My wife is going to buy me a garmin varia for my upcoming birthday.
What is a good device to pair and display the info best?
I have a garmin 945 watch that pairs but no bike computer yet.
530 is tough to beat. 830 if you are a fan of touch screens.
Both the newer Garmin Edges and Wahoo Bolts will work with Varia. Just pick the computer you like. It’s tough to beat the Bolt Roam or the Edge 530 IMHO.
Having run the Varia with a dozen or so different head units, they’re all a bit different, but I wouldn’t say any one of them is clearly the best. It sorta depends how you prefer things to be displayed.
We did a piece on the display differences between a pretty decent assortment of head units a while back, you can check it out here.
530
.
I’ve used all of the following with the Varia
Garmin Edge 130Garmin Edge 530Wahoo ELEMNT BOLTWahoo ELEMNT ROAM
Just in terms of usability with the Varia, my first choice is the ROAM and my second choice is the BOLT. (There may be other reasons for preferring one computer over another, but since you asked specifically about the Varia.)
I think the Wahoo computers are better than the Garmin computers because Wahoo does a better job with the alert tones.
The Varia can elicit several different alerts from the computer. There’s an alert to indicate an approaching vehicle, an alert to indicate that all is clear, and an alert to indicate a particularly dangerous approaching vehicle (one with a high closing speed and/or a large mass).
Garmin distinguishes those tones by the number of beeps: two beeps for oncoming vehicle, one beep for all clear, and multiple beeps for danger. That approach becomes problematic when the situation is changing rapidly, and sometimes the Garmin gets confused. Was that three beeps (danger)? Or was it two beeps followed quickly by a single beep (car was approaching but then turned)? And I’ve never been able to figure out why the Garmin sometimes beeps three times, sometimes four times, sometimes five times, etc. If it’s trying to indicate the magnitude of the danger alert, there doesn’t seem to be any correspondence.
Wahoo, on the other hand, has actual tones rather than simple beeps, and it uses different pitches/durations for the different. signals. The approaching alert is two tones with the stress on the second; for me, it perfectly matches the vocal cadence of “Watch OOOUUUTTT”. The safe alert is also two tones. They’re different tones, and the stress is on the first (“Aaaallll clear”). The danger alert is a staccato series of multiple tones and impossible to mistake.
The bottom line for me is that with a Garmin, I have to look at the display to feel confident about the situation. With a Wahoo, sounds alone are enough to keep me informed. This is especially helpful, for example, when standing on a climb, or in other situations where it might be inconvenient to glance down at the computer.
As for the BOLT vs. the ROAM, I give a very slight edge (no pun intended) to the ROAM because it has both top and side LEDs. You can setup the side LEDs for power and the top LEDs for alerts (including the Varia). The BOLT only has top LEDs, so you don’t get to see power except in the main display. You can technically configure the top LEDs for power, and they’ll switch to the radar status when relevant. But I don’t want to look down, see red LEDs, and not be absolutely certain whether it’s telling me my power output or the radar status.