Like DC rainmaker says, yes it it water prof
, see the hammerhead site, I don’t use the bung and ride in the rain, sometimes I put it in for a MTB ride, but washing out after is just as good
Mentioned in dcrainmakers review of the device (where he compares weights to other devices) and the karoo web site
Great, thanks @dcrainmaker & @WombleHunter …that makes me feel a little bit better!!
Heading down to Palm Beach Gardens for a work thing this weekend and will be giving this some test runs. Just mapped out an 80 mile route to check the navigation.
It’s also worth mentioning that in order to give everyone a piece of mind Hammerhead also supplies a spare plug. I’ve been riding with mine for quite some time now and haven’t managed to lose it yet. I’m actually more worried that I’ll lose it one day while charging rather than while riding but since the unit is waterproof it doesn’t really matter.
Used my HH for the 3rd time today
the predictive path with the climber is the chef’s kiss - sooo good
3:20 min ride with one 15 min restroom/water stop - HR monitor, power meter pedals, radar/light and brightness set at 30 still had 73% battery on the screen. Wasn’t using navigation as I am very familiar with the route.
Today was my second time using my new HH k2 that I recently picked up on sale. Coming from a Garmin 130, it’s a drastic change. For the most part I’m impressed although it’s always difficult for me switching electronics. The screen is nice and visible in most all conditions and battery life doesn’t seem to be an issue. I did 3 1/2 hrs today and went down to around 70%.
My main gripe is that I haven’t figured out how to alter the workout metrics? When I upload a planned Training Peaks workout, it only allows me to use the preset metrics.
I just finished a 4 day gravel holiday using the Karoo2 with navigation on (turn by turn) the whole time, garmin varia and assioma pedals connected my battery drain was 10% per hour. The navigation is so much easier to see than on Garmin screens (I previously had a Garmin 1030). Im really happy with it. Even if I need to charge it every night if I was doing longer rides that’s not a big deal for me - no different to plugging in a phone each night. I’ve found everything about it easier to use than my Garmin which the Bluetooth transfer would only work sometimes and I has to re connect it to Garmin Connect all the time - used to drive me nuts
Just did my first real ride with my Karoo 2 this weekend and I’m pretty happy with it. It was a local event (Muddy Onion), about 40 miles and 4000 feet of climbing, Couldn’t have asked for better Central VT weather this time of year, either. I’ll be taking it to Rasputitsa next weekend, so lots of opportunity to use the Climber function.
Some quick hits:
Climber - This was great. The elevation/grade data looked accurate, and in terms of real world experience everything felt very fluid.
Battery Life - I ran it at 70% brightness connected to Varia, power meter, HRM, speed sensor, and the battery was at 67% after 2:45. I ran it on the navigation screen with four data fields probably 90% of the time. I had several regular data fields, and another graphical screen with two graphics for Time in Zone: one for Power, one for Heart Rate. No complaints for the kind of riding I do.
Screen Visibility - This was one of my biggest concerns going in. For background: I’m 50, had cataract surgery last summer for polar cataracts (which means no near vision), and have lamellar holes in my left retina. In short, my eyes are shit. That said, I never had trouble reading anything. I really like how Ride Time and Time of Day are always in the top pane of the Android screen, but for obvious reasons never used any of the screen layouts that included 12 fields. I was concerned about glare (my eye problems can exaggerate it), but everything looked great. Worlds better than the Garmin, and about on par with the Wahoo Roam in that it just wasn’t a thing.
Route Storage - This may be user error, but it doesn’t look like the routes are stored on the device. I got to the start a bit early, went to load the route and … nothing. I had to scramble to hot spot my phone and connect, then grab the route and flip off wifi before the start. With the sheer volume of storage on the device, it doesn’t make sense not to store the files onboard considering the likelihood of starting routes out of cell service, let alone wifi. On the plus side, being able to group routes by things like Favorites for stuff out of the house and create a separate Events group for races is pretty cool and would be very helpful if you have a ton of RWGPS and/or Strava routes.
Live Tracking - Utterly useless. Doesn’t automatically send out a notification of a ride start. Requires a sim card and only displays current location rather than progress on a route. This is actually kind of a big deal, but I’m willing to be a little patient. I just loaded the route and used Strava’s Live Beacon. I’ve got a FreedomPop free sim card I haven’t set up yet, and I’m hopeful they’ll make this super obvious, baseline-feature-at-this-price-point feature what it needs to be sooner rather than later.
