For the millionth time in the last 20 years I find myself at the “had enough of Garmin, but everything else seems to suck as well” crossroads. For context, I’m only in it for the maps, the navigation, and the basic time/distance/speed data. No training data or linked devices.
Last time I tried a Wahoo device it was buggy as hell. The app drained my phone battery in minutes, it wouldn’t sync to the device, and so on. Early adopters of the Bolt v2 reported a fair number of bugs, as I recall.
So how are they these days? Stable, or buggy?
I think mine is a v1. I can't fault it. Connects every time perfectly. App not draining battery. Has it a couple of years.
I felt exactly the same as you about Garmin after getting utterly sick of my 820. Declared I’d never use one again but then caved and got an 830 last month in a moment of weakness and have to say it’s tonnes better.
Still stuck with shi***y Garmin connect etc though but the touchscreen and battery are way better.
Garmin Connect is one of the issues. It’s totally unreliable, struggles to sync, and frequently fails to convince the Connect IQ apps that there’s a connection. Most of the time, getting routes onto the device is barely any easier than it was in the early 2000s.
No issues at all with my v2, but can’t say I had any problems with the v1 either until I smashed the screen.
Some combos just don’t seem to work for people.
It's been mostly fine. As you say, there were a few bugs a while back but they seem to have gone now. The navigation is definitely better than the v1 - I know you have some fairly specific standards on that though and I'm not sure if it would meet them. I will say that I can plan a route quite carelessly on Komoot and be pretty confident that it will get me back on track if I have to change things when I'm out.
It does have a slightly annoying lag between button press and action at times. Just a fraction of a second but enough to question whether the button press has regisered. It's not in the same league as my old Garmin 810 touchscreen for that.
On the whole I'm having a much better experience than I did with Garmin, but that's comparing with an 810 and I gather the *30 series are a huge improvement.
Happy to answer any specific questions you have.
You know since my early 305 and then 705 which were bloody excellent the 810 and then 820 out of the box were shocking - using Joe Public to finish the testing and dev work. The 820 was so rubbish I stopped using it. As soon as it was stable I flogged it and bought the then new 1030 and pretty much 99.9% of the time is been excellent.
I read at the time that the 820 they had given up on and were concentrating on fixing the flagship just released the 1030.
I know you have some fairly specific standards on that though and I’m not sure if it would meet them.
😀
Yep, correct on all counts. Just a case of choosing the device with the lowest sum total of annoyances. I accept that with Wahoo I’ll never have “north up” while navigating, but if that’s the price to pay for reliable connectivity and a display that’s usable in bright sunlight then so be it. It used to be that Garmin also had the advantage of the detailed through-junction navigation screen, but that hasn’t appeared on my device for a long time now, so I guess Garmin are now killing off their useful features as well as piling on the usual bugs. An interesting approach, albeit not an entirely surprising one.
I've got a Mk1 Element Bolt and it has been great.
Only complaint is no way to turn on the backlight momentarily.
It still seems to be getting updates too and must be 5 years old.
It doesn't do all the routing stuff, but I mainly use it to record rides or follow routes that I have created on RideWithGPS.
My V1 bolt does either north or direction of travel up. It's in the front page of setting, by toggling "always rotate maps" when off north is up.
I think mine is a v1. I can’t fault it. Connects every time perfectly. App not draining battery.
This. Won mine when they were first released. Thinking of upgrading to a v2 as the screen is leaking in the corner
Havee we the ELEMNT roam and thought it was good, but then bought a 530 for the other bike and now find that the ELEMNT is excellent compared to the garmin, think I’ll bump the 530 and get another roam soon!
My V1 bolt does either north or direction of travel up.
Yeah, but not when navigating. At least, not unless they’ve changed the firmware recently. But they spent years not supporting that feature so I’ve resigned myself to them never wanting to add it.
V1 and new V2 user. It’s great- it has the occasional bug pop up as described, but either sorts itself, or is patched pretty quickly. Pretty sure my V1 did north or direction of travel…
A mate has a Garmin and he seems to have far more issues with his than I have with the Bolt.
I've got a Bolt v1 and really like it.
I had an issue on Saturday where we started a planned gpx route from a location half way round - when I got to the start/end point it stopped doing the navigating for me. Is there a way to join mid-route and then follow the loop in its entirety?
My V2 stopped connecting to one of my PM's, it had worked out of the box but one of the many firmware updates along the way broke it. Support were useless, few videos and log file exchanges but 2 months on and they were no closer to resolving it so back it went to Wiggle who kindly refunded me. The ticket is still open now 6 months later.
Of all the issues reported I didn't really experience many of them, temperture was way off which never bothered me. Elevation data very similar to Garmin when I ran both devices over the same route.
I wanted to like it but if it wasn't doing the basics then it was largely useless, I bought an 830 to replace it as I'd never had any issues with any of my Garmins over the years, I just fancied seeing what else was out there.
The Garmin feels a more polished unit.
Oh another thing it did which wound me up, if I recorded a ride then stopped and saved it it would need restarting before being able to connect back to the PM it had just been recording from.
I had an issue on Saturday where we started a planned gpx route from a location half way round – when I got to the start/end point it stopped doing the navigating for me. Is there a way to join mid-route and then follow the loop in its entirety?
I think in that case just choose the same route again and pick it up from the start (either on your phone or on the head unit itself). You can start/stop planned routes independently from the ride you're recording.
Thanks. I ended up doing that but missed about 2km in the middle of the ride