For those who have left the Wahoo ecosystem and gone to Garmin, need some feedback. The Wahoo ROAM has been an awesome road computer but is horrendous for MTB. The GPS reception is terrible, Wahoo customer service is useless in troubleshooting, and I am generally fed up with the system, and looking back at my Wahoo BOLT the GPS graphs were much the same, whereas my Garmin friends have perfect tracking for GPS and segments on Strava.
On road this isn’t really a problem, but when I MTB I want to have fun and chase segments, and due to the poor GPS tracking, the Wahoo gives me credit for doing segments I haven’t done, and misses ones I rode. It short changes me on speed/distance, and often times shows me riding through the lake that I rode next to.
Now I know the grass is not always greener on the other side, and Garmin have had their share of issues, and I know the initial setup is generally a pain, but the last time I used a Garmin device it was an Edge 500. Looking for some feedback from the group here who have more experience than I, what’s your experience been with the two systems? I don’t do outdoor workouts, but I do use the navigation for new routes, and enjoy live segments on the road as well.
I recently went the other way, few years old Edge 520 to Wahoo Element Roam. Maybe the newer Garmin are better, but I got tired of the blue tooth dropouts (necessitating re-pairing with my phone at random unpredictable times), the random nature of the live tracking working (or not), etc. I have not found much if any difference in GPS tracking ability of road vs MTB between the 2 at least where I live. I sometimes get data dropouts on the Wahoo, but the Garmin did the same thing. Wahoo live tracking has always worked.
Here’s my issue. All I want to do on my MTB is have fun and chase Strava times. Unfortunately because the Wahoo can’t track me well I don’t get credit for doing certain segments I worked really hard on. But I get trophies for the trail 300 feet away which I didn’t even ride.
Here’s a comparison, all using a speed sensor. The 520 is actually 6 total passes through (out and back 3 times) while the ROAM and iPhone only went out and back once
The Garmin wins here by far, and part of me wants to get a used 520/520+ for MTB only, but having two systems is a bit pricy and redundant and I’m failing to see reasons to keep the Wahoo, like what does it do on the road that the Garmin can’t?
I’ve been pulling my hair out because of my Garmin 510 for years. Lots of folks jumped ship to Wahoo because of constant Garmin glitchiness.
My 510 still works but I wanted modern features and hopefully something that worked better so I bought a 530. It is awesome and glitch free so far. I really wish I had ditched my 510 earlier.
Could it be that your Wahoo is defective? Do all Wahoos behave this way? I had an iphone that had flakey GPS. It would show you 100 feet away from where you actually were. Do one of your friends have another Wahoo you could test?
If you want to use mapping I wouldn’t get a 520 without reading the reviews. When I was deciding whether to get a 520 or 530, all the reviews said that the 520 was very slow and could take minutes to calculate a route or recalculate after a missed turn. The 530 is vastly improved.
My only regret was not getting an 830 - mostly because I was used to the touchscreen on my 510. The 530 has buttons. After a month of use though I’m no longer frustrated and have adapted to the buttons.
Rather than jumping ship I stayed with Garmin because all my data is in Garmin Connect. It’s also in Strava and Training Peaks now so I do have backups. I have to say that I’m still wary of Garmin. It often seems like you are always one update away from them breaking working features on your unit. They did it many times on my 510. So far, it hasn’t happened on my 530.
That sucks! I’ve experienced similar before & I use an Garmin 520.
Recently did a lot of aero testing & was working on accuracy. Corresponded with this guy who knew a lot about the topic & he advised that I switch the satellite setting from just GPS to GPS+Galileo. That seemed to help out quite a bit.
Can you try something similar on your Wahoo? Or maybe you have & it just didn’t help…just throwing that idea out there.
No settings for it. I sent wahoo another ticket and they basically said “you’ve already asked about this and we’re still not doing anything”
They did however tell me I could buy a new ROAM for $380 from them and return that if the GPS is still bad, I told them if the GPS on that one was good then they should take back the old one since it’s then clearly defective, but they refused.
Will never recommend their products again, looking at the old graphs from my BOLT in the woods the GPS is equally blind so I don’t think it’s my unit but just another crap Wahoo product.
