Best Bike GPS 2024 for under 500 Deep-Dive Comparison

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This is your complete bike computer comparison  between the Garmin Edge 840, the Hammerhead Karoo 3 and   the Wahoo ROAM V2. I've been putting these units  through their paces over the last...well quite a   long while in fact, but in particular here in the  island of Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands doing   epic climbs, epic rides, epic everything on this  bike with these three head units. To figure out   all the differences, and where they work well, and  where they maybe differ quite a bit. The tourism   board of Gran Canaria actually reached out and  offered to sponsor this video, but more about them   of course a little bit later on in the video. For  now though, I've got a whole bunch of different  

topic areas I want to cover on this and so for  that let's jump back over to the desk so I have   things a little more organized... So here we are with  the very first section, which is the pricing. In   this case here are the prices on the screen right  there. The thing to keep in mind is that these are   all in the general ballpark, also keep in mind  the Garmin Edge 840 has two different versions:  One without solar, and one with solar. The solar one  simply extends the battery life using the solar on  

the outside edge there. That is the only difference  between these models that are identical from a   feature and functionality standpoint. Next up we  got another quickie which is the mounts that   are included in the boxes, there. All three of these  include mounts that are out front mounts which is   nice. Most by computers do today, and in the case of  both the Garmin, as well as the Hammerhead mounts,   you can also mount a GoPro or something like  that below that mount if you buy an accessory   for it. It's not included in the box unfortunately  but you can put either bike lights or GoPro's or  

action cameras whatever you want on the underside  there. In the case of the Wahoo mount, it's got a   so-called 'aero mount' so it's more aerodynamic  and thus you can't mount anything on the bottom   there but it is more aerodynamic in theory than  the other two in fact years ago I even actually   arot tested Wahoo's Arrow mount in a wind tunnel  check out that video up in the corner okay so next   up we've got the display touchcreen and kind of  general usability of that display as you can see   there's three different types of displays here in  the case of the Hammerhead crew you've got more   of like a cell phone type display in the case of  the Garmin you've got less colors but still very   very visible uh it's not quite that cell phone  look to it and in the case of the waho you got   even less usage of those colors in the different  display elements in terms of seeing these three   units outside in both sunny conditions as well  as night conditions and literally everything in   between there's no real problems on any of these  they're all perfectly fine that said I've seen   some comments say that the Hammerhead has like  the clearest or most visible display out there   and honestly it simply doesn't it is not hard to  see just be very clear about this it is perfectly   fine to see but if you were to objectively look  at these three displays from the view of a py   list uh you'll find that in super bright sunny  conditions like I've been riding in the Canary   Islands and other places you'll find that the  Hammerhead crew isn't quite as visible off angle   when you're looking directly straight down at  it like like this camera above me here uh it is   more clear but as you pull back the same position  that you'd be riding a bike that's when you start   to see some of those minor differences there again  it's not really a big deal going to the other end   of a spectrum at nighttime also no problems with  any of the three units I saw some complaints that   said that the crew was just way too bright and  things like that at night honestly hasn't been   an issue riding at night with it it's perfectly  fine and viewable and especially if you switch   it over to dark mode uh but again it's just not  like a too bright sort of thing and inversely the   other two are perfectly fine too so then what  about the touchcreen well in the case of the   Wahoo doesn't have a touchcreen so that makes  that easy in the case of both the Garmin and   the Hammerhead no problems even in dumping rain  I did a test here with the crew out in dumping   rain while I'm running along it's part of my full  review zero problems there and the same goes for   the Garment I did a test when that first released  showing in the rain as well and no problems with   the newer touchcreen on the Garin ed40 compared to  some of their past units so then the last item is   what about responsiveness in terms of the user  interface and lag and things like that in the   case of the Wahoo it's pretty good you could  rotate through stuff there's definitely some   delay there but it's not too bad if I look at  the Garmin I can tap into things it definitely   feels the fastest of the three uh looking at  the Hammerhead it's certainly the slowest of   the three and probably the best example is just  simply swiping down you can just see there's just   a lot of lag Ross the board there that said when  you're out riding like once you open up the ride   screen there and get in the ride this swiping left  and right is pretty efficient in all this there's   no problems there it's just pulling down from the  top there that tends to be slow and tends to get   slower as the ride goes on uh versus when I'm in  a ride here again no problems like this and then   simply swipe down it's instant to go through those  pages the point of this section though is to not   worry about this section all three are fine in  the sun all three are fine in the dark all three   are fine in between all those three things all  three have a perfectly usable screen touchcreen   scenario uh and all three of them are fine while  you're rotting swiping between data Pages don't   overthink this section despite what the internet  might tell you the next question is what about   