Not sure about a digital crown 
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Battery life looks amazing but the navigation looks to be severely lacking, at least at the moment.
Edit: apparently it isnāt even that amazing. I read another review where they claimed otherwise.
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Glad Ray didnāt write it off immediately, hopefully theyāll see it through to where itās workable.
I donāt mind the extra bulk if it means not having to worry about keeping yet-another-device charged. 120 hours would be almost once a year for me (sadly).
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@gpl didnāt hold back on his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhCuyAIkN0w
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Itās been interesting to see which reviewers bring up the problems and which donāt even mention them at all. DCR and GPL bringing it up right away notably.
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@operatingthetan666 Very. The contrast is amazing.
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Great point, a good litmus test for reviewers who are full of sh!tā¦
Personally nothing here that I find compelling vs. Wahoo or Garmin (the former being my preference.) The total market for whom 100+ hour battery life is a gamechanger has to be pretty tiny; randonneurs and bikepack-racer types I guess?
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I do like the idea of it being able to charge faster in the sun than what the battery drains. Be pretty cool to be able to just leave the computer on the bike and not take off to charge. Garmin hasnāt gotten to that point yet so perhaps this will push Garmin to innovate on this front.
Definitely sounds like it is not ready for prime timeā¦zero interest in this unit right now.
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Not at all. I switched to Wahoo from a cheap and ugly Lezyne (I love Lezyne for many good things, but their usability is stuck in the 1950s, and they did nothing about it for years). But one thing I was spoiled was battery life. I always knew that even if I forgot to check my battery status before the ride - it would still last me until the end of the day, no matter how long I was going to be out there. Unless, of course, I forget multiple times in a row, but my memory isnāt that bad yet. But with Wahooā¦ itās a constant pain in the ass. Iād love to think less about that.
If I were in the market for a bike computer - Iād probably buy Coros. For three reasons:
- Battery life (even if itās not exactly as good as they claim - itās still great).
- Just like DCR Iām confident theyāll get there eventually with all the updates.
- I just like trying new and non-mainstream stuff
But obviously, nothing to even think about while my Bolt is still kicking.
Video review of a ānormalā rider I enjoy following. Also has some sweet van build videos.
I donāt understand the decision to send it to media in its current state (I donāt know how that process works tho). Maybe they expect something from the media that I donāt see or know.
Theyāre entering a market with established brands and devices. They need to punch above their weight in order to gain a spot here. However, they currently arenāt offering anything that you couldnāt find in the other devices at a similar price. Maybe they deliver what they promised but consumers can also wait until they get there. Thereās little to no point in taking the risk right now.
Iām excited to see what happens but until then this device is not even an option.
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So they wanted you just to read the promised spec sheet? An ad for free
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That is it in a nutshell for meā¦.if they canāt get the basics right now (seriouslyā¦.navigation arrows pointing in the wrong direction?), why should I trust a future update?
Nopeā¦hard freaking pass for me, even more so after actually watching Ray and Llamaās videos.
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Yeah Iām not sold that they will have a good product within the next 6-9 months or so. I also think that releasing it in that state is a big mistake. As long as the routing doesnāt work properly with Routes not created in their app they shouldnāt even think about releasing it, same goes for Power data from ANT+. And according to DCRainmakers observations the Battery life right now is no where near the claimed one.
The device would be interesting for Bikepacking and ultraendurance stuff if the Battery life gets to a point where it is close to the claimed one, but for that the Map needs to be usable and rerouting should probably work on the device, because that are the scenarios where you are in areas without cell receptionā¦
Iām also not sol on the digital crown thing when riding offroad.
Thanks, @gpl for being my morning entertainment. That was on par with the equally scathing review of one of SRMās recent power meters ā¦
My understanding is that Coros makes very good sports watches, and it is surprising that they introduce a dud. Just the huge forehead makes it seem quite ungainly, and the Digital Crown doesnāt make sense to me in the context of a bike computer. What a pity, I was hoping for credible competitor to Garmin, Wahoo and Hammerhead.
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Have they ever watched your or Rayās videos? 
I would assume that @dcrainmaker has had a lot of contact with them in the past as he has been reviewing their sports watches. Coros should have known better.
Another viable option would have been to nail the core functionality and then bank on their good reputation in the watch space. Before they fix routing, they should fix the sticky watts issue. If they promise insane battery life, they should deliver that ā underpromise and overdeliver.
I think Hammerhead went down that route where they kept on releasing regular updates until it became something customers could count on.
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I think COROS believed theyād have the majority of issues fixed before the 17th. Or even, weeks ago. But I get the impression their developers have underestimated just how complex the cycle-specific realm is. Itās one thing to have āfunctionalā bike features on a watch (many companies do this just fine), but another to have bike-focused features on a bike computer.
A significant portion of the reason the ship-date launch got pushed, was myself and a few other reviewers pushing back that this was hard-not-ready for shipment (or proper review). Most of the reviewers that received the COROS unit were either watch people that happened to have relationships with COROS in the past, or, a smattering of non-tech reviewers in the cycling realm, that might not have had much review experience in bike GPS. And thatās fine, having new opinions of devices is always welcome. But COROS does have a long history of leaning very hard on their sponsored athletes, and ambassadors for content, often without declaring any relationships there. Itās a large part of why the āreviewsā (or whatever they are) this time are so varied.
As I said in my post/video, knowing COROS, I have lots of confidence that COROS will fix the bug-type issues by fall-ish. But offline routing is incredibly complex/hard, and will take years.
The battery bits remain to be seen. Most reviewers out there looked at the summary battery page, which is, as COROS themselves said, simply incorrect right now (you have to look at start/end times) Itās a random number generator. So, weāll have to see the battery down the road. However, historically COROS has had crazy-long battery life, somewhat heavily through trimming other features. We recently saw them reduce the official battery specs of some of their watches to account for having to add in things like more accurate HR data. If we look at the bike computer side, we see some of those shortcuts already in the current firmware (e.g. not recording left/right power, weird power recording atop that, multi-minute delays on missed turns, not showing turn notifications if not on map page, etcā¦). How those impact battery life, once added, will be notable.
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@dcrainmaker Ha! I just realizedā¦ Wahoo: Good bike computers, underestimated watch segment. COROS: Good watches, underestimated bike computer segment.
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I think it is fair if Coros introduced analogs of the different GPS tracking modes that sports watches come with, where you can make different trade-offs on the battery lifeāaccuracy curve. It is not cool to obscure that to customers.
It is weird that they felt it necessary to risk taking a hit in their reputation. Iād rather have great battery life (if possible), solid connectivity and data recording of the usual sensors and breadcrumb navigation than a so-so attempt at offline routing.
When I saw that Coros in its current state did not reliably display radar alerts (as was the case in @gplās video) that made it an unviable product for me. I rely on my Varia every single day I commute.