Wahoo ELEMNT ROAM Review: 8 New Things // Hands-on Walkthrough 

the dvice is too big and the screen isn't even to the edges - poor

Watched vids &/for turn by turn navigation not that great. Also heard some say if you go off route you are off route. I am just a bike commuter so navigation is more important.

@@shaneturner4630 Some of us need a bigger display because our sight has gone and wearing glasses and sunglasses is a No no. So it might not suit you, but it suits me. Edge screens as an engineer are difficult to save if dropped. This has been built so if you crash or it gets knocked off it will survive. So nice to have an opinion, but that is all it is.

@@vincewhite5087 , turn by turn on the Wahoos is great if you use it with komoot

You must be new here lol. But welcome, Ray is the best at what he does, that's for sure

You can edit the names in the app

Where did you order the Roam with a 10% discount?

@@benm468 Yes, agreed, I don't understand why DCR keeps going on about Strava routing... anyone I know who is serious about creating routes realizes how vastly superior RideWithGPS is. It's not even close. I'm glad Wahoo went with the best and chose RideWithGPS as their partner!

The side button flap on my Elemnt has come loose as well, just so you know. It's a Wahoo issue not simply a Bolt issue (unfortunately)

The Wahoo breadcrumb feature with the chevrons is fantastic. So many times I've gone the wrong way with my Garmin since it just showed a line and I wasn't sure which way I was supposed to (at the start of a loop for example!)

Og elemnt has always done this

I think it’s far more than navigation. In fact, I’d argue that Wahoo thinking it’s just about navigation is exactly what got them into this pickle now.

This ^^^

shanmac77 I’ve done this in the past. Trouble is that your phone screen isn’t designed to be on for that long. You have to force it not to dim or turn the screen off.. which means that the battery deteriorates. Even more so if it’s in direct sunlight. You’ll also want to get an anti-glare screen. Sweaty hands make operating a phone touchscreen quite difficult. So many times I struggled to unlock my phone after it locked during a big effort, i.e. exactly when you want data. If you’re in a crash, the last place you want your phone to be is out front taking the brunt of it. I could go on. These points are all fine if you’re a casual commuter. If you’re doing long distance or high intensity rides, though, a phone just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Lean method/Devops.

People still buy it. That's why!

Marketing, most likely. They commit to a release date/press event well in advance. Things get delayed on the development side, and they ship a product out that might need software updates out of the box. I'd assume there's a solid 30-60 day lead time from manufacturing to delivery to a consumer.

Agile Software Development / Continuous Delivery

Same question here

It’s improved a lot over the last 20 months, which is 20 months too long. The fact that it works almost 2 years later doesn’t change the fact that it was so bad it was recalled at launch.

Or a camera in the tail light using radar to trigger the camera. So it doesn't consumer power and hide your data all the time. I love my garmin radar, but a quick picture would make it as good as a head turn. Come on wahoo, lets see this?

Curious if you’ve tried an alternative device ..:

Steps? I can’t find any way to, and when I noted it in my written review, Wahoo didn’t say anything about that being incorrect.

@@Dcrainmaker I think this sequence shows it, although I cannot translate anything here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fjV0EUVgytM.html

Weird, that doesn't exist in my app (not even the beta one). I wonder if it got pulled for some reason? (And Wahoo hasn't corrected me on that item).

It’s more functional this way. :)

Yeah, love the original elemnt, why you need a colour screen I don't know, they are jist harder to see in bright ozzie sunlight. The maps have worked for me overseas using komoot so don't see why change. I would still buy the old unit today, it does everything i need.

SRAM RED eTAP blips. Allow gear changing from bars. Never used them. 🤣

Lol....I was just wondering the same thing! Took a screen shot to ask my roadie buddy.

yes. and radar support coming soon

Yes, you can now - but you couldn't then. Cheers!

@@Dcrainmaker , good to see Wahoo taking things like this & Radar integration on board

@Martin Reading So what do you think after a few months use? I am looking to update from a Garmin 520 and wanting good navigation for touring.