the ease of use and the usability of the three  devices there are some people that want a super   easy to use device without a lot of features and  some people that want all the features I think   all three companies would agree that Garmin has  the most features and even if they don't agree   there's just no competition there they have the  most features but as you add more features this   is true of any software platform out there you  have to intrinsically increase complexity to   deal with all those features and Garmin has of  course increased that complexity over time does   that mean the Garment unit is harder to use no it  just means there's more menus and things to dig   around into and more places you can get lost  finding those features for daily riding it's   pretty straightforward you just tap it and you  start riding like it's not that hard just like   it's true for the Wahoo as well start ride just  press start it's as simple as that and also in   the case of the Hammerhead you want to ride you  just either press the yellow button right there   or press this and then press the yellow button  all three devices are pretty easy to use you just   simply tap and start going and when it comes to  the core functions all three devices are easy to   use there as well and one of those core functions  is going to be the differences in the data pages   and data fields all three devices have pretty much  every data field you want on there so things like   your speed and distance and time and ascent and  calories and all that kind of stuff all of them   are all there not a problem there where you start  to see some of the differences on them is some of   the graphical data Pages things like the charts  and stuff like that Hammerhead and Garmin tend to   have more of those natively built in versus huahoo  doesn't have as many of the different graphics and   charts on the unit itself while you're riding on  the flip side one feature that Wahoo does have   that the others don't is the ability to instantly  increase or decrease the number of data fields on   a single Data Page just by pressing the up and  down one so you essentially can order your most   important field in this case my power average over  3 seconds and then you can say you know what my   second most important third most important and so  on all the way down to your total list there you   still have multiple Pages by just simply tapping  the page button there but it does allow you to   change kind of the focus area mid rde if you want  to again some people really like that some people   just simply never use it uh it gives you that  flexibility there and on the flip side Garmin also   has their connect IQ Data fields and data pages  and apps that we'll talk about a little bit later   on but that allows you to expand out all those  data fields as well with thirdparty apps that are   almost always free that said one thing of note is  that Wahoo lacks any sort of bike profile concept   so like Road biking versus gravel biking versus  mountain biking which means that that's not going   to feed into straa either uh and for some people  again that won't matter but if you have multiple   bikes in particular if you have multiple biking  genres that you do and you want different data   Pages or data fields for that the lack of that on  Wahoo continues to stand out compared to virtually   every other bike computer out there on the market  today now we get to the most complicated of all   the sections uh there is a lot of nuance here in  this next one which is mapping and navigation so   let's just start off how they're the same and  then we'll dive into the differences first off   all three offer mapping and navigation so on the  mapping side all three offer free downloadable   maps pretty much of every country in the world  so there's not really any problems there how you   download those Maps differ slightly on different  units uh but at the end of the day you can get   maps onto the unit and they include them for  free no matter where you are in the world so   then we get on to actually navigating something  and navigating comes in a couple different forms   one being downloading a route somewhere so from  straa Kimu to rivo GPS Etc uh two being that you   just instantaneously want to go somewhere you put  a dot over there and say I want to go to this Dot   somewhere across town or the city or whatever the  case may be and then three being navigating back   home somewhere so if you say I want to return  to my starting point or return to my home Point   again all three of these do that just fine then  we get to the question of rerouting on the Fly   you're going down the road you miss a turn how do  all three of these different units deal with that   and the answer is they deal with it just fine  they reroute you based on the maps they have in   the unit does not require internet connectivity  and you'll basically catch up somewhere down the   road on that particular route I've been putting  that through this pce over the last little while   and I haven't had any failures from any of these  three uh their internal routing engines are very   very good these days and all three companies have  grown up and really kind of nailed the art of that   so the question is where are those differences  well the first one is actually going to be the   map styling and the user interface itself as  you're seeing on the screen right now they are   different map Styles and how they look and I find  in general I actually prefer Hammerhead styling   uh you can see there that bright section that  orangey color that is the heat maps that are based   on sunos heat map map data now depending on where  you are in the world you're going to get varying   levels of success with that uh if you're in Europe  or a lot of the US you're going to probably have   pretty good luck with that in other places where  sunto heat map data isn't as strong perhaps parts   of Australia uh it's not going to be as good it  just depends on how many suto users are out there   cuz that's where that data comes from so when you  look at on the unit it makes it super clear as to   where people are actually rotting with my