I’m in the market for a new computer and have narrowed it to these two, with an outside possibility of the Garmin 1000, assuming it is updated this year.
What would you recommend and why?
Thanks.
The best advice I can give has to be to read the DC Rainmaker review of the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt where he addresses this exact question: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/03/wahoo-elemnt-bolt-in-depth-review.html
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I have only used garmin products, but have looked at others.
I love the “live track” and “crash notification” features on the 820: My spouse knows where I am at all times and if I have a sudden stop or accident it triggers a notification if not cancelled. It is also useful when I ride point to point to meet up with the family some place. I can tell them to leave the house at a certain time or distance into the ride.
The mapping is good, not great. I wish it wouldn’t map me on to dirt. The mapping has extended a few of my long rides by 15 or so miles by taking me to places I’m not willing to go on my Road bike (never mind my TT bike).
The size is pretty good, but for racing it might be nice to look at something smaller. I cannot remember the product name but there was a front page ST article just after Oceanside. Lionel was rocking it for his race.
Truthfully I don’t think you can go wrong with either, but I really like the tracking features on my Garmin.
Edited for autocorrect error
Good point about the crash notification. Most of my rides are solo and I use the Road ID app on my phone. It’s good, but a data hog and drains the battery fast.
Thanks.
Hey there,
I own both and use both. There are few things that prevent me from giving up either one. Personally, I think Wahoo Elemnt/Bolt is a superior bike computer. It has all the features Garmin offers minus one, which is ANT FE-C which would allow it to control smart trainers. Well it technically has the feature but it is locked only to Wahoo trainers, i.e the kickr and kickr snap. So if you do training/riding indoors and would like to do structured workouts or ride previously ridden courses AND you don’t own a Wahoo trainer you miss out on a HUGE feature. That is where Garmin comes in. Now Wahoo did say they will be opening up the FE-C for their bike computers to support all smart trainers but they promised that last year and it hasn’t happened. They have now moved that date to Fall 2017 so let’s see.
Advantages of Wahoo over Garmin 820
- THE APP!! I can’t say enough good things about this. The fact that you can change data fields and customize your bike computer exactly how you want it using your smartphone app just makes it dead simple and fast. With garmin you have to fiddle through the finicky touch screen and go into menus and sub menus and sub sub menus, you get the point.
- Mapping. Wahoo started out with pretty crappy mapping but they have been updating the computers at breakneck speeds and mapping which includes turn-by-turn navigation, strava live segments etc are equal to Garmin’s offerings. I think the difference is in the Maps each use. How wahoo excels here is that you can change your route on the fly. So if you’re riding and want to find a convenient store or want to change your route for whatever reason, you can just bust out the companion app on your phone, search or add a destination on your current route and it will add or re-route you accordingly and sync with your bike computer. Yes, really that simple!
- Apparently we are told that the bolt will help you ‘slice through the air’…
Advantage of Garmin 820 over Wahoo elemnt
- If you are invested in the Garmin ecosystem of devices, say you have the vectors, then all those fancy dynamics are only accessible using the Edge. Or, if you have the Varia vision or radar, again those are only usable with an edge computer.
- its more aero…? lol
- Elemnt is Fugly. It’s like they handed a child play-doh and told em to make a bike computer. I don’t understand what happened when they were designing the elemnt. They went out of their way to make look bad.
So yeah those are my reasons why I have both. Hope it helps!
I really want to buy the Bolt but the lack of structured workouts is a deal breaker for me.