then Stages anticipated, but I've had access to course builder on an essentially continual basis since getting my M50 at Christmas 2019 (I say "essentially" because I've had to send follow up emails to support@stagescycling in order to have it reactivated a few times).

Ok, thank you! I will definitely send in a ticket and see about getting this activated.

FYI we have an ETA of October 8 to make Stages Link Premium and course builder to be continuously free. Sorry for the delay!

If you do that, you'll have a customer for life here!

The L10 is great for what it is, and the price, but I'm thinking of upgrading to the M50 next year. One thing that would be nice is Strava segment integration, it doesn't look like that's currently offered but maybe in the works? Please?

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

We would like to include Strava Live Segments. Technically it's doable but as a wise person once said, "It takes two to make a thing go ri-ight....."

It looks like the L10/SDL1 has been discontinued. Good, although probably not good if you own one as the already dismal product support will likely become non-support.

I have two power meters(one arrived set to the wrong crank length), a heart rate monitor(works okay), cadence sensor(L10 reports it has low batt. constantly), speed sensor(broke), and an L10 Dash from Stages. I used the L10 for all of a couple months before determining that its many flaws and shortcomings were unacceptable even given the low price; it just doesn't do many of the things it claims to.

Never mind proprietary, limited, and very expensive mounts, the firmware is a disaster. It doesn't play nice with the app and is glacially slow to sync. It doesn't natively record to FIT format and corrupts the conversion to a FIT file about 5-10% of the time. You're then left trying to upload it to Stages Link in order to download the FIT file, but that feature is broken (or purposely deactivated) and clicking it doesn't do anything. Been like that since at least August 2021. GPS lock is also very slow as others have noted(for me, typically five minutes or more). This is only a partial list of the problems.

I was in contact with customer service(which then had a three week response time...might still) for one of the power meters and when I mentioned also having issues with the L10, they simply told me the more expensive units work better and gave me a discount code toward one. I didn't use it and instead bought a Garmin that works flawlessly. It ended up being part of a broader customer experience that made me to not want to patronize Stages as a company.

I had a Dash L50. Here's a small list of my gripes:

Going over bumps, my unit would fall off the mount. You must use a tether or it'll be bouncing off the road. For months after I got rid of it, I instinctively reached for my Garmin whenever I hit a bump in the road. It was always a worn mount, loose screws on the back of the Dash, or it wasn't clipped in all the way (a rare problem since I was very aware of it and the extra time to get it properly attached). For me, it was falling off at least once a ride. There's just too much unsupported weight on the L50 to be attached at the edge with their current clip-in method.

Even when it was secure in the mount, it was still floppy.

With my Power2Max, I had dropouts every 256 seconds. It didn't happen with a Wahoo or Garmin. Support was generally responsive to mount problems but not my P2M issue. It dragged out for 6 months until I sold it.



The power button was amazingly hard to push, you could easily pop it out of the mount if you weren't careful.

You had to plug it in and turn it on to charge, plugging it in wasn't sufficient.

Mine had some weird altimiter problem and it was RMA'd. Post upload, I got this error:
"Altitude issue - An altitude value was recorded < -100m or > 6000m. It's likely the rider's head unit needs attention."

Overall, I would not buy another Stages head unit.

Sorry - I didn't realize this was a necropost/thread.

Been away and just seeing this now and I thought I’d update with my experience. I ought an M50 a little over 2 years ago and I really like it. I agree the power button is hard to push and the mount isn’t the best, but I’ve never had mine fall off even over rough roads. It also pairs with my P2M, Hammer H2, and powertap G3 just fine and I’ve never had drop outs. The data pages and customization are awesome. I do wish it charged faster though. Overall I love it and have been considering the new version just for the better buttons and mount.

I can affirm that the new versions are fantastic. I do not specifically remember charging speed, but it did not strike me as slower than anything else. (My standard for slow charging is the Garmin Varia, which seems to take lifetimes to recharge.)