The present and future of cycling computers — will your bike computer soon be sensing when your performance drops off and telling you when to eat and drink? We asked Garmin, Wahoo and Hammerhead to find out what’s in store for GPS tech…
Last year, I reviewed a handful of e-bikes at the same time as I reviewed the Hammerhead Karoo II, and learnt a few new things: I was seduced by metrics like power, and a strangely addictive visual representation of which gear I was in .
Stephane added that their mantra was ‘Simply powerful.’ Just hearing this made a lot of my use of the Bolt V2 come into sharper focus. I’ve found it exactly that, a simple, yet replete computer, at which I’ve never become frustrated. When I asked about functions that were for the moment absent from their eco-system , their response reflected this core philosophy."We're making sure it just works…. it’s definitely on our radar and when we do it, expect an experience similar to the implementation we’ve done with radar products that is well thought through and intuitive for the rider."
All this intelligent combination of a broad gamut of data sounds brilliant, and the insights genuinely useful. So Wahoo, see their future as being more connected to more and more sensors, with the computers becoming more intelligent. "There is no technological limiting factor, we could build custom displays, but to justify a custom display and custom battery, you'd have to sell a lot more. That is tens of millions of dollars in R&D and tooling that this industry just can't afford.
If you’re a cycling content creator or someone else who needs to record your computer screen, not only does the Hammerhead do it, it’s the only computer that does. It’s this sort of different approach that allowed me to say it feels like we’re talking about non-competing products. However, somewhere in a room in Hammerhead HQ, they’re talking about what a Karoo III might look like in a few years time. Jess started off talking about their history as a lean start-up, right up to"We’re a product and engineering company who started out ‘lean’ by necessity, but the acquisition now gives us a ‘sense of stability,’ with ‘access to really smart people.
"You can’t design for the edges when you're starting out and you're a young kind of early-stage company, and the displays and screens of other products just didn’t meet the needs of riders, so we invested there. And yes, there is a trade-off to power that screen, that trade-off is battery." I’m with Jess here, and really don’t begrudge a more frequent recharging for all that joy that screen brings. Nonetheless, Hammerhead are looking at ways to help riders to mitigate these problems, like reminders when you're low on battery juice.
I personally would love to see a Karoo III with a companion app. Not because the Karoo II can’t do it all, but because I like to sit down off the bike with the big screen on my phone and get the setup perfect, and then press a button and shoot it across to my head unit, knowing I can update or tinker as needed on the computer itself.
last year. All the companies I spoke to talked kindly about one another, about working together and mutual benefit, so it comes across as a little petty on Shimano's part, especially with the advent of Ki2. Much like the mobile phone industry, cycling computers saw a race to miniaturisation, before a prompt about-face when the tech advancements brought new capabilities to these devices, and we wanted bigger screens., with more processing power than was used to put a man on the moon. As a celebration of the pinnacle of tech, I really want one, mostly just because it’s so clever and so ‘advanced’...
Perhaps the 1040 solar is a long-term money saver, obliterating your need to ever recharge it? Well, it has a 1800mAh battery, about the same capacity as an iPhone 8, which even at current electricity rates, would cost about 0.3 pence to charge.
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