I’ve used outdoor workouts once on my Elemnt Bolt, and the UI was great. The workout was a very simple recovery ride, so there wasn’t much in terms of interaction (warm-up, 60-70 minutes in Zone 2–3, cool-down). But it worked well. I did not time my ride well, though, so I think I prefer doing workouts indoors.
For navigation the Elemnt is alright. What I mean by this is breadcrumb navigation is very good, simple and reliable if you stick to the route. Because zooming and panning is a bit more cumbersome, you’ll likely prefer do anything more complicated on your smartphone.
Re-routing is at times a bit annoying (e. g. one time the algorithm insisted on me using a farm road parallel to the road and the Elemnt correctly claimed I was off-route). But if you are with your smartphone, this isn’t an issue for me.
Overall, I think I made the right choice for me. The Wahoo is easy to set up and very easy to use. Was my experience flawless? No, but what in life is.
Pros
- Zooming data fields on pages. This feature alone sold me on the Wahoo. I’m serious.
- Very easy to set up on your smartphone.
- Easy to use.
Cons
- I had to delete and re-add my Wahoo a few times when the Bluetooth connection got flaky. Fortunately, you don’t lose your settings and custom screens in the process, so this just a slight annoyance. I did not have to do this recently, though.
- Changing data fields could be a bit easier. Sometimes I want to change my power field from 20-second average to 3-second average (for indoor workouts like 30-30s), and this is fiddlier than it should be.
- Since a recent firmware update, the Elemnt Bolt insists on using Bluetooth to connect to my Tickr even if I pair it as an Ant+ device. Outdoors, things work beautifully, but indoors when I do TrainerRoad workouts, I need my Tickr to use its Bluetooth connection to pair with my iPad. So at the moment for indoor workouts, my heart rate only shows up in the TrainerRoad app and not simultaneously on my head unit. This isn’t a big issue, but I’d prefer if it worked correctly.
- I’d really like to have a color screen like the Roam, but didn’t want to shell out the extra money at the time.