Overall, I’m actually super happy with it. Historically, computers have always irritated me in tons more ways than the Karoo 2 and I end up fiddling with them constantly to get the right data on the screen or just see things better, but the Karoo kinda just worked. I had everything I wanted on my main screen so I didn’t need to flip around much, and was able to just enjoy the ride more without technology distractions.
The entire HH web interface needs tons of work. I agree live track web interface sucks. They need to display a lot more data. But if you follow a route during your ride, it does show the route on the livetrack web interface. At least that’s what the people who follow my livetrack tells me.
The garmin livetrack web interface is better. But imo the entire livetrack experience on the K2 is way better with the sim card. Having to use the garmin app with BT connection on the phone was a hot mess. My garmin livetrack experience was so frustrating. I really like how automatic the K2 livetrack experience is. I would like for it to notify folks when you start a ride though. HH really needs to invest some resources and completely overhaul their web interface.
Now with heatmaps. Some really interesting updates lately.
Hammerhead Karoo Gets Heatmaps & New Suunto Integration: Hands-On - YouTube
My favorite update so far! Makes navigating without a route much easier and helps me discover trails which are popular among cyclist but I’ve never taken before.
What a loser move from Shimano.
I’m wondering what they’ll gain from this other than many unhappy customers who cannot use their electronic groupsets with the head unit of their choice.
2 out of my last 3 rides, my Karoo 2 has randomly restarted in the middle of the ride. On Saturday, it happened about 7 miles into the ride and today it happened about 20 miles into it.
I cannot detect any reason why it would have occurred…AFAIK, there has been no warning message, etc. both times I have glanced down and seen the start-up page as it reboots.
All data from the start of the ride is also lost….although today it asked if I wanted to return to my ride, which I tried to do……but it just linked to my commute home from the night before (the restart happened to coincidentally occur close to my office, so I guess it associated the restart with my commute last night)
Anyone else have this occur to them? I am supposed to do a 85 mile gravel race this weekend and I have zero confidence in this computer right now.
HH is aware of this. I think it’s a bug with sound notifications. If you get two at same time it can happen. They’ve said they should have a fix soon.
If it is the sound bug, you could temporarily disable all sounds except for varia.
I don’t think I have any other sound notifications enabled besides the Varia…i’ll have to check. I know I don’t have headphones or anything similar connected.
Thanks!
ETA - I checked my settings, and while i had all Audio notifications enabled, I don’t think that would have been the issue since I was not using any of those features other than the Varia. On both occasions when it did this, I was not using TBT directions, not in a workout and I don’t use Strava Live Segments. But I have turned everything off except for the Varia…but since I am doing this 85 mile gravel ride on Saturday, not having audio TBT directions enabled isn’t exactly comforting.
Have a help request into Hammerhead as well, so we’ll see what they say.
Thanks again!
Better living thru software!
I bought one and ultimately sent it back. I appreciate the easy return process.
I had numerous minor complaints but my two biggest issues were the inability to alter the training peaks workout screen metrics and connection issues with my Assioma pedals. I’ve never had one connection issue with my pedals until I switched to the K2.
Now I’m back to my tiny 130 and enjoying the simple life!
Hammerhead confirmed that was the problem…but I just got the release notes for this week’s update and it specifically addresses that issue, so hopefully I am good to go now.
Yeah. There was a post on their General Discussion forum (here) where someone from Hammerhead confirms that the Karoo 2 won’t be getting an Android version update past 8.0, unfortunately. I’m still really happy with my Karoo 2 overall, but once other computers start getting unrouted Climber functionality, things on the other side might start to get a little too tempting.
Awesome. Hope it works for you. I praise HH software team often on this forum because I have worked closely with them and they are quality folks doing a great job. But, with this issue I was disappointed that it took as long as it did. I hold them to a pretty high standard and was surprised. Glad to hear that an update is ready.
Quick real-world battery life experience update. While my Karoo has been back and forth on battery life surprises, I was pretty impressed today.
I did a metric century today. My Karoo navigated the whole ride, connected to 3 sensors (power, heart rate, wheel speed) and used 34% battery in 4:35. All sensors were ANT+. I don’t use Bluetooth on my Cycling computer so that I can connect my phone to the sensors via Bluetooth, and don’t have to worry about multiple connections to the sensors. That includes boot time (which seems to be getting longer, but I’m not timing it) and connecting to WiFi to download the course before starting. No live track though. Screen at 28%, and it was completely visible the whole ride, most of which was in bright East Coast summer sun.
So a burn rate of 7.5% per hour, That’s a reasonably conservative estimate 12-hour battery life with sensors and navigation! (technically it calculates out to 13.3 hours).