[Closed] Wahoo Elemnt Bolt

I don't have an Elemnt, but I believe the Lezyne GPS units can also import nav details on the fly from a smartphone using their app.

(I don't have a Lezyne either - but have been looking at both recently. The DC Rainmaker site is a mine of information.)

This review's just been updated with a longer term use video showing various functions in use:

http://www.bikeradar.com/road/gear/category/accessories/gadgets/cycle-computers/product/wahoo-elemnt-bolt-review-51034/

Yer, I watched that but no real input into the nav or anything showing in detail how it works.

Also, there are quite a few comments on unreliable data, average speed, distance etc.

Yes really good unit. I only use it for road use as I use a garmin watch for MTB. Much easier to use than Garmin units. Black and white navigation isnt as good as the colour garmin1000 but with turn by turn pop ups giving 200m warning of the next turn, its been pretty consistent so far. Dont expect to just download a strava route and expect it to tell you when to turn, you have to use ridewithgps.com to enable that and include a cue sheet. Lots of info online.

Overall, much faster than garmin to pick up satellites, sensors etc and the ease of setup via a phone is really good....its biggest selling point. Value for money too I think.

Interested in one of these..Does it come with any mount that can attach to aero road handlebars does anyone know

djglover - Member
Interested in one of these..Does it come with any mount that can attach to aero road handlebars does anyone know

It comes with standard bar mount plus the standard type rubber band solution for attaching to top of stem.

For aero bars you may need to look at other solutions as many include Wahoo inserts. There was a really good one on kickstarter a while back now in production but its 40odd quid I think from memory.

thanks!

What's it like for pulling info from google maps ?

Interested in one of these..Does it come with any mount that can attach to aero road handlebars does anyone know

Using one from Raceware on my Canyon. Or you clean buy an adapter if you gave a Garmin/K-Edge one already.

OP, I went Elemnt Bolt fanboi crazy in this thread a while back, may be some more info/insights in there: http://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/psa-wahoo-elemnt-bolts-in-stock

😉

Couple of question.

I have just used min for a road ride and used the HR zones. However the zone only went up i.e on a hill climb i went into Z4 but the zone never settled back down, even after i removed my HR monitor. Anyone else had this issue?

Also, anyone use these for MTB?

Were you riding with anyone else? ie. were you definitely paired with your own HRM? When was the last time you changed the battery? Did you get, erm, "sweaty enough" to make a decent contact with the sensors? When I've not been pushing it on a ride my HRM measures 200+ thanks to the poor contact and even higher if I lift it off my chest, bizarrely.

I've just bought some electrode gel for my Garmin HRM (which intermittently misbehaved on the Garmin as well as my Bolt) so will see if that helps in the case I mention above. Cheaper than a new HRM I figured. I'd suspect the HRM before the Bolt personally but you never know...

Decided to buy one of these but can find stock anywhere in Switzerland or the uk.

Is the Bolt sunlight readable? My Garmin Touring is hopeless if the sun is anything but behind you.

I bought one of these last week. Wiggle had them in stock briefly. In the sunlight it is clearer than the Garmin 800 it replaced, the black and white screen gives better contrast. However I found the LEDs hard to see in sunlight, they work great for a turn indicator - except on a sunny day.

No issues with the LEDs being used with the HRM function, seemed to work fine.

And it has been used for Mountain biking as well. Seemed fine, and I was surprised how many local trails are shown on the map.

The indicator LEDs only work on RWGPS routes so as such I rarely get that functionality (tend to just use Strava routes) but yes the LEDs are less visible in bright light. Screen great though.

ah. one quick questions fellas.

How is the screen with polarized glasses? iphones for example are a pain in the hole.

cheers

I wear polarising prescription sunglasses with mine. No issues at all.

Edit: but then I've never noticed any issues with my iPhone either so maybe I'm not the right one to ask.

@ munkster

Yes i did get sweaty enough and have also tried it out at home. The Wahoo support have been great to a point but on this HR issue they have gone silent. I guess no one else has had the same issue ?

I have tried ringing their customer support phone line but it always says the are closed..

