The Varia will show you the speed at which a car is closing. Both by the visible dot on your screen and also by going red instead of amber if the car is closing very quickly. I’ve found these indicators along with scanning the road in front of me to be extremely useful in anticipating a likely close pass. E.g. If my screen has gone red, there’s a car closing on me at a rate of knots, and I can see there’s traffic coming the other way and not much space to pass, or an island in the middle of the road that restricts the width, then either the car is going to perform a close pass or slam the brakes on late, and I can start to act accordingly. Forewarned is forearmed.
You can also see on the screen if there’s multiple cars, which can exacerbate the likeliness of a close pass as the first car might be aware of you but judges if they keep their speed up they can just about pass you safely and then pull back in before the island/traffic, but the car behind quite likely isn’t even aware there is a cyclist and hasn’t anticipated the suddenly closing distance and narrowing road space.
As others have said, it’s hard to appreciate just how useful the Varia is until you’ve actually experienced it!
They did claim to be able to show the lane of the oncoming car. Including this feature is likely why the Trek unit is wider than the Garmin. If it reliably works, this would be a nice feature. If it only works some of the time, it’s pretty much useless.
a) where I ride there are no two lane roads where cyclists are allowed (that I know of)
b) I don’t have my phone mounted to my handlebars
I hope Trek comes out with a “light” version of what they have here more in the vein of the Garmin Varia in shape, but with their powerful ION RT light, USB-C charging and battery indicator on the side.
Im not sure how it’ll work, whether or not its sensitive enough to say if a car in your one lane is passing far enough out to give you space or not. If it cant give that info or it only gives that info on the phone app (like you I don’t mount my phone to the bars), I cant see it being much benefit to me over the more streamlined Varia either.
In my mind the game changer would be a live video view of what’s behind me. Make the bike computer an electronic rear view mirror, like what is available on some cars. Depending on price I might upgrade for that.
I have also noted that when the car is approaching fast but is in the further lane from the right most lane (ie 1 lane over in a passing lane or across the center lane) the display is orange and not red. This is some level of indication that it is not as hazardous as a fast approaching right lane pass.
I really like this as I have running headtorches powered by 18650s, and would love to convert to a bike solution but they never seem much cop.
How much does this work out at in terms of weight vs say, a Nitecore NB10000? An 18650 has a max MAh of about 3500ish, so you’d need 3 of them to match it…
The other issue is recharging is never as good as just being able to swap a battery out…
I disable the Varia’s light to save power, and use a separate rear light instead. Sometimes the Varia’s light re-enables (connected to a Hammerhead), so I have to occasionally check that it is still off.
Yeah that’s what I do too (with a Bontrager Flare actually) and also what happens to my Varia. Using mine with a Garmin 530, which is also starting to lose a bit of battery capacity, I think. It’s been excellent though.
at 5600mAh (2 x 2800mAh) but could upgrade to 7000mAh (2x3500mAh) for $10.
The Nitecore NB10000 is 150g / 10,000mAh so with my $10 upgrade its still almost 50% more but not sure I would need that much juice for another double century or long day from the valley to South Lake Tahoe.
But the electronic device decides what voltage is “empty”. Garmin only needs to set that turn off voltage to a higher value. It would result in a small decrease in as-new battery life yet be a big improvement to years-old battery life.
Anyone considering the CarBack should really watch that video. Based on the range being nothing special, the side detection not being wide enough, and the speed differential being set too high (could be fixed by SW I think), I don’t see it even being on par with a Varia.
