That’s true, but those examples are from a time when branding and marketing were vastly different than they are today, and from well outside the tech/cycling space. I’m probably missing some obvious example, but the closest comparison to a shared name I can think of off the top of my head for a product/company in cycling tech is Stages, but even there, the product was the Stages Power Meter and the company was just Stages. By that precedent the Karoo would be the “Hammerhead Head Unit” which is considerably less poetic-sounding than the unit’s actual name.
At any rate, I think I agree with you in spirit, as I pretty much always just call my Karoo 2 “my Hammerhead”
This is a snoozer tangent to the twists and turns of this thread.
Bought a Karoo and got an old one? Bring on the parallels to Trek dropping model year from bikes, in an apparent move to clear out old inventory! Now that was a doozy of a forum discussion!
We could get into a really long discussion on marketing and branding here…I have many thoughts.
BUT, in the case of Stages, I would argue that they fit what I described above. the term “power meter” was simply a product descriptor, not a name (ala the Karoo) and most people said they had a “Stages”. Then we they extended into computers, they created the sub-product name “Dash”…but their primary product line still matched their company name.
And that, unfortunately, is a marketing fail… if people call a product something other than the product’s name, then the product team made a poor naming choice.
OTOH, if people use the product name for the activity (e.g., “Google” for “search” or “Kleenex” for “tissues”), that’s the ultimate branding/product naming success!
Has anyone used this on singletrack? I lost my Boltv2 and I’m considering the Karoo v3. One thing I don’t like about the Bolt is that it is a little slow when changing direction. When riding on new singletrack it can be confusing when approaching a fork in the trail.
I’ve had not but problems with the Karoo 3 since I bought it - wouldn’t recommend it at the moment.
First ride it completely froze, wouldn’t respond to touchscreen or button presses and was pretty much unusable. Contacted Hammerhead and they took 3/4 days to reply and basically said the memory was overloaded due to me sideloading TR despite it not being run (note I tried to delete it after installing it but there is a bug so you can’t deleted anything sideloaded at the moment).
Every other ride I go on now, the touchscreen stops responding (see videos below) about 5 mins in and then never starts again. Hammerhead support not replying within 2/3 days to resolve.
Note that rain lock is always turned off and I’ve been checking so it’s not that…
I haven’t had a single issue, but my girlfriend’s Wahoo Roam V2 was nothing but issues (we’ve both been Wahoo / Garmin since 2018 when we started riding).
My Roam V1 stopped uploading rides, etc last year.
My Garmin 1040 I had was useless for navigation and so much reflections on the screen it was crazy.
Honestly, the Karoo 3 is the best head unit I’ve had.
I’ve had the K3 since release. I was coming from a K2 which was replaced by HH 3 times and finally returned for a refund (twice cosmetic manufacturing defects and twice elevation drift issue, if you know you know). I prefer the UI and relative simplicity, but functionally it’s not as good as other devices.
The K3 hardware upgrade helped with the sluggishness, but it still stutters switching screens.
Elevation still has some drift, sometimes more sometimes less. One hour flat training rides with the same start and end point that end 60 meters higher than they started is normal (see pict).
My 4iiii PM gets dropped 6-12 times per workout, which could be the PM but didn’t happen on the K2. Battery shows full, but I’ll be changing to a fresh battery today to see if it improves. Anyone else experiencing this?
Lastly, they dropped the SDK support on the K3. On the K2 you could side load the “Ki2” app (indie developed K2 -Di2 sync) as a work around for the lack of sync with Shimano groupsets. HH promised to share an update 4-5 months ago on their plans for the K3 SDK and disappeared. They’ve ignored a thread of complaints on their support site.
I own it, can work around the issues, and the UI is enough to keep me using it. At some point I’ll come across a new device with solid engineering and support, as well as an elegant UI, and migrate.
Fresh Duracell, still getting drops. Arguably less and shorter. I do my training rides by San Diego Bay and the drops seem to at least in part have certain areas they tend to happen which causes me to suspect signal interference, maybe from the navy bases around the bay.
