GPS cycle computer for navigation - recommendations?

[Webbo2]

The Coospo CS600 gets great reviews everywhere. Simple navigation, bright touch screen, good battery life blah blah

I’m generally trying to resist electronic / technology ‘clutter’ on my rides (And only normally doing max of 50 mile: loops - I don’t need one). That and I’m c^*p with: and get easily frustrated with modern electronic Tech.

BUT: I feel I should for the occasional longer ride, group rides where I become leader. And I’d like possibly stretch out my riding distances a bit more next year.

I’d also like to maximise my limited cycling / turn some of my rides into Training rides - and link them in to a HR monitor. *Mainly to make my slow rides - properly Z2 slow……🙄

At £100 and change for the head unit, couple of extra out front mounts, a HR monitor, silicone cover etc - I feel I should have tried my luck long ago as it would seem to be a very cheap introduction to GPS navigation……. 🤷‍♂️

Why not just get a unit that does everything GPS, Heart rate, power, cadence and so on. Yes it will cost more but your bars are not going to be cluttered up.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

BUT: I feel I should for the occasional longer ride, group rides where I become leader. And I’d like possibly stretch out my riding distances a bit more next year.

As long as you know the route (and alternates for closed roads) there is no need for GPS when leading rides. Important bit is you know the lay of the land, which usually means doing a test run by yourself a few days to a week ahead. I have had leaders on group rides, who did not really know the route, and were relying too much on their GPS.

 

[Bass Culture]

Any ‘updates’ (Pardon the pun) on how the Unit is working out for you ?

Hi, yes indeed. I finally took it out with me on a 28 mile loop around the Wirral that I'm already fairly familiar with. I was initially flummoxed as I was careering along the Shropshire Union Canal towpath towards Ellesmere Port, by the fact that the display seemed to present as 'true north' in terms of routing, rather than showing you turns as they appear in front you. However, this was easily corrected by simply tapping the compass symbol itself. The navigation screen display also includes current speed and distance to go - fine by me, so I didn't adjust and therefore can't comment on how easy it might be to customise the display to your own preferences. You can also expand the display to navigate more intricate sections of the route more easily by tapping the screen to bring up + and - signs and adjusting the scale as required. This was as much as I did and it worked well for me. I need to go out now on a route I'm not familiar with, which I'll I'll be doing next week when my sister and I are doing three days around Suffolk. So far though it looks as though it's going to be entirely fit for my somewhat rudimentary purposes. It can probably do a good deal more than I'm presently asking it to, I've no doubt. Likewise, I suspect there's other units that will offer more comprehensive specs and data, but I just don't need all that. The Bryton 650 appears to do everything I need it to do, and well enough, so I'm not looking at anything else for now.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

As long as you know the route (and alternates for closed roads) there is no need for GPS when leading rides.

Garmin of several years ago used to treat a route as a "ride every inch" target were divert for a road closed and it would navigate you back to the closure rather than just return you to a sensible point on the route. Then updates improved its dynamic re-routing.

But recent firmware has become "terrible" again (being polite). eg this summer in Netherlands came to a "Road Closed" and turned a sensible way and Garmin recalculated and navigated me through several turns 1½ miles away from the closure, round amore turns and back to the closure again! Given that in the Netherlands they maintain their roads, I came across a fair few closures and soon learnt best to stop Garmin recalculating and zoom the map out to find an easy detour.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Garmin of several years ago used to treat a route as a "ride every inch" target were divert for a road closed and it would navigate you back to the closure rather than just return you to a sensible point on the route. Then updates improved its dynamic re-routing.

But recent firmware has become "terrible" again (being polite). eg this summer in Netherlands came to a "Road Closed" and turned a sensible way and Garmin recalculated and navigated me through several turns 1½ miles away from the closure, round amore turns and back to the closure again! Given that in the Netherlands they maintain their roads, I came across a fair few closures and soon learnt best to stop Garmin recalculating and zoom the map out to find an easy detour.

A bike GPS has a different job to a car Satnav - which just keeps routing towards the destination. But what does a bike GPS do if you go off route?
Rejoin the route as soon as possible? Maybe. That's a good idea if the rider has just taken a wrong turn, but it won't be much use if there's a road closure or bridge out or something.
Forget the route and re-route directly to destination like a Satnav? Maybe, but probably not because there will be parts of the route later on that the rider wants to ride.
Rejoin the route in a bit when reasonably practical? Hey, I'm just an algorithm! be more precise!

This is one of those cases where you have to engage ye olde human brain. What I do is try to ride in a direction that I feel is parallelling the original route, and keep an eye on the map. Eventually it gets the message.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

A bike GPS has a different job to a car Satnav - which just keeps routing towards the destination. But what does a bike GPS do if you go off route?
Rejoin the route as soon as possible? Maybe. That's a good idea if the rider has just taken a wrong turn, but it won't be much use if there's a road closure or bridge out or something.
Forget the route and re-route directly to destination like a Satnav? Maybe, but probably not because there will be parts of the route later on that the rider wants to ride.
Rejoin the route in a bit when reasonably practical? Hey, I'm just an algorithm! be more precise!

