I’m a long time Wahoo Bolt user in need of a new computer. I was disappointed with the Ace, but had the opportunity to test drive both a Karoo 3 and an Edge 1050 over the Festive 500, and thought I’d share my takes on this comparison. I have a bunch of travel-with-bike planned for this year, so mapping functionality in unfamiliar terrain is important to me, and rather lacking on the Bolt.
Top line: I’m keeping the 1050. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s really good and fully realized now, has a huge number of features you won’t find anywhere else, and I find the UI to be much improved relative to Garmin units I’ve tried before. The Karoo is a solid unit, and may be the inheritor of Wahoo’s “simple and just works” crown, with a nice screen and very clear mapping, but it’s missing a ton of features and configurability present in the Garmin.
Wins for the 1050:
- · Customizability: You can almost certainly get it to show you EXACTLY the data you want, either natively or using ConnectIQ apps to add data fields. The map is a programmable data field, which is cool. My favorite everything-at-a-glance field is this, which includes both Connect IQ fields up top and a map inset.
- · Richness and customizability of maps: Garmin’s maps are not the easiest to read IMO, but they have more info and more ability to alter their display than anyone else’s. Detail level, contour lines, font sizes, bike shops, restrooms, road hazards, popularity/heat map, MTB trails via Trailforks, all available and customizable.
- · Feature set: 1050 just does a lot of stuff the Karoo doesn’t. The bell, native music control, native (though imperfect) eat/drink alerts, performance/recovery metrics, power guide, Garmin Pay, suggested routes, all the group ride features, road hazard mapping, there’s a lot going on. This is a partial list, and I don’t currently use many of these, but I find some of them super handy.
- · Battery life: I ran both units with backlight low auto-brightness but always on and with AXS shifting, PM, Varia and HR all connected, so pretty high drain use cases. With these parameters, I was averaging 17.5 vs. 13.2 hours to empty for the 1050 vs. Karoo 3, respectively. Neither number is amazing, neither is a dealbreaker for me either.
Annoyances for the 1050:
- · The map is not the easiest to read. The primary navigation line is dark purple, a color palette that’s also used for “popularity” heatmapping. Huge win for the Karoo here (thick bright yellow/red nav line.)
- · The screen is a bit more prone to glare than that Karoo. Not a huge deal, as the backlight is strong enough to be seen, but in the rain under a dappled tree canopy this was noticeable.
- · Virtual Partner must be killed with fire. It’s an annoying feature, no one likes it, and it’s on by default and can’t be turned off as far as I can tell. You can set it to be very slow or very fast so it goes away, but these settings aren’t saved so you have to do it again next time you ride a course. Annoying.
- · Alerts should be more customizable. I want an audible alert for eat/drink but not for turn-by-turn. You can’t have one without the other.
- · As noted by others, the elevation graph that appears on the map page, and associated % grades, seems to largely be a random number generator. Making this work right, have scale marked, and have user-customizable zoom would be nice. Making upcoming elevation a graphical field that can be added to any layout (as map currently is) would be even better.
Wins for the Karoo:
- · Setup with SRAM AXS is laughably easy. Connect to your SRAM account and every sensor is paired and ready to go.
- · Menus are more intuitive, and include little graphics showing what changing each parameter will do to the display. Very nice.
- · The map is easier to read. While it lacks the customizability and data richness of Garmin’s, the color choices, line thickness, heatmap implementation and ease of showing/hiding data overlays are all great.
- · Physical buttons. I found both touchscreens to work well, and both units can also be programmed to work with wireless blips (which I have and recommend). But with thick gloves on in the rain it’s really nice to have an option to scroll through pages with buttons rather than pawing ineffectually at the screen.
- · Karoo shows clock, ride timer and battery % at the top of the screen at all times, like a smartphone. This is handy.
Annoyances for the Karoo:
- · Limited display options: There are many fewer total data layout options, and the screen real estate is not used super effectively. Data fields are pre-specified as numeric or graphical, and can’t be changed; Garmin lets you put a graphic anywhere.
- Navigation, workouts and elevation data appear in a “drawer” that pops up from below; this is a great idea, but the drawers pop up to different heights and don’t snap to the existing data field borders, meaning they partially hide some fields. They also block the “navigation” pill at the bottom of the screen, so there’s no way to have navigation, climb/elevation, and HR/Power data all visible at once. Depending on your map settings they also obscure the “rider” arrowhead on the map, rather than the map re-scaling. Great idea but badly implemented.
- · Missing features: Lack of native music control, eat/drink reminders, and bell are the most glaring for me. Obviously Garmin has a whole universe of performance metrics, power guide/stamina/pacing info, and group ride features that I find less useful but are missing on the Karoo as well. The new HH SDK may eventually help close this gap; a few nice 3rd party apps have appeared and more will presumably follow, though they’re obviously way way behind Garmin’s ecosystem.
- · Lack of customization: I probably wouldn’t notice this without the Garmin for comparison, but almost everything on the Garmin can be adjusted. This can be overwhelming, but if you take the time to learn how it works it’s pretty nice. From big things (e.g. how maps are displayed) to smaller ones (e.g. Garmin will auto-select which satellite networks are used to preserve battery) the Garmin just does more stuff.
Things Wahoo still does better:
- · I miss the data field zoom feature.
- · Option to control everything via buttons is nice when riding with gloves (though a touchscreen is indispensable at this point in my opinion.)
- · Routing via huge chevrons that are color coded for climbs is a great way to represent the route in 3D in an easy-to-read way. Wahoo’s maps are very sparse compared to Garmin’s, but color coded chevrons are still my favorite way to route.
- · If small size is what you want, the Bolt obviously wins. I actually think size/weight is a wash between Karoo and 1050; size is similar, the 1050 is ~38g heavier but I can take the physical bell off my bike, so call it even.
Bottom line: If you’re willing to spend the time to set it up and learn its features, the 1050 is by far the most capable and customizable bike computer currently available. The new UI on the 1050 is much better IMO, and I can always find what I need when I need it.
The Karoo works very well however, and if you’re looking for Wahoo-like ease of use (and are a SRAM AXS user, ideally), the Karoo is intuitive to set up and easy to read. I expect it will gain functionality via 3rd party apps with the new SDK. It’s obviously also less expensive than the 1050, though to me the 1050 has enough extra functionality to justify the cost.
The software updates have reduced the annoyances to that minor level.