Fitness watches/trackers/cycling computers

[Beancounter]

What are people using nowadays?

I'm replacing my five year old TomTom Multisports watch and am wondering what to go for. Not really impressed with the TomTom, it struggles to connect to my phone (piece of shit Huawei), bulky/uncomfortable and takes ages to connect to the satellites.

Will be using it for cycling and am quite geeky in that I like to track my route and upload it all to Strava.

[Mr Moofo]

I have a Garmin Forerunner 235

It's pain in the arse ... very flaky, switches itself off and on etc.

Others think they are great ....

[Mr. Dazzle]

Mrs. D and I have had three fitbits between us in the last 5-6 years - I wouldn't recommend them at all, they're flaky as (often drop out half way through what you're doing) and the app isn't great.

Mrs. D has a Garmin Forerunner 640M, that's much much better. It's been pretty much faultless in her experience and the GPS is much more stable.

[Yorick]

T'other day I saw a tart with a slim purple Fitbit thingy. And also a gaudy bling watch side by side on same wrist

[Mr. Dazzle]

T'other day I saw a tart with a slim purple Fitbit thingy. And also a gaudy bling watch side by side on same wrist

When I wear a fitbit I have it on my right wrist, I keep my regular watch on my left still Since my fitbit is one that's a full on watch too I have a big watch on both hands.

[lostboy]

Still use an ancient Garmin 800 on the bike - expensive in it's day, cheap when I picked it up SH and dirt cheap now. Super reliable and works a treat. Also use a Garmin Vivoactive 3 for 5-a-side, windsurfing, running, surfing and everything else and again it's been very reliable. Touch screen is a bit sensitive and I haven't worked out a way of switching it off so that it can "accidently" be swiped by a water droplet or a sleeve brushing it but that's the only minor annoyance.

Garmin Connect as a software is dead easy to use, syncs really well on iphone.

[MingtheMerciless]

Polar M430 watch and H10 heart rate belt (wrist HRM is lousy with cycling but fine walking our running). Very reliable but do remember to turn off your phones bluetooth as that can corrupt the connection between belt and watch. Watch then syncs with phone (via BT which you have to turn back on) and uses the polar app which then syncs to strava. Sounds a bit more of a faff than it actually is.

[Mr. Dazzle]

If you like a bit of music then deffo get a smartwatch that can do that. Trying multiple Bluetooth things at the same time is a nonstarter.

[Saga Lout]

If it's recommendations you want I can't help you. I use a Wahoo's Fitness app on the phone along with a Wahoo Rflkt which, as the name suggests, reflects info from the phone to the Rflkt head unit on the bike. Wahoo stopped making them about three years ago. If I was buying something now I'd probably go for a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt although they're considerably more expensive than the Rflkt was.

[Slenver]

I have an Apple Watch and using that for Strava was mostly good. The HR monitoring is supposedly very accurate and GPS is good.

The obvious downside with a watch is that you can't see it the whole time, so if you're interested in anything like average speed then it's no good.I tried mounting the phone to the bike and using the Strava app on that, but the app is pretty shit. Doesn't show average speed at all for some bizarre reason, and also Strava refuse to connect the phone app and watch so you can't take the HR data from the watch. A bazillion people complaining on their forums don't seem to interest them - it's phone or watch, not both.

In the end I bought a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt, with speed and cadence sensors and HRM belt thing. Annoying to have to buy/wear the HRM belt when I already have a perfectly good one in the watch, but Apple don't allow the data to be transmitted to other devices. Either way, the Bolt is a nice bit of kit - small and light and very customisable, you can have it show pretty much anything in any layout at any size. Good for a known route with loads of data or for mapping a new route.

The main competitor, and bigger fish in the pond, is the Garmin Edge 530, but it's more expensive and battery life is supposedly woeful in comparison.

[chutzpah]

I used Garmin Edge for years and then flipped to a Forerunner 235 purely as it allowed me to track running and was simpler on the commute (as I didn't need to connect it to a computer to load up rides). Plenty of people would say tracking commutes isn't all that important but I found it useful for tracking maintenance, especially if you're using multiple bikes.

I guess the starting point is budget, for me any dedicated bike computer I'd want to avoid plugging in to a computer to upload the ride, just for the convenience. I wouldn't be so bothered about some of the current features they're pumping out like alerting you to upcoming strava segments.