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Birthday at he end of the month, this will be my birthday pressie.
The software is identical on both. Obviously, the Bolt is Moooor Aeeerooo, but is the Elemnt's slightly bigger screen and extra set of LEDs worth £50?
If you have diminishing eyesight then the larger screen will help but both are very clear. The leds i still havent really figured what use they are in real life, they sound like something you would use but you wont. I have the bolt by the way and i only got it because it wasnt a garmin and it was cheaper than the elemnt. If i had an extra 50 quid i still dont think i would buy the elemnt,the bolt is enough. If it bothers you, and it didnt for me, the elemnt isnt as asthetically pleasing as the bolt.
That's useful, ta. And do you rate the Bolt?
I got the smaller one which is also cheaper, with one set of lights. I find them pretty useless for heart rate, speed etc but for navigating they make more sense, flashing red when off course and showing direction changes.
I'm glad I didn't go for the bigger one, it seems most of the bulk is the case and the screen doesn't get much bigger.
I find the leds sort of useful they show power zones
but the bolt is a brilliant bit of kit so easy to set up
never will I touch Garmin again
The bolt is superb, it just works and i can make changes to screen displays with my phone which is handy but not something you do regularly. The most important thing though is its not garmin so doesnt come with annoying software. The Elemnt is ok but it does feel like a bit of a brick. The bolt also comes with stem and out front mount too which i dont think you get with garmins.
I do find the extra leds useful and I'm all for a bigger screen however my Elemnt was the same price as a Bolt as they gave me 50 quid trade in against my old edge 200. 😉
Another factor was that the elemnt runs happily from a usb battery and I wasn't sure if the usb port on the bolt was obscured by the aero mount.
https://advntr.cc/2018/01/wahoo-elemnt-review/
Its pretty cool to plot a route on Ride with GPS, get changed into your gear and walk out to the garage, fire up the Bolt and sync it over Wifi to download the route 🙂
How do you find the navigation? I have a garmin 820, which is basically shit - slow, laggy, and unreliable. Am semi tempted by the Karoo. I generally use it for following GPX routes on my roadbike - i generally make the route black and don't bother with the turn by turn directions (as you have to wait 15 minutes before you can follow a 100k route) as that is the only colour you can accurately distingish from the rest of the map.
With the bolt, I guess everything is b&w - are you able to pick out the route ok? Is the turn by turn nav good enough to follow a route you've never ridden before?
I've not used a Garmin but I found the Wahoo navigation easy to follow. It doesn't have turn-by-turn built in so you need to plan the route using software that loads the turn-by-turn onto the device. So Ride With GPS and Kahoot does this, but Strava doesn't.
So if you divert off your route, the turn by turn will cease until you rejoin the route, whereas the Garmin should be able to adapt. Some reviews said if you go off-route with Wahoo, you can zoom out but the detail level drops off too quickly so you cannot see the roads or tracks to navigate the shortcut/diversion. I didn't find this but I was offroad, I suppose a road ride with potential for a bigger diversion might run into issues...but of course you can just whip out your smartphone and use some real maps to navigate/memorise the next few turns.
If you go off route with the garmin 820 it tries to recalculate and thus locks itself in a loop for about 10 minutes. So crap as to be unusable.
MIght flog the garmin on ebay and buy the bolt...
By all accounts the Elemnt is better built than the bolt. It's also got more of a paper white screen which is easier to read. I went Elemnt.
Regarding the LEDs, I use the side ones for HR zones on all screens. So when on a live segment or whatever I can see where my HR is.
I really like the big screen. Mounted a lanyard behind the screw on the battery cover, which is the only advantage I see the bolt having.
The newer Elemnt had the same bright leds as the bolt, earlier ones were a bit dimmer.
I have the bolt and have played with the elemnt. I'd say the main difference with the bigger screen is for navigation. If you're going to do a lot of nav then I'd probably go that way. The bolt is fine for nav but I find myself stopping to look at a map on my phone to do anything complicated.
Everyone I know who has wahoo devices has turned off the LEDs.
Longer battery life on the Elemnt, if that's a factor for you.
Nav is another area where the Leds help. They flash green when you rejoin a route, red when you leave it and flash towards the turn you should be taking so you can see this all in the periphery. I wish the beeps were a bit louder.
I also like the vertical leds for heart rate. If I see green I know I'm trying enough and if it stays red much beyond a short climb I know to ease off.