route  overlay on top of that garment also has their   own popularity routing data which is arguably a  much better data set than any that Hammerhead has   the display of that data doesn't tend to be like  super awesome it kind of gets lost in the shule   of everything meanwhile the Wahoo one tends to  be the most minimalist with what it displays on   the display from a mapping standpoint really  just focused on here's your route and here's   the main road that around you it kind of like just  gets rid of all the Clutter everywhere else again   it's all kind of what you want from a personal  preference standpoint the other big difference   between the three of them is when you want to  go Rogue with the unit itself uh meaning that   you have no planned routes you have uh no like  anything else you just want it to tell you to go   do something so in the case of Garmin you can say  hey I want a 50 km ride and it'll go out and give   you a 50 km ride based on all that heat map data  and generally speaking those rides are very very   good you can even tell I want to go to the west or  the east or the South or whatever you want uh and   in my experience those tend to be very good rides  in the case of both Hammerhead and Wahoo you can't   do that at all likewise only Garmin has a point  of Interest database on there where you can search   for things like bike shops and restrooms and water  shops and coffee shops and all that kind of stuff   on the Fly uh versus the other unit you'd have to  use your phone to find the exact location or know   the name of the thing you're going to in order  to route to it meaning if you were to sum up   this entire section if you've got a planned route  from stra cud or something like that you're not   going to see much difference between them what you  do tend to see the differences is if you're just   doing ad hoc routing on the Fly uh that's where  the Garin is going to give you more ability to   do that uh without any sort of connectivity  versus the other two will require some sort   of connectivity from your phone to be able to do  that kind of planning on the fly now one you're   probably likely to use the navigation features  the most is when you are traveling so let's swing   back into the port for a real quick second now  as I mentioned earlier on this video is actually   sponsored by the grand Canary tourism Board of  course I've been coming here like I said for   about a decade riding running hiking like doing  all the sporty things in fact this past weekend   my wife raced here she did the challenge family  triathon great event for the entire family we   went out here the kids cheered all day long from  the swim to the bike to the run and when they had   enough cheering then I got them ice cream and of  course after that they just simply played on the   Beast for a while while watching her race she won  her age group by the way from a cyclist standpoint   there's of course epic rides here you can do  really long rides I've done 5 six plus 7h hour   rides in the past but it's also great for a lot of  shorter rides too like yesterday morning after the   family and I finished our breakfast they headed  to the pool and I just simply head up into the   mountain SP about 2 and 1 half hour ride nothing  too crazy in the cool Parts there's tons of other   sports here to do as well I was out doing a lot  of running and hiking and an absolute boatload of   swimming I've swam every single day at least twice  a day out doing testing of GPS watches making a   great place to escape to in the fall winter and  spring cuz you don't need a coat or anything like   that for any your activities but in the highly  unlikely event that you do get bad weather the   hotel I'm staying at back there actually has two  Kicker bikes in there I'm not kidding two Kicker   bikes with whift the whole thing is absolutely  insane maybe I'll do just a video on that just   because I've never had a hotel have kicker bikes  and that's pretty darn cool and of course the food   is good too which is like the two things you  need as a cyclist uh anyways definitely check   out island of grand Canary if you're looking  for a place to escape to as an athlete it is   a pretty awesome spot okay so what about climbing  and climb related metrics uh so when you're going   up a mountain uh obviously I did a ton of that in  Grand Canaria and in this case I'm using the climb   Pro equivalencies on each these three units they  all call them different things but it's the same   general concept of showing you information about  that climb automatically and for all three units   they do this both for Planned routes as well  as on the fly so if you're just rotting along   without any planned route and you're going up a  hill it'll be like hey I know where the top of   this climb is automatically here's your distance  to the top of the climb here is the uh average   incline both upcoming as well as total left here  is your total altitude left to go to the top all   that is pretty good and in my testing all these  three did very very similar across the board uh   Hammerhead has improved the European Maps back  a couple months ago and that does seem to have   made a pretty good difference in the upcoming  elevation gradient numbers so like 8% 7% Etc being   more accurate in Europe or in the past it was  really pretty like random sometimes as to when it   was accurate so then looking at a different sort  of segment what about straval live segments all   three of them support straval live segments that  means that if you have a Strava premium account   or basically a paid account uh they'll pull in  those Strava live segments that you favored it   and then show you your progress on that segment  against your competitors or against the K Etc now   while all three have this feature there are some  notable differences in this case Hammerhead for me   easily Takes the Cake uh one both Hammerhead and  Wahoo support multiple concurrent segments meaning   that you can have two or three segments that are  overlapping showing up at the same time you just   simply tab through them Garmin only supports one  segment at a time being shown that really notable   on