So, further to the question above - if you stick a GPX in, how do these deal with it off road?
I've never had any sort of navigation device, and am seriously considering one of these for road rides, but also crucially for off road routes as well, but with the intention of following routes done by others, but not having to stop every 5 seconds to check I'm going the right way.

i've got a elemnt, and use the HR on that and with the Suunto watch.

Never had any issues; might be slightly high (got up to 195 in a run the other week), but it does come back to normal when I stop. Resting according to it is about 55 so seems rightish (and obviously that's without [s]any[/s] a lot of sweat)

@shanta...

The Wahoo support have been great to a point but on this HR issue they have gone silent. I guess no one else has had the same issue ?

I have tried ringing their customer support phone line but it always says the are closed..

Are you aware that there is a pretty active Google Groups, er, group for the Elemnt? Could try on there, I believe that the developers keep an eye on it too: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wahoo-elemnt-users

I was not aware of the Google forums, however i can't find anything on this issue. Wahoo did call me yesterday from America but dared not ring back on my mobile for obvious reasons so i am awaiting another call. For those who do use HR zone, does the zone revert back to 1 once the activity has stopped. Mine still shows what my hr was when is stopped the last ride, in this case z3.... Is that right?

Back in stock @ Wiggle if anyone is looking for one.

Just checked and they aren't showing for me.

@shanta

i used my HR monitor last [url= https://ibb.co/bVEdxa ]night[/url] - it did the usual up and down with the HR over time (and hills). And obviously when I got back it was back to normal very quickly

Yours sounds a bit dicky.

@ on and on - I guess you are looking at the bundle (out of stock), the unit on it's own is in stock.

No, wahoo isn't even listed when I search.

Submarined, I am over the moon with mine. Bought it specifically for following off road gpx routes and strava routes and im more than happy with the results. To be fair i can only compare it to using ViewRanger on my iphone which did a job but would often drain the battery before the end of the ride, leaving me in limbo so battery life was one of the main factors of me choosing the wahoo. I followed a quantocks route that I downloaded from strava, it is only a small screen so i did have to correct myself a couple of times (it angrily beeps at you when you go wrong so you can quickly sort it out rather than noticing miles later) I found zooming right in at the onscreen map helped as alot of trails run adjacent to each other so it was easier to distinguish which trail i was supposed to be on. I was out on the bike for about 4 hours and still had 69% battery left when I finished so yeah well chuffed.

Another bump for this topic

I have apparently won a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt courtesy of an online competition, should be with me by the weekend. 😀

Currently got an old Edge 500 - anyone gone between the two and point any perils and pitfalls of losing my Garmin habit?

Bugger. Rushed through to the checkout and then realised the current £40 off £200 code is for other stuff.

Ok. Ordered one eventually from wiggle. My location was Switzerland and some items aren't shown when you search the site. I swapped back to UK and there they were. I guess Wahoo have their own channel for supply here.

Anyway. Looking forward to giving this baby a try.

Wahoo in the States rang me in the UK yesterday (would not get that from Garmin) and said they were not aware of the issue i have. The guy said he will pass it on to there developers who are pretty hot on Bolt bugs at the minute as it is obviously there newest product, so i need to look out for software updates soon.

Customer has been very good o must admit, just hope they sort it soon.

Beginning to think im cursed....

According to my Elemnt app i had a KOM last night (big surprise believe me). After checking in Strava i was actually no where near (face palm).

A bit of a pain but sounds like they're keen and interested in helping you out.

I have an issue with endomondo at the moment. It will only record up to 42 miles in one session so I keep loosing my bigger rides.
I emailed them and they helpfully responded with ( I imagine that's annoying ) and no further information or help.

Is there anyway to change the number of fields shown on the screen. When using the side buttons, my Bolt goes from 4 metrics, to 7.

I would like 5 metrics as with 4 there is a gap of unused space.

Yes, i must admit they have been on the ball trying to assist, much better than Garmin. Lets hope the issues can be sorted with software updates.

Shred
I have the same issue with fields jumping from 7 too 4 so i guess that is how they are out of the box, not sure if you can amend this.

