Which gps and speed cadence setup?

[Hudson1984]

Hi all,

So, recently back in the saddle and this time round, wifey is interested too.

We’re 90% turbo based, mainly as we’ve a young child and until he’s up for riding around too our riding needs to work around him and obviously it’s not great parenting to leave him in bed whilst we nip out for a few hours 😅😅

So, once a month is going to be our designated trip out, nothing major really, more for enjoyment than anything. Now we’ve both got wahoo powr pedals which are great on the turbo but I’m not really confident to be able to unclip in a hurry if I needed to put my foot down and wife is the same.

I’m sure we’ll get there with them but in the meantime we want to use flats and normal training shoes, no not the most efficient setup but hey, again, it’s a ride out for enjoyment rather than full efficiency.

So, I’m wondering what’s a good gps setup? I used to have a garmin unit, with garmin speed and cadence sensors and that was great, really liked having turn by turn gps and making routes on komoot. But hoped there had been some new developments in the last 5 years, and don’t want to buy wahoo just to match if there’s a better option to use

 

[13 rider]

The 2 big players are Garmin and wahoo most people sit in one camp or the other ,me I'm a wahoo fan .
If your just riding outdoor for leisure do you need a speed and cadence sensor . The GPS unit will do the speed ( apparently slightly less accurately than a speed sensor) and do you look at cadence when leisure riding I don't .
Navigation both wahoo and Garmin link to sites like kommot and ridewithgps were you plan your route and provide turn by turn on a map screen .

 

[Hudson1984]

That’s a good point, I’ve always had speed and cadence but on an actual ride I never really look at the cadence and in reality our pace will be set by my wife and that’s totally fine. So that’s really true, ignore that bit. The gps alone will be fine (saves me £100 too at not getting it for both bikes)

Komoot is what I’m used to, just makes a tea break fun planning a route and loading it up.

Probably stick with wahoo as everything else I have is wahoo

 

[Ming the Merciless]

What new developments did you want to see?

 

[13 rider]

For plenty of reviews on all GPS search for DC rainmaker

 

[Dogtrousers]

I used to have a garmin unit, with garmin speed and cadence sensors and that was great, really liked having turn by turn gps and making routes on komoot. But hoped there had been some new developments in the last 5 years, and don’t want to buy wahoo just to match if there’s a better option to use

I'd say that over the past 5 years the main changes have been that they have put more powerful processors in the units and ironed out kinks in the user experience and integration with mobile apps.

So, compared with your Garmin of 5 years ago (and depending on which model it was) you'll find that the routing is slicker and it doesn't take so long sitting saying "calculating". More memory means more room for maps so less/no faff getting the right maps on your unit. You may have had a unit that required plugging in to a PC to upload rides/download routes. This will all be done via Bluetooth to a phone app now.

If you were to go down the Wahoo route you'd have an app-focused user interface which is more friendly and less fiddly than the Garmin menus.

So I'd say it hasn't fundamentally changed much, it's just become a bit quicker, less faffy and enabled you to be a bit lazier.

 

[Hudson1984]

cheers for the replies, I went with the Wahoo option, I like the linking to komoot and being able to sync with my phone etc, so I can plan maps on the pc and link it all really easily.