Ha, some of these marketing teams need to be restricted to decaf. FW seems up to date, there was no update when I popped in to grab that screenshot (tho I’ll double check the procedure for triggering that to make sure). Really wonder if it’s resolvable. I’m starting to think my watts are so small they’re easily lost between the PM and head unit. When the connection resumes, it will often spike way too high and mess up my power data in the other direction too. I think Intervals.icu has me sprinting at 2200w this season and I know I didn’t do that. Needs to drop a 0.
Resurrecting this because I’m curious about the current state of the Karoo 3. I’ve watched/read lots of the launch reviews, but I gather lots of stuff has been updated via firmware since launch.
I’m a longtime Bolt user looking to upgrade to a more modern unit. The new Ace is just too big and, as of now, buggy for me to consider. I’ve messed with an 840 but found the complexity of the Garmin UI not to my tastes.
Seems like ~6 months after launch is when you should actually consider a computer these days, as several have launched with unfinished or buggy firmware. So, how’s the K3 looking at this point? Wondering if the following issues mentioned at launch have been improved:
Laggy UI (really a minor concern)
Eat/drink/customizable alerts, are these now available?
Crazy loud beeps; I think they’ve introduced some alternative tones, are these better?
Outdoor workouts (e.g. TR) seemed poorly implemented on launch, has this been improved?
Can you control iPhone music playback from the K3 now?
Any issues with general stability, GPS, device connectivity, syncing etc? Saw the note above on altimeter drift, is this a common complaint?
General thoughts from those who have many hours with one? Are you satisfied or tempted by something else?
Laggy UI (really a minor concern) I find no lag at all, except for opening the top menu sometimes. Now granted I only do that to select/change route, or to add/calibrate the power meter. So for me it’s not biggie even if it bothers me a bit haha. But small thing in the grand scheme of things. I love how fast it is switching screens etc
Eat/drink/customizable alerts, are these now available? Nope, not yet! I do miss having it, had it on the Roam.
Crazy loud beeps; I think they’ve introduced some alternative tones, are these better? The new ones are so much better, not only are they less loud, but they also changed the tones so they are different enough from each other. Phone notifications are very toned down, radar has its own more aggressive sound, and next turn is a more positive chirp, if that makes sense
Outdoor workouts (e.g. TR) seemed poorly implemented on launch, has this been improved? They do use the drawer for workouts. I came from Wahoo, and I do miss structured workouts on that, but other than that I feel like it works alright. I run the drawer half way up, with a regular data field behind with select data that I want to see. So, it’s ok, but Wahoo was better.
Can you control iPhone music playback from the K3 now? Not that I know.
Any issues with general stability, GPS, device connectivity, syncing etc? Saw the note above on altimeter drift, is this a common complaint? Rock solid for me, aka, it boots up, connects to GPS, no dropped rides or crashes at all. Way more stable than my Wahoo was (Wahoo family here, been running them since original Elemnt except for a small bout with Garmin 1040).
General thoughts from those who have many hours with one? Are you satisfied or tempted by something else?
For me its the small things that makes it great, for example:
When on a data page, you can always see the next turn, and distance to it, at the bottom. So I am never riding “blind” even if I am on the data page and not the map.
When on the map page, I can get a new lap by double pressing the zoom button, very handy not having to change to a data page to get a new lap.
Its very very easy to control with just the buttons during bad weather, or if you’re riding with gloves
Screen is incredibly good, the auto brightness can be trusted 100%. Have not adjusted it once.
Battery life seems to be getting better? Was riding 3 hours in -2 celsius yesterday, and with Varia, PM, HR, navigation etc all on, it was pulling 6% an hour.
For me stability is important, I just want something that works well and has a good screen for navigation. I am out there training and don’t want any interference from the head unit.
Map and screen is great, just have to mention it again. It’s so so good. Also like that they have 3 zoom levels predetermined for the map page, so you can quickly toggle between those
It switches to dark mode if it’s dark outside, which is nice for the data fields. Screen doesn’t blind you.
I was looking forward to seeing the new Wahoo Ace, but after seeing the reviews, not so much. Also the screen seems incredibly bad compared to Hammerhead and 1050. I also wasn’t expecting it to be that big.
Let me know if there is anything else that you wonder
