[Closed] Wahoo Bolt mini question

It does have a phone-free mode, but without GPS.  In that mode, it's a fairly basic bike computer, using sensors.  It won't record where you go.

It also has a phone-connected mode, where it uses the GPS on your phone.

If you want a GPS, this is bad choice.  Using your phone for that bit is daft.  If you don't want GPS, I can't imagine it's the best choice either.  Why effectively pay extra for the ability to connect to your phone GPS?  Odd device.

All the info you could ever need is here:   https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/08/wahoo-elemnt-mini-in-depth-review.html

Lezyne do some basic ones that have GPS and good battery life.

I got the small Garmin Edge 25 from Aldi for £50 a couple of years ago. Nice little unit but not quite a basic unit. Connects to speed, cadence and HRM, can upload routes and it'll give you a breadcrumb trail which works quite well and has a great battery life, so I can recommend one of those if you can get one within your budget.

I’m not sure the above is true but have not tried it, I am pretty sure you can use it as gps without the phone, but you are a bit limited in what you can input into it, ie preset the route only.

To record a route via GPS you need your phone on you.

It does work stand alone with a speed sensor but only records time and distance (no route).

I have have clocked up a few thousand km with my wahoo elemnt mini in the last year. My advice would be save your pennies a little longer and get the bolt with dedicated GPS. I have had a fair few problems with my mini, on long rides sometimes the phone and the mini suffer from a glitch where they unpair meaning you can't finish your ride (the computer thinks you are at 0km, and the end ride button does not work in app!) meaning you lose all your data for the workout.. annoying when you have just done 150km! Wahoo customer support have been useless trying to resolve this. It also lacks any navigation. I am upgrading to a bolt soon.

Thanks for the advice, sounds like this is not the unit for me, I've been using the Edge 200 for a number of years and the 14 hour battery life is perfect for my bikepacking trips, so that's why the mini with it's 300 hours caught my eye, I use an Etrex 30 for all my mapping so don't need a GPS unit. The edge 25 is only 8-10 hours so would need to re charge mid ride, any other suggestions?

I’m looking for a basic bike computer with a long battery life

Then why not just get a bog standard bike computer? It'll cost about £20 and battery life will be a couple of years.

If you do want a GPS and you need lots of battery life I would look at the Lezyne Mega XL and Mega C. They claim far longer battery life than anything else (48h for the XL).

But then if you're already using an eTrex 30 I'm not sure why you want anything extra at all 🙂