Cheap Ant+ Speed Sensor?

bungle73

Is there any downside to buying cheap Chinese ones from eBay? I want to purchase a sensor for my Garmin, and I've seen some being sold on eBay for a lot less then the official Garmin one. Is it worth it?

jlloyd

How much are the chinese ones?

Wiggle are doing a lifeline speed & cadence for £22.50 at the moment - a better bet?

bungle73

JLloyd wrote:

How much are the chinese ones?

Wiggle are doing a lifeline speed & cadence for £22.50 at the moment - a better bet?

£12.33 + £2.99 p&p

I looked at the one you mention, but it looks like it is the old style that uses magnets, where as the one I'm looking at attaches to the hub, like the Garmin version.

I have seen someone selling the Garmin sensor second hand for £20 on eBay. Do you think I would be better off with that?

jlloyd

probably better off with the garmin but it depends on how 'second hand' it is

What are you going to use it for?

I have a speed and cadence sensor with magnets, a little bulky, but only use on it the turbo trainer. I rely on garmin gps for speed on the road, never had any problems.

bungle73

JLloyd wrote:

probably better off with the garmin but it depends on how 'second hand' it is

What are you going to use it for?

I have a speed and cadence sensor with magnets, a little bulky, but only use on it the turbo trainer. I rely on garmin gps for speed on the road, never had any problems.

Just on the road bike for better accuracy.

The description reads "Lightly used and in excellent working condition." and the guy has a 100% feedback rating, of 366 transactions.

jlloyd

Completely up to you mate - seller seems legit

bungle73

I decided to pay safe and picked up the Garmin one. What I was wondering in my op was are these the sorts of things where it doesn't matter which ones you get, or the sort of thing where its best to stick to branded types, ie is the Chinese likely to go wrong, or not work properly. That's the trouble with that sort of stuff on eBay, there are no reviews so you can see how other people got on with the product.

the_chief15

I bought cheap Chinese speed and cadence from eBay, accurate enough but the speed sensor died after about 6 weeks.

bungle73

the_chief15 wrote:

I bought cheap Chinese speed and cadence from eBay, accurate enough but the speed sensor died after about 6 weeks.

That's the sort of thing I was afraid of. I guess I made the correct choice then. The one I was looking at was a combined speed/cadence device (you set it to the one you wanted it to record).

Man Of Lard

I have a cheap Chinese pair of sensors on the turbo bike - work exactly like you'd expect. Again these are dual ANT+/BLE and switchable between speed & cadence. Magene is the brand (that nobody ever heard of)

bungle73

Man Of Lard wrote:

I have a cheap Chinese pair of sensors on the turbo bike - work exactly like you'd expect. Again these are dual ANT+/BLE and switchable between speed & cadence. Magene is the brand (that nobody ever heard of)

I looked up the Magene and it looked exactly the same as the one I was looking at, only much more expensive. The one I had in mind wasn't branded.

Man Of Lard

They were £9.something delivered around December last year...

bungle73

Man Of Lard wrote:

They were £9.something delivered around December last year...

The one I saw on Amazon was being sold for around £20 (or ~£30 for a pair), as opposed to ~£15 on eBay. TBH I didn't even search for it on Amazon, it just came up when I was looking for something else.

Man Of Lard

Ah, I used Aliexpress

super_davo

I found this on Gearbest.

http://www.gearbest.com/bike-computers/ ... AmUI8P8HAQ

£9.54 delivered.

My Garmin speed sensor is garbage - keeps on dropping signal, which then makes my head unit auto pause; so stopped using it and just rely on on GPS. But at £9.50, that's tempting.