Bike computer - Polar CS200cad or Cateye v3?

B.B.

I'm looking at either the Polar CS200cad or the Cateye v3 for my bike.

Need speed/distance, HR and cadence - and these two bits of kit seem to be the best things on the market for up to about £100. Whilst I'd love a fancy Garmin thing, I don't want to spend that much, and I have enough trouble with my Garmin Forerunner losing satellite in London when running that I DON'T want a GPS. (I could of course add a cadence metre to my forerunner 305, but as I say, I've had enough of the satellite trouble)

If anyone has any advice which of these two to get, it'd be much appreciated

Cheers

richa

Polar CS200cad is an excellent bit of kit.

Also the CS100cad is similar but cheaper (only stores the last workout so you have to note down after each session).

reverendmark

I found the Polar CS200cad very slow to respond to stop/start if you had it on the auto programme. The V3 starts up pretty much instantly.

Also, the Polar build quality is a bit flaky - it's easy to break off the small plastic tabs on the back of the computer.

The Polar does have an autolap function though - it's the only thing I really miss about it.

B.B.

Thanks guys, very helpful.

Jamey

I don't know about the Cateye computers but don't the Polar ones have some funny interface to get the data onto your PC? Like you have to hold it in front of the microphone and it records the noise and then de-scrambles (new word I just made up) it back into proper data?

That put me off when I read about it.

Two of the biggest reasons I went for a Garmin were actually nothing to do with GPS at all... The reasons were:

1) You can customize the screen any way you want with up to eight data slots. If you want the speed reading to be big and fill the whole screen, no problem. If you want eight little slots with eight different things (speed, cadence, HR, time, clock, average spoeed, etc etc) then that's do-able too. And if you want a big section at the top showing time, and then four smaller sections underneath with various other readings, that's also fine. I just really liked that level of customisation. And there are two screens, so you could have current readings on screen one and averages (for the whole trip) on screen two.

2) A proper USB interface with the computer. No pissing about holding it in front of a microphone while it makes farting noises that the computer interprets back into numbers.

B.B.

I've ordered the cateye v3 - will let you know how I get on

Cheers