Lezyne XL/Mega C vs Wahoo

[false_Aest]

I might be in the market for a new head unit in the next month or so.

I currently have a 510 and don't really have any complaints other than the UX and navigation isn't intuitive.

Has anyone done comparisons of the Lezyne + Wahoo (Elemnt)?

The Lezyne really interests me mostly b/c of price + battery life.

I've got some long events next year (BWR, DK200, Crusher, LT100 maybe) and for some longer training rides/adventures I would love to not bring an extra battery. The thing I'm unsure of is if the Lezyne requires you to be continuously paired with your smart phone for GPS navigation/directions. If so it seems undo some of the benefits of having a long AF battery life.


Thoughts. Experiences. Fried Chicken?

[Waldo]

Fried chicken. Totally...

[unterhausen]

The leyzene looked really interesting when it came out. I was expecting randonneurs to try it due to the battery life, but I haven't heard of any using one. Maybe it's the method of loading routes, dunno.

[makoti]

All I can say is the Wahoo has been solid for me for the past 6 months. I've loaded several rides & never has a routing issue. Cavat: all are paved.

[efixler]

I only have experience with the Lezyne, but I really like it. The battery life is great. I charge it once a week and it'd probably go two weeks if I forgot to charge it.

The basic metrics are simple and customizable and all I need, and it syncs with Strava (mostly) automatically. (The Strava auto-syncing is super-slick as long as the GPS unit auto-reconnects with your phone when it turns on, but this part has gotten really flaky in more recent app/firmware releases)

You can load routes a few different ways:

1) Lezyne web mapping tool: It's OK, but unfortunately it seems to have been made by people with very large screens who never looked at on a big screen. It's fine to use on a big screen, but kind of a nightmare on a laptop.

2) .tcx files using RideWithGPS or whatever -- when I started out I was using the Lezyne site ^^ but I've moved more towards RideWithGPS, in part because it's somewhat better, but mostly because there's no way to share routes from the Lezyne tool with other people.

3) From your phone, you can always get a route to a place and it does a good job of sending you on a less-car-ey route. With my device I need to have service on my phone to do this (and I often don't where I live, natch); the newer devices let you save offline maps.

[efixler]

Oh, and to answer your question directly -- the Lezyne only needs to be connected to the phone when transferring the directions to the device, e.g. at the start of the ride.

Once the route is started the phone and the lezyne do not need to be connected (so, yes, you can turn your phone off and save power)

[Alan]

I really like the Bolt and battery life is rated at 15 hours. Integration w ridewithgps is fabulous. Just copy to your routes or pin and sync your Bolt you are good to go. Wahoo software is really good and compared to the competition their development platform makes a lot more sense. Two models that share the same software vs. others who have a bunch of models.

I doubt you can go wrong either way but it may be worth trying the Bolt first.

Hang out on DC Rainmakers site to soak up all the comments about both units.

Alan

[madsciencenow]

I’ve not tried the Lezyne but did look seriously at these before buying my 1030. I previously had a bolt and edge 1000. What I really disliked about the bolt was the ability to re-route back to a course if I happened to miss a turn. This is also a major issue if you happen to back track and can’t remember exactly where you came from. There are work arounds for this that primarily involve getting your phone out and telling the bolt where you want to go but my experience is that when you are riding, potentially in a hurry, sweaty or wearing gloves in the winter that this isn’t ideal. The bolt battery life is pretty good and all other features aside from navigation are really solid, imho.


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[efixler]

With the Lezyne, you have a couple of options for rerouting. Rerouting while you're on a ride is always dependent on being connected to a phone with service.

- You can set the device to 'auto reroute'; I don't use this, because it can provide undesired results when you take an intentional detour.

- With auto-rerouting off, when you go off-route you can hold one of the buttons on the phone and it'll reroute you. This is my preferred approach, when, say, a road turns out to be closed or impassable.

- The graphic maps on the Lezyne device are not great (you'll rely more on the turn-by-turn) but, if you're just taking a short detour you can use the breadcrumb map to try to get back to your route.

The tl'dr here is that rerouting is not amazing by any stretch, but you can use the second option (or the others, I suppose), without pulling your phone out of your pocket.

[jruhlen1980]

I might be in the market for a new head unit in the next month or so.

I currently have a 510 and don't really have any complaints other than the UX and navigation isn't intuitive.

Has anyone done comparisons of the Lezyne + Wahoo (Elemnt)?

The Lezyne really interests me mostly b/c of price + battery life.

I've got some long events next year (BWR, DK200, Crusher, LT100 maybe) and for some longer training rides/adventures I would love to not bring an extra battery. The thing I'm unsure of is if the Lezyne requires you to be continuously paired with your smart phone for GPS navigation/directions. If so it seems undo some of the benefits of having a long AF battery life.


Thoughts. Experiences. Fried Chicken?

Mmmm... Fried chicken.

My 2 cents:

I had a first generation Lezyne GPS and the battery life was amazing but it had some other bugs, mainly erratic behavior when pairing with sensors. Unfortunately my experience with Lezyne support was unsatisfying.

I've read things that indicate that the second generation Lezyne products are better but I have no personal experience.

I have a wahoo bolt that I've used for a couple years now, including DK200 plus some other gravel centuries. Yes, I bring a spare battery for anything much more than 10 hours, but the navigation has been flawless and it's never lost data. I even accidentally sent it through the washing machine a few weeks back and as far as I can tell it suffered no ill effects.