Wahoo Elemnt

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LewisLondon

Well-Known Member
Location
SW London
Morning all!

Has anyone been one of the first to get one of these? They look brilliant (if a little overprice, maybe?), and could be genuine competition Garmin.

I'm just worried about the price/being a first adopter...
 

jdtate101

Ex-Fatman
Thought about it too as a replacement for my old garmin 800 (battery starting to lose it's ability to hold charge), but the only thing that stops me is the need to buy new mounts (non garmin compatible). I'd need 4 mounts in total (CX bike, Road Bike, TT bike & fixed gear). The bundle comes with 1 outfront and a TT mount, so I'd need to buy 2 more from Wahoo, and they only sell the k-edge as an optional extra at £40 per mount, so an additional £80 (total package slightly cheaper than buying a 1000 without bundle...and if I went for the 1000 I'd have to buy bigger mounts anyway)

I've used wahoo stuff for a while and it's good quality stuff, so I wouldn't be concerned about being an early adopter. The ELEMNT does look like a really nice unit & i love the following features:

BIG power and HR display for TT'ing (easy to see)
Basic mapping and navigation
Smaller footprint than the huge 1000
Ability to control my kickr
Visual queues for navigation and phone alerts

I'm going to sit on the fence a little longer to see some more 3rd party reviews, but so for I'm impressed and certainly dcrainmaker's review has me 90% convinced.
 

smutchin

Cat 6 Racer
Location
The Red Enclave
I've had a little play with one and first impressions are good - I like the way you can easily change which fields are displayed on the go. Based on the reviews, it will have to improve to replace my Edge 510 in my affections though.
 
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LewisLondon

Well-Known Member
Location
SW London
I've had a little play with one and first impressions are good - I like the way you can easily change which fields are displayed on the go. Based on the reviews, it will have to improve to replace my Edge 510 in my affections though.

Ah, so it's probably not even as good as the 520 then!

It's a bit disappointing there are so many bugs as I had high hopes. May hold off till they get turn by turn mapping, which would be brilliant!
 

jdtate101

Ex-Fatman
Took the ELEMNT for it's first proper ride today...

Couple of observations:

1) The setup is really easy and all done via the phone app.
2) You can store multiple sensors and rename them for ease of use, no bike profiles as it stands to reason you can only ride one at a time.
3) The screen is really sharp and contrasty, very easy to read in sunlight.
4) The LED's are quite cool. I've got the left hand ones set to HR zones and the top for notifications and GPS directions...it works really well.
5) I've asked if they can use the left hand LED's for FTP power (indicate above and below FTP) for TT's...apparently this is already in the works and is a killer feature for me. The ability to see if you are above or below pacing with a 1s glance will be awesome.
6) Not tried the Nav yet, but the unit does sync all my Strava routes instantly and the map with breadcrumbs is very clear.
7) I've found the Garmin branded mounts from my old 800 WILL work, as some of them have screws to hold in the replaceable quarter turn bit, you just unscrew turn it 90 degrees and re-screw.
8) I have 4 data screens set currently, but you can program more and there are over 100 metrics to choose from...all from the phone app.
9) It uploads data as a FIT file (garmin format) so can be used with multiple 3rd party sites and tools. If you want to browse the device filesystem, you need to download a desktop Android file transfer app, it doesn't mount as direct storage.
10) Cannot comment on battery life yet, but I estimate from today's ride I'll get about 12hrs. Wahoo have said further code optimizations will increase this as they find bugs.

So far I'm pretty happy with it. It seems to tick all my boxes so far and as a bonus I can use it to control my kickr when warming up for races (power the kickr off a 12v car feed). I'll still keep my old Garmin 800, but strictly as a unit for CX races where I don't care if it gets trashed.
 

smutchin

Cat 6 Racer
Location
The Red Enclave
You can change the fields on some Garmins on the go as well (e.g. the Edge 1000).

You can on the 510 too, but the way you do it on the Elemnt is much neater and more useful.
 

jdtate101

Ex-Fatman
Ok, I've had the device for a long time now and smashed out enough miles to give a better long term review of it. Up until recently it did have a HUGE bug in the firmware, it would lose connectivity to power meters, HR straps and spd/cadence sensors randomly...sometimes for a few secs other times forever. Many users were having these issues as it had to do with the antenna chipset firmware. Thankfully they've just released a new firmware that has resolved the issues for the vast majority, although some people are still having issues to do with signal strength on power meters (probably more to do with transmission power not the E sensitivity). We're still waiting for turn-by-turn directions (currently just a bread crumb type) and a few other major requests such as power zones, training workouts etc..., but the vast majority of the base functionality is solid now. I did a 200 mile ride with it last weekend and it did require topping up at each cafe stop, so the battery life is NOT the advertised 17hrs...more like 10hrs at best.

It's now stable enough for me to shove the 510 in a draw, only to be used for CX races. I know the Wahoo guys have a lot of stuff in the roadmap and are still pushing new features out the door at a rate of 1 or 2 releases per month, so within a short time period we should have everything that the 1000 can do plus a lot more...
 

Shut Up Legs

Down Under Member
Well, the 10 hour battery life has ruined it for me. I was considering buying one, but not if the battery life is that bad.
 

smutchin

Cat 6 Racer
Location
The Red Enclave
Well, the 10 hour battery life has ruined it for me. I was considering buying one, but not if the battery life is that bad.

It's not great is it, especially considering it doesn't even have a colour screen, which is always a big draw on a battery.

By contrast, I was out for over seven and a half hours on Sunday, with my Edge 510 running continuously (not switched off at stops, no autopause) and it still has 52% charge left.
 
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LewisLondon

Well-Known Member
Location
SW London
I did a 200 mile ride with it last weekend and it did require topping up at each cafe stop, so the battery life is NOT the advertised 17hrs...more like 10hrs at best.

Well, the 10 hour battery life has ruined it for me. I was considering buying one, but not if the battery life is that bad.

I'm interested, did you HAVE to recharge? Just because reading online it seems people get closer to 12-13 hours, and that although the battery shoots down at first, it seems to slow its rate of dropping after a while, so it lasts longer on a lower charge.
 

jdtate101

Ex-Fatman
I'm interested, did you HAVE to recharge? Just because reading online it seems people get closer to 12-13 hours, and that although the battery shoots down at first, it seems to slow its rate of dropping after a while, so it lasts longer on a lower charge.

I thought it wise to have that option given the likelihood for longer cafe stops, group mechanicals etc.. As it turned out the ride was 6am to 9pm, so would have been a struggle for the E to complete without a top up.
 

jdtate101

Ex-Fatman
BTW...Wahoo just released the Turn-by-turn firmware in the last few days. Not had the chance to test it out, but others are reporting good things, so it seems the functionality is now rushing towards a complete solution at last.
 
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