Hammerhead Karoo 2 – maps?

Has anyone used one of these yet? They look interesting as a Garmin alternative. I’m mostly interested in the quality of the maps and ability to load custom ones for mountain biking. Not bothered with turn-by-turn navigation though.

Any idea what the base maps are like? And can you sideload Open Source maps like you can with an Edge 1000?

Seems easy to import routes from Strava and RipewithGPS etc, but I cant find much info on what this then looks like (outside of urban areas).

thanks

I’ve got one. I wrote up my initial impressions here.

The standard maps are Openstreetmap maps, and they’re pretty good. The screen is very good so you can actually see a useful amount of detail.

I don’t think you can load alternative maps, although I’ve not yet felt any need to.

Interesting. I’ve been toying with picking up a Karoo 1 (can’t really justify the cost of a 2) but haven’t taken a punt yet.

The rerouting sounds quite good from your brief description: with Garmin I find I have to ride a couple of miles off-route before it finally figures out that I’m deliberately riding away from the road it’s so damn keen to U-turn me back onto.

I’d be interested to know how good its routing is on the device (ie pick a point, get routed to it, adapt the route as you go if necessary) because Garmin is crap at this and has been for the 20ish years I’ve been using their devices. They’re good at the prompts and the navigation through junctions (assuming it works, and some of their firmware bugs cause it not to) but holy hell the actual route calculation is dire—no. Matter whether you’re trying to stay on tarmac or keep away from it.

Also interesting to see I’m not alone in my dislike for Wahoos…

I always had my Garmin set to “ask” for re-routing, so it didn’t try to make me do U-turns. What it did to was wait until I was back on route, put up a happy “Course Found” message, and immediately follow it with “Re-route?”. Hateful thing.

I always had my Garmin set to “ask” for re-routing, so it didn’t try to make me do U-turns.

Same here, but it’s a mile or two of pressing “yes, recalculate it please” before it does anything remotely imaginative.

You’d think that they might conclude that since I’ve explicitly asked for rerouting whilst riding away from the route, the one thing that that implies is that I absolutely don’t want to make a U-turn. But like you say in the other thread, Garmin pretty much have total disregard for user experience.

As above, the maps are based on OSM and are pretty good. There are no contour lines shown, but if you are on a planned route you get upcoming elevation plot. If you really want contours and shading you can side-load OSMAND or Komoot.
Most of the trails near me are on the default Karoo maps (disclaimer: I don’t live in the UK).
The re-routing is very very fast; just a few seconds to plot a new route, and seems quite sensible to join back up with the planned route. Unlike the Garmins I have used, the K2 processor is fast enough to keep up and does not fall behind your actual position when generating turn-by-turn prompts.

Newer Garmins have increased processing speed, changed how they handle rerouting and added Trailforks. I decided to get a 1030 plus which seems nice but not used it properly yet. Battery life is v good too