For quite some time I’d been wanting to try out Wahoo’s take on GPS devices, with my focus firmly on navigation and not fitness data. So I finally sold my Edge 800 and bought a Bolt.

There always seems to be plenty of interest in the Wahoo so I thought I’d write up how it fares for this sort of usage.

Inevitably it’s probably tediously long and detailed. Sorry 😉

Wahoo: Navigation Nailed or Failed?

Nice review thanks, must admit I struggle with navigating with my bolt, mostly due to the off route problems you mentioned and not being able to pan the map, really hope they sort that out, as it’s a massive issue. You can set ‘north up’ on the mapping by the way, I’ve definitely set mine up to do it, can’t remember where it’s set though, not sure if it’s in the app or on the settings on the device, haven’t got mine to hand to check.

Sadly you can only set “north up” when you’re not navigating a route. That’s actually the default, and the app has an option to select “direction of travel up” at all times. But there’s no option to use “north up” at all times. I hope they can add this in, as it seems like it should be an easy fix and it would make a massive difference to those of us who prefer that orientation.

I can’t see them ever adding panning functionality to the map, as there’s no obvious way to control it. I suppose at a stretch you could use the side buttons for up and down and the leftmost and rightmost front buttons for left and right. But then you’ve got to add an interaction to get into and out of that mode, and even though it’s a feature I use on the Garmin, I think it would compromise the Wahoo’s ease of use too much to be a wise addition. It’s a good fit for the Garmin’s touchscreen, but not for the Wahoo.

Nice write up thanks.

I totally agree about the navigation on the fly. I was recently in France and had plotted some routes to ride. One had a closed road that caused a major headache to re-route around and the Bolt was no help on that front.

Agree that the on-screen nav is better on garmin devices BUT on my 810 I never really got on with the map and always ended up stopping to get my phone out anyway. The disappearing road feature when you zoom out is really awful.

I’m a bit confused as to why you can only get turn-by-turn if you use RidewithGPS. I’ve always used Strava for route planning and t-b-t worked on the Garmin but not on the Wahoo.

It seems that wahoo are pretty proactive in improving the features on the device though so I suspect these things will be fixed in time.

I’m a bit confused as to why you can only get turn-by-turn if you use RidewithGPS.

You don’t need to use RWGPS, you just need cues in the GPX file. The Elemnt doesn’t generate them. Whereas if you use Garmin’s navigation it calculates a route derived from the GPX and generates its own turn notifications.

Here’s another point, which I forgot to add into the review (but will do so later).

Hmm. Now the Android app has started eating battery, too (the iOS app munches it like crazy). The Elemnt is switched off. Not ideal. pic.twitter.com/Ypl4NtnPdT

— Bez (@mashing53) July 13, 2017

The app seems to randomly eat battery life, even when nothing’s happening and the Elemnt is switched off. On my first ride it really chewed the iPhone battery, to an extent where I’d certainly run out of battery on an all day ride.

That’s potentially a really serious problem, because you never know when you’re going to need an emergency call.

I’m quite interested in one of these after reading a few reviews (inc this one). The phone battery thing does appear to be a problem though, anyone else had the issue? That’s the kind of battery use I get from having the GPS constantly running on the phone. Disabling the background app refresh for the wahoo app may stop it, but may disable the SMS functions?

The phone battery thing does appear to be a problem though, anyone else had the issue?

I noticed this on my phone while using the Bolt on a mapped ride the other day. Having used it for mapped rides in the past and having the SMS feature on without seeing that kind of battery drain (phone went from 100% – 32% in less than 3 hours!!) it seems to be the LiveTrack feature that could be causing the issue.
When I noticed the battery drain and I was still a couple of hours from the end of my ride I disabled the LiveTrack and at the end of the ride 2 hours later the phone bettery had dropped from 32% to 30%.

Could be that something else was going on but I get the feeling that the LiveTrack feature is using the phone GPS to constantly update the LiveTrack link which would drain the battery at around this kind of rate.
Not an issue for me if that’s the cause as the Mrs can just use Apple’s built in ‘Stalk the Hubby’ feature which does the same thing but only polls my phones GPS when she is checking and so doesn’t empty the battery.

Re the app battery drain just done 2.5 hours with live track turned off and used 15% phone battery so maybe 5% less than with live track on. I don’t use the phone app when on long rides anymore been caught out a couple of times with flat phone battery halfway through a audax