When you first start riding distances, whether day rides or bike tours, buying a bike GPS can seem expensive and unnecessary, especially when you already have a smartphone with an app such as mapy, RideWithGPS, or Komoot. Indeed, many long distance bike tourists go without, relying on a smartphone or paper maps.
Having used a GPS for over 10 years, I disagree and here’s why I think that it is worth the expense, even if you are just looking to go out on day rides but especially if you are getting the bug of bike touring.
1. It’s dedicated to the task(s)
I’m a great believer in dedicated tech: gadgets that are focused on doing one or two things and doing them supremely well. I own a Kindle for reading, two ReMarkables for note taking, and a DJI Osmo Action 4 for taking videos. Their quality comes from their simplicity.
A bike GPS is no different. It has two core tasks: to give you directions and to record your data as you ride. Its design is focused on that without the distractions of email, phone or any of the other apps that you have on your phone.
As a consequence, its physical design is simple and focused, adapted to what you need on the road.
And the directions and mapping is simpler.
With a smartphone, you will have clutter as it tries to do a thousand things. A jack of all trades and master of none.
2. It offers more features than a smartphone
Bike GPSes – the correct plural – are getting ever more sophisticated.
Even the most basic will offer a height profile. Do you absolutely need this? No, but it is super useful to know so that you can plan your efforts. Is that super long hill about to end or will it get worse? Is there a horrible hill lurking round the corner or a wonderful descent? These days, the climbs tend to be colour-coded so that you can see how steep they are.
Temperature? I admit not essential but it is nice to know,
And increasingly, GPSes are offering features such as radar for passing cars as well as many of the features of smartphones – displaying text messages or allowing you to adjust music.
3. It’s weatherproof
Linked to this, it is ready for all weathers: hard rain, hard sunshine and everything in between. Snow, hail, wind, mud, dust, none of these will phase it. I have had my GPS in all these. Not only has it handled them all but its screen is designed to be easily wiped, it has plastic
Do you really want your precious smartphone out in all those?
One of my smartphones met an early end when I had it inside my rain jacket on a filthy day in March. I only found out when I got to my hotel that my rain jacket was not waterproof enough. No amount of drying could save it.
Even on a mildly cold day, you can have problems using your smartphone, having to remove your gloves because somehow it no longer recognises your face.
Even with a dust or rain cover, your phone can still suffer.
4. It’s crash proof
Linked to this, a bike GPS is designed to take the rigours of the road. I have had mine spin off onto cobbles – the fitting that I had it in was insufficient tight – or involved in minor accidents and it has not picked up so much as a scratch. Would your smartphone survive that?
5. You don’t need to unlock it each time you want to use it
Trust me, unlocking a phone on a cold and wet day when the phone claims that it has never met you before and your fingertips have dissolved into mush or freeze as soon as you take them out of your lovely warm gloves is not pleasant.
Your bike GPS doesn’t care who you are or what your criminal record is. It just cares about getting you to your destination. And recording a ton of information while it does so. What the hell is VAM anyway?
6. It’s not the end of the world if it breaks or is stolen
If you lose your smartphone these days, you are in real trouble. Whereas if your GPS breaks down or is lost, at worst… you lose your precious data for that day and have to use a smartphone for your navigation. Trust me, I have had it happen. On the road to Malaga, after three years of hard use, my Elemnt Bolt started to pack up, the screen showing scratchy lines. So I used my phone to navigate the rest of the way, and promptly walked into a bike shop and bought a new… Elemnt Bolt, which was operational very quickly.
7. Once you have paid for it, you do not need to pay any more
It only needs GPS, not a WiFi or mobile phone signal. Travel abroad and you don’t need any data roaming or offline maps.
Yes, you can buy advanced features, but in practice I have never found the need. There is usually a workaround. The only exception to this is for those who are on long term tours and want to plan on the fly.
Many of the apps available start charging you once you want to have turn by turn directions. That can quickly mount up, as can data roaming charges.
Let me put it this way: you invest a lot of money on getting a bike that is just right for you and you don’t think that it is worth paying a few hundred for a unit that will help you get the most out of it? If you can afford it, I highly recommend it.
Buying a GPS
I’ve convinced you (hopefully). So how do you go about choosing and buying a decent GPS? When I’m looking for new equipment, I tend to use Google and put in a question like “What are the best bike GPS for touring?” or such like.
The following sites can be useful and have been reliable:
The things I look for are:
- Price – pay for the features that you want, and not for things that you don’t need like gear sensors and the like
- Battery life – it doesn’t need to be amazingly long, but you do want to be confident that it will not run out including for night rides
- Integration with smartphone/ ability to download routes to it from RideWithGPS / Komoot/ your chosen routing app
- Visual simplicity: I love Wahoo’s simplicity on this front
- Size – bigger is better and more readable
- Ease of use in different weather – rain, heat, cold – I want something with a screen that is easily readable in the rain/ intense sun, that doesn’t get fazed by wet, sweaty, or gloved fingers – so touchscreens are out
- Ease of mounting ideally on several bikes – this can mean buying several mounts
- Reliability of GPS connection
Over the years, I’ve used a Garmin – I hated the touchscreen – and a succession of Wahoo units – the Elemnt Bolt and now the Elemnt Roam, but the market is constantly evolving with players like Karoo, Bryton and Sigma. Take your pick. Find what works for you.
I hope that this is helpful but let me know below if you have any questions.
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