Roam or bolt navigation?

Well, I love my Bolt, but it is very basic mapping.
Depends how much detail you need.

I wish you could pan the map on it because sometimes you want to just look over there a bit from where you are 👉 and all you can do is zoom out, and the detail goes to pot.

For what it is, small, simple and basic, it's fantastic.

No experience with the Roam sorry.

I've got a Bolt v2 and while it's better than the v1 was for navigation I still do most of my nav on the phone. It's great for following pre-determined routes but making a route on the fly isn't great. I haven't tried choosing a location and getting the computer to take me there - not even sure if it's possible on the bolt.

I have a pal with the Roam and he does a lot of gravel navigation on it so I guess the bigger screen is useful for that.

Are you after v1 or v2 bolt? Or a v1 roam?

I have a roam v1 and it's far better for navigation compared to the bolt v1. The roam will re route when you make a mistake. The bolt didn't and I'd have to stop, get the phone out and click to get me back on route.

For navigating on the fly I use Strava app as it follows the popular routes based on their heatmap data and you're therefore less likely to end up somewhere you shouldn't be. Once the route is saved in the Strava app I use the Wahoo App to sync it to the device (no need for wifi or anything that way).

I found that the routes that my Wahoo plots are absolutely bonkers and made no sense. Strava is waaaay better at building a point to point route

Dare I write it the Garmin 1040 is great for navigation. You can now directly upload your route from Komoot, Strava or Garmin connect. You can also upload any gps file from other routing software such as Ride with GPS.

I have the 1030 plus and think it works really well.

Opposite to Jimbob, I find Strava is utter tosh (for off-road/gravel), even with popularity based route choice it will try and take me down footpaths that don't exist on the ground and have no discernable heatmap even for walking/running. And their route planner doesn't show or distinguish between footpath and bridleway.

I think Wahoo is great for following preplanned routes, if you want to plot routes over breakfast whilst on a European Jolly, I would give the mobile app for RideWithGPS a go. It's pretty good with loads of layers and it's own heatmap. Once plotted you would just star the route, refresh your wahoo and it will appear on the unit.

Garmin 1030 and OpenMTB maps as you can download any country with contours...

Classic "recommend what you have"...

I use the free Garmin app that has heat maps to plot my routes, I then download the gpx and upload that to my wahoo.

You can now directly upload your route from Komoot, Strava or Garmin connect. You can also upload any gps file from other routing software such as Ride with GPS.

Which you can do easily with Wahoo products since they started.

I seem to have tried most of the computers over the last year. I've come down to thinking it's horses for courses to an extent. I mainly pre plan routes and want something to follow. As such I want minimal mapping detail and a bold line to stay on. Roam v2 works very well for that. If I'm exploring, rather than following a route, OS mapping (in the UK) is king, and there's nothing better than a smartphone to look at that on. I use Memory Map, which I can also plot the route onto for reference if things get confused.

Mini review of head units I've tried.

Garmin 1030. Add Talkytoaster maps for better detail and you still don't have OS level mapping. Plot line not very clear to follow at a glance. User interface not brilliant. Battery life good. Screen reasonable. Rerouting not great off road but can be disabled. Integrates with AXS and Di2. Touch screen.

Hammerhead Karoo 2 minimal map detail and no ability to add more detailed maps. Screen is fantastic - smartphone quality. Plot line very easy to follow - BUT rerouting poor off road and can't be disabled so constantly rerouting, and you lose the original plotted route. That's the deal breaker for me. Poor battery life. Requires the HH website to add planned routes. Doesn't integrate with Di2 but does with AXS. Needs Web connection to talk to phone or PC. Touch screen.

Roam v2. Decent high contrast screen. Clear line to follow. Poor map detail. LEDs act as direction indicators. Battery life very good. AXS and Di2 integration. Control mainly via smartphone which I think is the way forward. Phome talks directly to unit, not via a Web connection. Physical buttons not touch screen.

So, for me, the Roam has a clear but not beautiful screen, easy to follow planned route and enough battery life for 3 long days out. I can create or add routes from my phone without Internet. It has physical buttons rather than touch screen which I find better in reality. In conjunction with a smartphone with OS mapping seems to be my ideal unit for following planned routes. I find the hill profile page handy.

All the units have loads of stats and training stuff, which I don't use.

The routing line on Garmin devices is dark purple if you're following a course, and bright pink if you're navigating a route it's generated itself. I don't understand why they do this (people have been complaining for years) but it's a 30 second modification to fix with Notepad on your PC.

Both the Roam and the Edge 530 are ridiculously cheap at the moment. Edge 1040 is expensive, but the same price as the Edge 840 if you use the discount link from STW. Personally, having had a Bolt 2 and an Edge 530, I'd go for the Garmin.

The Bolt screen is very difficult to read with polarised sunglasses (or at least it was with my Oakleys, where turning more than 20-30 degrees off axis made it unreadable).