Garmin 1030 or Wahoo Elemt

I've owned 3 Garmin units in years past. I bought an Elemnt (not Bolt) a year ago and absolutely love it. For me, my cycling computer is just that - for cycling. I like the non-color display as it shows up in sun very well, shade just fine and isn't affected by polarized glasses. I really like the zoom feature for my metrics on one page and the Strava live segments work very well.

My sense is that the Garmin is likely better (pure speculation) at maps and directions. I have used my Elemnt several times when I wanted to ride a route I hadn't done before. I would draw the route in Strava and my Elemnt downloaded it just fine. The Elemnt is not so great at letting me know WHEN to turn but I was able to follow along on the map page pretty well. It worked fine but if you need a lot of navigation and directions while riding, Garmin may be a better choice.

Big pros for the Wahoo: Screen visibility in sun, ease of set-up from a smart phone, very simple to use, receives updates regularly.

Isn't the 1030 something like £300 more expensive then a Bolt, not £100? That's a serious chunk of money which can be spent on nice bike bits.

I love my Bolt but the 1030 does do more, it depends if things such as creating routes on the fly are important enough to you to spend £300 more.

You wont need the bundle if you already have heart rate monitors etc. Either will pick up what you have. I got a bolt 2 weeks ago after my Garmin 1000 started playing up.

For me, bolt plus points:
The bolt is substantially cheaper.
Battery life is way better.
I didnt like the button placement on the 1030 with them move to the bottom of the screen from the top where they are on the 1000. This would make them hard to operate with the already large unit being close to the bars.
It has a feel of a device that just works and needs less fiddling than my old Garmin (but thats because it does also appear basic in comparion, like an old Nokia compared to a Smartphone in some ways).

There are some things that bug me:
When minimizing the amoubt of data on the screen, after 3 fields it goes to 5 fields but leaves a blank space in the bottom left corner that could have easily had another field in it. I dont mind 5 fields. I dont like an empty space though!
I cant see my di2 battery without selecting the device and looking up the status. My garmin just had a field for this.
The live segment screen is a waste of time whilst you cant customise it. It wont show power. Really, whats the point in that!
I do find the screen harder to see compared to the Garmin screen, and I havent even had it in bright sun yet.
Getting mounts can be a problem if you are running any sort of integrated aero bars.
It needs wifi to upload. You cant really use this device without a phone, so why cant it just use the phones connection?

I am happy with my choice, primarily based on what I spent on the device but it wasnt the total revelation a lot of reviews make it out to be

Thing with Garmin is, that no matter how good the 1030 might be now, you can more or less guarantee they will cock it up with a firmware update sometime soon. Wahoo doesn't suffer with that repetitive problem like Garmin. The B&W display is clear as a bell in bright or dark lighting and fortunately for me, the hidden buttons on the Di2 shifters somehow get me additional pages that show the Di2 battery life. Its simple enough though to check your battery before you go out and takes 20 mins to charge it.

bendertherobot wrote:

I wonder that that Hammerhead is going to be be like...

I was going to suggest it could be worth waiting for that, considering high end bike computers should last quite a few years. However, I just checked out DCRainmakers most recent Hammerhead video on youtube and it still looks pretty buggy...that can always be improved but one thing he mentioned that I didn't realise was that it has no audible notifications. Might seem like a small thing to some but I find them really handy when navigating and don't want to be constantly checking the computer to make sure I haven't missed a turn, pretty much made it a no go for me.

Struggle to see how in any world a 1030 is good value @ £499 vs an Elemnt @ £249 or Bolt @ £199.

Given both Wahoos have worldwide mapping and miles better interface, you're just paying for a colour screen which isn't necessary anyway.

Segovia999 wrote:

I don't have a speed sensor with my Garmin but there is one available with the Wahoo, do I need one?

You don’t need one for outdoors riding as the Wahoo will use GPS. You can use one if you like, which offers a more robust speed signal than GPS through, for example, trees and tunnels. The speed sensor will be needed for a turbo.

I have the speed sensor because it came as a bundle with the HRM and cadence sensors, so I use, it. It is currently on the road bike but I keep meaning to swap it to the MTB to cover the tree thing, as a while back I kept losing GPS on a particularly tree-ey ride.