Further update,

Greg from Wahoo has emailed me to say there will be some firmware updates available late this week to hopefully fix any bugs, which is good. Hopefully it will fix my latest bug where the ride results on the app shows a max cadence of 220!

Yep, Wahoo have been great for me too.
I logged a fault with the Bolt still saying its connected to the phone, even when switched off.
Also the fact that the phone battery level (displayed on the Bolt) is always 50%.

So there are bluetooth related issues with my setup, and they tell me they have a fix for all of them being released in a few weeks.

Other than that, the Bolt has been excellent.
I do feel the side buttons could do with a bot more 'click' feel, they are a bit mushy for my liking. The top 3 buttons feel great in comparison.
Great screen in sunlight, maps are good, easy to setup up, phone app is excellent compared to Garmin Connect I find.

Still waiting for my competition prize Bolt to find it's way to me 🙁

I get the 50% phone battery bug. Only thing for me so far would be the ability to pan around the map on screen rather than having to get phone out and do it in app

Simonbea - I have just moved from a Garmin 810 that you could pan around the map on. Even on the bigger Garmin screen is was unwieldy and I found myself using my phone maps most of the time instead.

Ok, so my bolt arrived and I'm setting it up. Any way I can import my data from endomondo?

Mine came this week. Love setting it up using the phone app. Really need to get around to riding with it....

I have absolutely no need for a Bolt but have a strong urge to order one anyway.

Currently have an Edge 800 and its just a bit clunky and half the data fields only update when they feel like and are blank the rest of the time.

At my level of riding (deeply unfit and slow) I could probably get by with one of those old mile counter things that you stuck on your fork and a little nodule flicked a cog round as the wheel spun round but that is entirely beside the point...

I've been using mine properly over the last week. Absolute bliss. Upload routes to it via strava. Once sensors have been connected then they'll do it by themselves from then on. Can easily change the fields on each page including the maps page. The mapping is very clear. Battery life is mega. The email live map tracking thing works a treat for the gf.

Very happy with mine and seems a lot simpler and better than friends garmins.

Is anyone using Wahoo's own cadence and speed modules?

If so how accurate are you finding them. Seen a fair few grumbles that the cadence on in particular is affected by things like bumpy roads and gives spurious readings.

I'm happy with mine too, it just works!
Easy to link to Strava and RidewithGPS and it copies the routes easily when connected to wifi.
Impressed!

Set mine up and a few rides in. Seriously impressed with it, far better than my previous Garmins.

QQ for users. It's connected to my iPhone but can I connect to my iPad at the same time?
I can't find a way to get the QR code up on the screen again.

I'm going to be a dissenting voice here: having done two rides so far with my new Bolt, I really like some aspects of it but I really dislike some others. But then a) I only care about navigation and basic info like time and distance, not about any fitness stuff, and b) I'm a properly fussy git.

Having sold my Edge 800 to get the Wahoo I've now picked up an Edge Touring to experiment with fixing two of the things I previously haven't liked about Garmins, and I'm now going to have to decide which one to keep. They both have their pros and cons.

QQ for users. It's connected to my iPhone but can I connect to my iPad at the same time?
I can't find a way to get the QR code up on the screen again.

I think you have to go to the "forget phone" option on the Wahoo, then pair it with the new device. Realistically that makes it impractical to use with two devices. Which is a problem for me, because the iOS app has one massive bug on my iPhone 5S and the Android app has a different massive bug on my Moto G3, so to get the Bolt set up I've so far needed to use both devices.

What aspects of the Bolt do you dislike. Always worth feeding back to Wahoo as they are pretty hot on improving via firmware.

I've got it half-written as a mini review which I might stick on the blog at some point. There are a bunch of things that are mostly minor but which add up to being a little underwhelmed. The one that I'd pick out as the worst one for me, personally, is the fact that if you're using a route you can't have "north up" map orientation. This really kills my ability to mentally visualise where I am in the grand scheme of things, especially in conjunction with a couple of other aspects of how it renders the map, route and track.