sometimes those big climbs where you may have  different segments some to the very top some do   like a turnoff Point Etc that you just simply  would not see in the case of Garmin now if straa   life segments aren't your jam don't worry you can  disable it across all three of them no problems at   all uh so it'll never show you any of that at all  so continuing to dig deeper what about structured   workouts all three of these do support structured  workouts so the ability to have a pre-planned   workout that comes from some sort of training  platform like training Peaks or train a road all   three of them do support that Wahoo also supports  their own system platform as well for pulling in   workouts from that and then Garmin supports every  other platform on the planet and this is one of   those things where this is where you see the  big difference uh for Garmin if you don't have   training Peaks or trainer road because they have  final Surge and exert and again like literally   dozens and dozens of different companies out there  push structure workouts to Garmin then when it   comes to actually doing that workout outside you  can see some of the side by side right here I find   that both the Garmin and Wahoo implementations  really understand the structured workout   mindset of an athlete and how that is supposed to  work Hammerhead doesn't seem like they understand   that they're just missing some core data fields  and data pages when you're actually doing that   workout that you want to know and the display  of those Target ranges is just really weird   uh see even Wahoo agrees right there uh still  the Hammerhead has been adding and making some   changes to the structure workout even the last  firmer update two weeks ago so they do seem to be   listening to the feedback from basically everyone  on that and hopefully they'll be able to address   some of those gaps here soon lastly for lack of  any where else to stick this Garmont also has   their power guide feature which kind of fits into  structure training in a way power guide allows you   to go ahead and load up a race course the actual  file like a GPS file uh of a route that you may be   doing from there it will give you the actual power  targets for each chunk of that particular route   so a different Power Target when you're going  up a climb and then based on a climb gradient   it'll change those power targets and so on uh and  you can adjust that in real time as well neither   other unit has that so it's something to keep in  mind if you want that kind of feature the next   category is things like physiological metrics and  this will be a relatively straightforward category   because there's only one company that has it  Garmin neither Hammerhead or Wahoo have any sort   of physiological metric so things like training  load training recovery training status load Focus   all those kind of various stamina Etc uh those  are all things that are only on the Garmin unit   that Wahoo and hammerhead haven't even tried to  touch likewise only Garmin will actually give you   suggested workouts so if you want to put a Fondo  on your unit uh it'll tell you which workouts to   do every single day basically give you a coaching  plan uh for that particular either race that you   have the other two don't do that same goes for  having a complete calendar of your upcoming   workouts and all that kind of stuff that's only  on the Garment side now a lot of people don't care   about that at all and that's perfectly fine but  it is a pretty big differentiating factor between   Garmin and the other units if that is a feature  that you care about speaking of physiological   metrics one that kind of get grouped into that  is Crash detection uh neither of the other two   units have it only Garmin has crash detection so  if you do crash in the case of grar it'll notify   your friends and family automatically uh that way  can call for help or something like that versus   the other two units will just shrug and kind of  laugh at you so next up what about battery life   uh now all three of these have the claim battery  life on the sheet right there that you can see but   let's talk about real world battery life now  certainly if we look at those claim specs we   would see that the hammer has the least amount  followed closely by Wahoo and then Garmin is   just way beyond their competitors reality check  from the real world that's pretty much the way it   works out as well here is a battery chart from one  ride right there showing my actual data from that   ride the Hammerhead ended up about 12 1/2 hours  the Wahoo ended up about 23 or so hours and the   Garmin was on track for 32 hours of battery life  all three units were configured the exact same   in terms of like brightness levels as well as  sensors connected and all that kind of goodness   so they're pretty even across the board so you  can get even more battery life if you want to   especially in the case of the Garmin you can not  only decrease the display brightness which tends   to be the biggest driver of battery consumption on  these three devices but also decreasing down from   multiband or dual frequency GPS to a more basic  GPS uh set setting for areas that don't have a   lot of GPS complexity will drastically increase  your battery life okay so next up we got sensor   connectivity how do they handle connecting things  like power meters and heart rate straps and all   that kind of stuff all three of them support  pretty much all the majors that you can see   right there all that stuff is covered of both  amp Plus and Bluetooth smart now the elephant   in the room is that the Hammerhead crew 3 does not  support Shimano di2 displaying that stats uh I've   covered that in my entire review that's a big old  like thing where Shimano has basically blocked and   banned and hammerhead from supporting that despite  every other device on the planet supporting it   just fine I don't know if that's going to change  there is a third party app called ki2 which you   can download and install on your Hammerhead crew  device but that's not yet available for the crew   3 once it is then that solves a problem for you  it's available for the crew 