anybody ride with more than 1? concurrently? asking because there’s a lot of info available nowadays - power, distance traveled, ave speed, ave power, velocity, cadence, and now air pressure, what have you, and while i could get all the data i want onto 1 head unit it’s impossible to read text that small (at my age). so, how do you handle that? if you don’t want to be switching the buttons a lot? or do you just switch buttons a lot?
i sound like a real geek asking this, but the thought crossed my mind.
I use a Garmin 820, with 10 distinct fields of information, and also use the Garmin Varia Vision, which has another 4 customizable fields of data, plus it also has time of day and temperature as static items, so 16 different fields, 14 customizable to view without swapping screens.
1 unit. While the Garmin 520 captures a lot of info to view later, when I ride I only have power and HR showing. It’s the only things that matter to me.
I race with a Garmin 810 and 920 but I only look at the 810 while racing. The 920 is on my wrist for the swim, run and total time. I don’t bother taking it off for the bike.
I use a Garmin 820, with 10 distinct fields of information, and also use the Garmin Varia Vision, which has another 4 customizable fields of data, plus it also has time of day and temperature as static items, so 16 different fields, 14 customizable to view without swapping screens.
right. my problem is not being able to read it. i don’t really like to have to switch screens. but if i have more than 3 metrics on 1 screen i can’t read it. type is too small. so, i’m happy with a big arse head unit with 6 metrics going, but it would need to be pretty big.
I suppose I ride with more than one head unit occasionally, but not for the reasons you state…
For every ride I do, I use my garmin 500 with three screens. The first screen is my “Current data” (power, speed, cadence, HR, etc.). Essentially everything I need to pace and ride. 99% of my ride is on that screen. I have a Lap data screen and a ride data screen on pages two and three with summary data for the lap and ride respectively (distance, avg speed, time, KJ, etc.). I only flip to those screens occasionally.
For rides where I am going out on a new route, I wear my 920xt with the navigation on to map my route out. I do not use my edge 500 map because I cannot see the data I need to pace my ride and navigate at the same time so I have the navigation on my watch, which could be described as a second “head unit”. I really only do that for new routes on training rides.
Most computers have an auto scroll functionality. So you could limit the fields per page to say 4 so they are all visible to you, then program as many pages as you can to scroll through all the data fields you want. Another trick could be to always keep 1 or 2 fields at the top of each page that you always want to see, such as power and HR. Then have the other two fields on each page different. That way it looks like only the bottom two fields are scrolling. If you can set up 10 pages scrolling, you could effectively have 22 fields available to you that are all visible without pushing a button…just not all at the same time.
You could go all DCRainmaker and run 5 or more head units (only works with ANT+, BTLE has to be 2 to 2); but a better approach might be to have your head unit scroll through various pages for you.
Pretty sure most head units can do this.
if I saw a guy riding with multiple head units I would quickly assume he is a douche.
i don’t care whether you think i’m a douche. so that’s not a consideration. but a head unit that auto-scrolls between panes would probably solve my problem. i hadn’t considered that.
I’ll use two on my gravel rig. Why? Because I have two 520s (primary and a backup) and don’t want to spend more for one of those Garmin 10xx units. One (mounted out front - also have my cycliq fly 12 out there) for following the course and the other above my stem for the metrics. It’s definitely silly but works - I could change screens but I just don’t like taking my hands off the bars that often.
I race with a Garmin 810 and 920 but I only look at the 810 while racing. The 920 is on my wrist for the swim, run and total time. I don’t bother taking it off for the bike.
How many other racers do this? In my last race I realized how cumbersome and annoying it was to keep rotating my left arm inwards to look at my numbers.
I have a Garmin 935 on my wrist, and an SRM PC7 head unit on the bike. The cool thing (to me) about this setup is my Garmin broadcasts my heart rate to the SRM. If I need extra fields, I’ll have them on my wrist and glance at it every once in a while.