The bugs I have with the apps are major (the iOS app is unresponsive to the point of being unusable, with up to 20 seconds of locking up every time I touch the screen, and it kills the battery, seemingly including background activity; while the Android app won't see my RideWithGPS routes) but I've not seen anyone else report them so I'm guessing I'm just unlucky there.

That said, in comparison to the Garmins I do love the clarity of the screen (and the clarity of the typography and map), the battery life, the ability to get routes on there wirelessly (even though, if I were writing the app, I'd do it slightly differently), and I would love the app if it worked. Anyone who isn't fussy about the navigation aspect and doesn't suffer the app issues will be very happy with the Elemnt.

I tweeted Wahoo about the iOS app but got no reply. Was going to email them about the "north up" thing but couldn't seem to log in to the website using my Wahoo account so got a bit frustrated and found something else to do instead.

You can have map north. Just go into the settings and switch off 'map always rotates ' or similar. Job done.

In fact map always north is its default setting so you must have changed it at some point!

First thing I do with any device like this is go through every single option in the menus 😉

The north up mode only works when there's no active route. If you have an active route it's always direction-of-travel up regardless of what you set the option to.

Got one a few weeks back, my first go at bike GPS. I have used Strava a tiny bit and MapMyRide but more for recording but wanted a navigation things too.

Love the battery life, the black and white screen is fine and easy to see in the sun ( with and without polarized glasses ).

You have to build a route in ridewithgps.com to get the navigation beeps and bits to work, otherwise you just follow the map ( which was fine ). Uploading routes is easy, once you make it on the site, you sync the Bolt and its ready there waiting.

Mounts wise you get a stem on ( zip ties ) and an out front one.

Screens are configurable and its easy to move between different screens. You can add and size the displays using the mobile phone app ( which is used for lots of the set up ).

I like it, been used a handful of times, but no issues ( getting lost etc ) yet :-).

The north up mode only works when there's no active route. If you have an active route it's always direction-of-travel up regardless of what you set the option to.

Hmm, not what a review on YouTube showed but I've not tired it myself so can't comment.

Definitely worth dropping an email to Wahoo about.

Got a link to the video? I don't think I've missed anything, because the explanatory text below the "always point the map in the direction of travel" option rather implies that it's always like that when using a route, but if I'm wrong I'll be happy 🙂

First few minutes of this vid shows him struggling with a route as the map view won't rotate.

Originally my Bolt was paired to a 5s and I didn't notice any delay in the response of the app. If anything it was surprisingly quick. I could change the fields on the app and the Bolt would have updated before I looked at it. I would agree that it did seem to drain the battery, although the battery on my 5s was slowly failing.

Got a link to the video? I don't think I've missed anything, because the explanatory text below the "always point the map in the direction of travel" option rather implies that it's always like that when using a route, but if I'm wrong I'll be happy

You haven't missed anything, you are correct, you cannot have north up when following a route. It is raised on the [url= https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wahoo-elemnt-users ]Elemnt Google Group[/url] it was something I thought I couldn't live without and I've actually totally got used to it.

I have zero issues with the Elemnt (Bolt in my case). Been using it a few months now and it's been brilliant. I don't miss my Garmin 1000 one bit, and that's after using Garmins for about 10 years. I no longer need to be an apologist for Garmin's faults just because I own one...

Thanks for clearing up re always north with routes.

Daft question - why would you what it to always point north. My brain couldn't cope with that!

Daft question - why would you what it to always point north.

For me I guess I'm just used to it and helps me to get my bearings if I am heading over to somewhere. If you know you want to get somewhere "west", well, head over to the left on the screen... Also easier for on-the-fly headwind avoidance 😉

As I say though, I've actually got used to it! YMMV

Daft question - why would you what it to always point north. My brain couldn't cope with that!

Because if I've planned a route, every second I've spent looking at that route it's been north up. The roads around it have been displayed north up. Every time I look at a map it's north up. When I get my phone out to look at a diversion it's north up. I can visualise everything easily if it's north up because everything is north up. I can look at the tiny screen and know exactly where the current section fits into a long route, but only if it's north up.

Everyone's different 😉 Just seems odd to enforce only one way of working when using a route.