2 already so it's   not a problem there uh but right now it's not  yet available for the crew 3 beyond that there   are a crap ton of other sensors out there that  are somewhat Fringe but if you've got one then   you probably want that connectivity that are large  only supported on the Garmin platform via connect   IQ for example AOS sensors for time trial bikes  or things like that is only the Garmin side of   stuff so that then Segways nicely into thirdparty  Integrations and apps which basically has kind of   two layers to it the first is connectivity to  third party platforms like Strava and training   Peaks Etc all three got you covered there for  all the major platforms out there but as is the   common theme here if you get to a platform that's  not one of those top like 6 to 10 that's really   only going to talk to Garmin which connects to I'm  guessing hundreds if if not thousands of platforms   out there platforms you've never heard of and  will'll probably never hear of but if you're one   of the users of those platforms then you probably  want that connectivity so again you got to kind of   figure out what you want from there you get into  the actual apps that run the devices themselves uh   starting off on Wahoo doesn't support any apps  then you get to Hammerhead you can run Android   apps on this so you can put Spotify on there  or uh this whiff companion app and things like   that but those apps as of right now don't really  integrate with the rest of the Hammerhead data set   or kind of features there so they're really just  running on the side just like an Android phone   were and then you get to the Garment side of it  which of course has all of their entire connect   IQ platform for data pages and data fields and  standad apps and all that kind of stuff uh for   some people they'll never use any of that stuff  yeah other people might for other Integrations to   other sensors or displaying other data types or  recording other data types okay so next up we've   got the manufacturer provided phone and web and  kind of app Platforms in other words the things   that support these devices well all three of them  have apps for your devices but are drastically   different in the case of the Hammerhead crew  It app is basically just a connectivity straw   to the Internet it's a tunnel to the internet  for connectivity there is really no features   whatsoever in the app that you can actually  interact with you can't see like your ride totals   or things like that uh up from there you've got  Wahoo where you can see your ride totals and ride   stats you can change settings you can do quite a  bit you can do basically everything that you want   to do uh but then one layer from there is garmin's  app which has tons of trending and Reporting and   all the things in the world that you want some  might argue way too many things but those things   do exist there and thus you have to at least  consider that it has way more features from an   app stpoint a native app standpoint anyways than  the other two on the website side of things Wahoo   doesn't actually have a consumer facing website  so that makes that easy Hammerhead does have a   website that you can look at your past rides just  at an individual level you can't do like trending   over months or things like that uh but you can go  ahead and plan routs there and the route planner   is very good allows you to go ahead and pull  in files as well as uh URLs from major route   platform so that all works pretty well and then in  the Garment side again a massive web platform that   is just well beyond the other two ultimately you  see three different philosophies from the three   different companies Garmin aims for the holistic  philosophy of they're going to cover everything   that you might need you can get it from garmon for  free within their app their website everything all   that kind of stuff is covered uh Wahoo kind of  straddles the middle ground there of they want   to provide you all those core functions and then  Farm out the rest to thirdparty platforms so if   you want more in-depth analysis of your rides then  go off to trending Peaks or something like that   and then Hammerhead is really just focused on the  device itself uh yes they have the web platform   for planning a route but that mostly comes from  Hammerheads history on the routing side once you   get beyond that routing area there's just really  no other features at all except for things on the   device itself okay so the last section then  is GPS accuracy as well as elevation accuracy   and I'm happy to report all three of them are  great all three of them have multiband or dual   frequency GPS all three of them have very solid  altimeters the Hammerhead crew 3 got it updated   altimeter there and I haven't had any problems  from a sensing standpoint on my rides with these   units I did have a single ride in the case of the  crew where did not correctly do its calibration   at the beginning of the ride Hammerheads looking  into that software bug but that wasn't a sensor   issue that was just the software didn't do the  calibration it was supposed to the beginning of   the ride and thus its altimeter data was offset  from the rest of the ride in my written review   though I go into tons and tons of data sets  from all three of those units if you want to   look at that data more deeply okay there you go a  complete look at every single feature difference   keep in mind my written review of this also dies  even more deeply into some of the stuff I just   couldn't possibly cover without this video being  like an hour long but again all three units are   great you're going to be happy with any of these  three units it just depends on which portion of   which feature is most important to you and then  from that just look back at all these different   sections and figure out uh which unit does it  the best for your particular needs as always if   you found this video interesting or useful just  give it a like at the bottom there or subscribe   for plenty more Sports technology goodness there  is it's going to be a busy June have a good one

2024-06-02

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