Anyone use one? How’s it been?

Got one for use on the motorbike. Generally works ok but is dependant on your phone performance, so not great if you’ve got an older or clunky phone. I find the route planning software very good and easy to use.Only real complaint is that on the motorbike it struggles a little bit in an urban environment, not quite updating fast enough to keep up with where you are, and without any mapping you end up guessing a lot. And then stopping to look at the phone to work out where you’ve ended up!
Overall though it does what I wanted it for, to pre-plan interesting routes and then be able to follow them relatively easily.

Cheers downshift, it would be the motorcycle I’d be using it for mostly but realised I could use it on the road bike too. Around town navigation isn’t too much of a problem either as Im never really going to use it for that. I’ve clocked a 30% off deal but may wait and see if beeline themselves offer anything.

I had one for the motorcycle. Put up with it for a few months but found it really irritating in town and on roundabouts. It often gets the exit number of the roundabout wrong if there’s any sort of grey area (i.e. sometimes counts small turnings/petrol stations, sometimes doesn’t) and the line of traffic you’ve just painstakingly overtaken sails past again.

In town there’s often cases where you need to make a multiple turns in quick succession and its useless in being able to tell you that. Add in when you need an idea of what lane to be in and you go wrong a lot.

Sold it and got a Quad lock mount for my iPhone which is so much better, and cheaper.

I’ve a bit of a thing for phone on the bars of the motorbike and bike for that matter. One of the delights of motorcycling and cycling is to not be looking at the phone. The beeline was to stop me checking my phone for directions which ends up with me having a look at any messages and notifications when I do. Bit disappointed to hear that your experiences are the same as downshifts.

Yeah I had similar ideas re: avoiding having notifications and phone distractions affecting the experience so I understand that.

As has been said the battery life is great, and the route planning is also good, backed by Google maps iirc. If you use a phone for any distance you’ll probably need to power it from the bike.

Downsides are it can be hard to read at a glance depending on where you can mount it and your style of bike. The display is pretty small and has a large bezel, so that you can end up like a nodding dog at times if it’s too low and you look down to check for turnings.

This reminds me, it signifies quite a lot of phantom turnings, so you’ll rarely ever see turn left in 20km, lots of smaller distances to turns which end up being corners.

To be fair you also get this a bit with a full navigation app, but it’s nowhere near as bad because it’s not your only piece of information to go on.

I’ve done a few hundred miles with mine now.

I did a review- YT link.

Overall I quite like it!

Pros: Easy to use, good value, looks smart, mounts securely and gives you basic metrics

Cons: Smartphone dependant, no crash protection, no elevation and odd route planning at time.

Cons, if you load a GPX track it will not auto re-route. You have to plan in the Beeline App. Deal breaker for me.

I did not buy the hardware just used he Beeline “Arrow” on an old phone.

I’ve had one a couple of years now, might even have been from the original kickstarter. Having used it on both motorbike and MTB I think it’s great. Had me all round the Highlands and Skye with no issues, journeying from Scotland to Sheffield and Baildon and then stopping off in Newcastle on the way home, all comfortably in its stride. Probably is a bit naff in big cities if you absolutely need turn-by-turn directions but then I very rarely motorbike through big cities I don’t already know my way around.

For cycling and re-routing when following gpx files I’ve found it does work, kind of: if you know where you’re going and just carry on it’ll eventually pick back up when you next pass over a gpx path marker/point thing but until it figures out what’s happening it’ll try to direct you back to the marker/point thing it thinks you’ve missed. Not perfect but not an insurmountable problem.

For me the ease of use, lack of visual clutter and the excellent battery life outweighs the minor niggles.

I’ve got a Beeline Velo and really like it. I mainly just want navigation with minimal other faff, and it does that pretty well.

I used it for a week of cycling around London with the family and it was great.

The route finding is pretty reliable and it’ll reroute as you go. It’s also nice that it includes cycle lanes and avoids busy roads etc.

The main drawbacks I’ve found are:

No elevation in the route planning or ride history. Apparently it’s a feature they are working on.

The basic display does mean some limitations of what it can show you, so complicated junctions require a bit of care to make sure you don’t go the wrong way.

There’s no internal compass to know which way you are pointing, but once you are moving it works it out. So when you set off you need to make sure you don’t set off in the wrong direction!

Overall it’s a good bit of kit and does what I need. It’s certainly well worth the money.