Jeez, you mirror my thought precisely. Wahoo is great for road but bad in terms of GPS and maps for mountain biking and I have had the bolt and roam.
I had a Garmin edge 1030 5 years ago and I lasted all of 3 months before selling it as it drove me nuts with failing to download rides and the power user experience.
I however have just bought an edge 530 for mountain biking as it has integration with trailforks. The problem is it is again driving me nuts. 2 rides in and 2 hours of trying to get the p2max power meter to work and calibrate on the ege… grrrrrr it recognises the powermeter but does not calibrate or show during rides. The wahoo still picks it up and the garmin picks up my PTap pedals. So frustration.
It has one or 2 more chances to work and then it is being sold and I will continue with the Wahoo and maybe get the speed sensor to up it’s accuracy.
Garmin was doing GPS before they were doing any of the bike stuff. It’s definitely what they’re good at. (OK, the GPS 38 was kinda bad but the GPS 12 was awesome).
I don’t mountain bike, but I do a lot of gravel racing, which is usually pretty remote, rural Texas. Often by the time I pull into the staging area, I’ve lost phone reception. Garmin drove me nuts (for many of the above listed reasons, plus more). Have switched to Wahoo, with no issues other than some technical difficulty downloading a course (and I think that was due more to Ride w/ GPS than the Wahoo). I will never use Garmin again.
I went from a Garmin 820 to a Wahoo Elemnt to a Garmin 530.
I will fight to the death anyone that thinks there is a better value in a bike computer than the 530. The 820 was a pile of garbage. Slow, terrible touch screen, would constantly freeze. Anyone that tries to degrade the Garmin computers due to the history of the Edge computers without having used one of the x30 units is being disingenuous.
Many Garmins are still having glitches. I had a 510 that was junk. My 530 has been pretty good but I did go through a spell of losing all my sensors:
I mostly solved it indoors by switching to 5ghz wifi as the Garmin gets interference from anything that is 2.4ghz.
For no reason my 530 stopped syncing over wifi and was really slow over bluetooth to my phone. This was after working fine for a couple years. It has since self-repaired after being in this state for a few months.
I had a 520 and then switched to a bolt and then to an 830.
Honestly I think I prefered the simplicity of the bolt, however I have become attached to the 830’s features. I’m always wondering about switching back to wahoo but not anytime soon. Maybe in a future iteration of the bolt…3 perhaps.
That said I have recently had a few mid ride reboots and sensor dropouts with the 830. I never had any issues with the bolt.
Never said they were perfect, but basing an opinion of the current generation on the faults of the previous generation is disingenuous.
I’ve had a similar issue with wifi sync on my 530. It happened after a new firmware update(I don’t remember what version) was resolved by resetting the device.
Bluetooth dropouts when in the presence of 2.4ghz wifi isn’t an issue limited to Garmin edge units.
I didn’t say you were, I was saying people that are advocating against Garmin based on their opinion of a 10 year old device are. I also never said the x30’s are perfect. I said that no other computer has a comparable value to the 530.
You did reply to my post and on the forum that usually means you are responding to what the other person said.
I did say the 530 was pretty good but I have been hit by two mysterious glitches so far (previously explained).
My 510, on the other hand, was hit with glitch after glitch with new glitches coming after every software update. My 510 still will no longer sync over bluetooth to the Garmin app on my phone which is primarily why I bought the 530 (out of frustration).
I’m locked in to the Garmin ecosystem enough that I didn’t want to switch to a different brand. I’m glad that my 530 has only had a couple glitches but I don’t have a huge amount of future confidence in Garmin’s software development.
Uploads aren’t the only issue. He probably needs to call Wahoo and get it swapped out. And he isn’t the only one, I’m seeing Wahoo issues on Strava from at least 5 different people. Including a Kona age grouper that bought Wahoo watch and bike computer, and immediately started having problems with them.
Wahoo, Garmin, etc, they all seem to have annoyances. I’ve had some annoyances with Garmin 520 and 530 too.
That sucks! I’ve experienced similar before & I use an Garmin 520.