This is one of those cases where you have to engage ye olde human brain. What I do is try to ride in a direction that I feel is parallelling the original route, and keep an eye on the map. Eventually it gets the message.

When Garmin went through their "better" firmware releases it would reroute to a sensible distance along the original route eg when arriving at closure you head off in a sensible direction for a short distance and it would recalculate to get you back to the route maybe a miles or so further along but if you didn't take that option recalculate a bit further along the route, etc. and it worked well. But recent releases seem to have reverted to "ride every inch" which is the worst of all worlds.

Were I specifying the functionality then there's room on the screen for a few large buttons "Diverted because" with eg "Route Blocked" or "My mistake" and select "Route Blocked" and 2nd set of buttons "Reroute to" with eg "1 mile on", "2 miles on", "Destination" (or something along those lines).

 

[Dogtrousers]

@nogoodnamesleft I like your idea of "Reroute to".

TBH this hasn't happened to me recently so I'm not sure what my current device, an Edge 830, would do. My 530 used to say "make a U turn". Regardless of what you were doing, or which direction you were going in, or whether you had indeed just made a U turn, it decided that if you made a U turn then eventually things would be all right.

When this happened I would take over navigation duties until it felt better about itself.

 

[sevenfourate]

Why not just get a unit that does everything GPS, Heart rate, power, cadence and so on. Yes it will cost more but your bars are not going to be cluttered up

I think you’re misunderstanding. When I say HR monitor - I mean the ability to connect a band on my arm to my ride effectively via the GPS Unit; and get the applicable HR data. Not a separate device. I’ve never seen anyone do that ever..……

 

[Webbo2]

I think you’re misunderstanding. When I say HR monitor - I mean the ability to connect a band on my arm to my ride effectively via the GPS Unit; and get the applicable HR data. Not a separate device. I’ve never seen anyone do that ever..……

If it’s a band on your arm it’s likely to inaccurate. Chest strap all the way.😎

 

[ColinJ]

If it’s a band on your arm it’s likely to inaccurate. Chest strap all the way.😎

My smartwatch HR readings are pretty good between 40 bpm and about 130 bpm, but higher than that and it tends to under-read. I use a Coospo chest strap, which has been 100% reliable. When I am going flat out, the watch thinks that I have 20 bpm in reserve, but the reading from the strap confirms what I already know - that am close to or at my limit!

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

My smartwatch HR readings are pretty good between 40 bpm and about 130 bpm, but higher than that and it tends to under-read. I use a Coospo chest strap, which has been 100% reliable. When I am going flat out, the watch thinks that I have 20 bpm in reserve, but the reading from the strap confirms what I already know - that am close to or at my limit!

I had a top of range Garmin watch at one point (for a few months). The HR recording when cycling was not good. Often an hour into a ride it would declare my HR down at levels I see resting watching TV in the evening so I'd really start pushing hard and it didn’t increase. In the end I got a Polar chest sensor on offer (cheap) and the Garmin watch was just wrong and went back to Garmin for full refund. Several other weird anomalies with it (eg glitches in "stamina") but almost certainly from data derived from the HR.

 

[PaulSB]

My smartwatch HR readings are pretty good between 40 bpm and about 130 bpm, but higher than that and it tends to under-read. I use a Coospo chest strap, which has been 100% reliable. When I am going flat out, the watch thinks that I have 20 bpm in reserve, but the reading from the strap confirms what I already know - that am close to or at my limit!

My Garmin watch was always 10 bpm faster than my Wahoo Trackr. My Xaomi watch is 1 bpm higher than the Trackr.

You can only be sure of this if you check it either by manually checking your pulse or using a medical grade blood pressure monitor which will take your pulse at the same time. My Wahoo chest strap always agrees with our BP monitor.

 

[blackrat]

As long as you know the route (and alternates for closed roads) there is no need for GPS when leading rides. Important bit is you know the lay of the land, which usually means doing a test run by yourself a few days to a week ahead. I have had leaders on group rides, who did not really know the route, and were relying too much on their GPS.

True, it's something like a small child still looking for a mummy's hand to hold when grown up. Around here it's drivers turning their car GPS's on to drive interstate motorways. Paper cue sheets for me if it is a new route (LEL tour coming up), memory if it is an old one.

 

[ColinJ]

You can only be sure of this if you check it either by manually checking your pulse or using a medical grade blood pressure monitor which will take your pulse at the same time. My Wahoo chest strap always agrees with our BP monitor.

I am sure that you are right, but TBH I don't need absolute accuracy, I just need consistency so I can adjust my efforts when I observe trends. Up in Yorkshire, I ride to power readings but keep an eye on my HR. Late into long, hard rides HR tends to drift up and when that happens I reduce my efforts to keep the HR sensible.

I don't have a power meter on my Devon bike so I ride by feel but watch the HR reading to make sure that I am not accidentally overdoing things.

 

[sevenfourate]

If it’s a band on your arm it’s likely to inaccurate. Chest strap all the way.😎

My Elite level Marathon runner Son would absolutely disagree with this blanket statement - I’m sure. And I wouldn’t think spends 15-20 hours a week Training: based on inaccurate input data from his arm band….

“likely” being VERY open ended.