@@SteveT__001 , can't fault it, navigation is great, I use it in conjunction with lookout for planning routes

@@thekiteflyer1 Thanks

stupid question..... do you need a new computer? my Elemnt is still strong 2 years in

It does work. It just has its own "features" from day one, which I am not too happy with. ... Like: When I am on a group ride, and half-way in we have a planned 20-30 min coffee break (long enough, so that I'd like to save the battery, and not force the Bolt to stay on the whole time), when the group decides to resume riding again, I do not want to be the one, whom they have to wait for, just because my Bolt needs 2 minutes to "resume" a simple 40K ride ... Or, when I am riding alone, using Bolt to navigate, in a foreign environment with a very dense set of round-abouts and heavy car traffic (getting out of town, to the start of a planned ride), and I take a wrong turn, by mistake, due to the low resolution of the Bolt's display, and me not wanting to be zooming in and out, when approaching a planned turn, instead of concentrating on the traffic situation - then there is no simple way, to get back on the planned route, but to stop, and see for yourself, how to slowly, manually navigate back, instead of being able to just keep riding. ... And end of last year, on a rented bike, there were unexplained signal dropouts to my Stages gen3 left-only crank powermeter. (We did eliminate all possible "simple" causes with Stages support, while I was still on vacation, like low batteries, eventual watter-bottles, or air-pump in the way, etc). I did send the powermeter to Stages, when I returned from my cycling vacation, and they did replace it, but they did say, that they found no issues with it, on their testing gear (and I have no way to re-test it, in a realistic scenario, since both my bikes @home have a different crankset {with their own gen2 Stages powermeters, which I had no connection problems with, thus-far, with the Bolt}) ... So I guess, I am just looking around, to see, if, 2 years later, there is a unit on the market, which will make my life with it less "bumpy".

Yes

I don’t follow. The lag on the screen is real life. :/

Since I am not a natural speaker maybe I cannot describe what I mean, e.g. recording 60fps of a 25fps display may create some effects the human eye doesn’t see. This means screen refresh on the Roam is slower than on the Bolt?

@@orci77 Totally understand, but it was recorded in 30FPS and edited/processed in 30FPS. In this case, the ROAM is legit slower for me. It's one of my core complaints.

DC Rainmaker ok that wasn’t quite clear to me even after reading your review. Thought it was more related to mapping. But that’s not good. Thanks for the clarification and I stay happy with my Bolt.

What a shame.

i rode from Europe to Iran and used Wahoo Elemnt Bolt for routing. worked out perferctly fine. Wahoo forever.

@@Pansee actually I believe the Bolt is more suited to that kind of tour than the ROAM, since the ROAM will most likely not have enough storage to store the maps for the countries you passed, while the Bolt has no such problems.

At the time of me writing this comment competitive cyclist offers 15% off for first time email subscribers wink wink so that’s about $55 off.

This is definitly one of those. Super product.

You're going to be waiting forever. The Bolt can't and won't ever have this capability.

@@TheRdrage it would be a pretty simple software patch. If I can get Google map bike directions that take me on main roads then so could they

Agree.

Depends on how you plan to use it. Wait 3-6 months and see which has made more headway and has the features you seek. Both released unfinished products and have already dealt with production issues.

Ah yes, I noticed that as well. Showing the previous turns was maddening. I haven't tried routing yet this year (long cold winter here in Montreal) so not sure if they've fixed that with any of the recent updates.

Rerouting would be really nice.

Or decrease the bezels. I often wonder how many people actually use the LED's. While I think in theory they sound good (and I'm sure some vocal users will sing their praises), it's something that almost nobody mentions when they talk about the ROAM. And when the BOLT only had one set of them, nobody seemingly cared - which makes me wonder what the % is of people that actually use them (or more specifically, pay attention to them).

@@Dcrainmaker I use the LEDs for power monitoring during training. I also use the top leds for routing as the speaker of the original elemnt is very weak. Had lots of great adventures that way :)

I've now played with the Roam and saw it has basemaps of most of the globe on it. You can delete the countries, provinces, states, districts, etc you don't need, update those you do and should still have plenty of space. I have the entire US and most of Europe and some South America and it still has over 300mb available. I'm quite certain none of them have highly detailed maps for the entire globe stored on the head unit. Perhaps the Wahoo rep should have explained this to you.