Wahoo Roam v. Garmin 830

[roadie7]

Good morning-- With my birthday coming up I decided to join the 21st century and treat myself to either the relatively new Wahoo Roam or the Garmin 830. I've read several reviews and saw different conclusions. One author changed his mind after a few months from the Garmin to Wahoo.

I'm particularly interested in the turn-by-turn feature. I'd like to hear the experiences of this group to help me make a decision.

Thanks.

[CDollarsign]

I think you need to figure out if you want to be a wahoo or garmin person. I personally like wahoo's interface a lot better. Setting up the device with your phone is super easy and I love all the 3rd party integration - such as building a route on ridewithgps and having it automatically get pushed to my device.

As for turn by turn - you could save some scratch and get the bolt. I think its turn by turn works perfect if you have a route selected. If you dont want to build routes I guess the roam is the way to go.

[unterhausen]

I have an 830. The turn by turn works really well. Except if there is a climb after the turn and climbpro is on, climbpro takes precedence and the turn warning is really short lived. Gotta turn that off.

[Ruckusdog]

I have the Wahoo and really like the turn by turn. There’s an audible warning, a blinking light and the road names are large enough to read quickly. It works even when I don’t have the map page showing.

I’ve never used that feature on a Garmin so I can’t compare.

[tigoat]

I have a Bolt and a Roam after many years of using Garmins. Both the Bolt and Roam have been reliable for my road riding so taht I can atest for their reliability. I have used the Bolt on several occasions for routing and it did seem to work great with turn by turn directions on the screen. Oviviously, Wahoos do not have street names on their maps but following the dotted arrow on nameless roads seems pretty reliable. The reason I bought the Roam is due to a bigger screen that has 11 data fields. The Roam has a few more routing options over the Bolt that I have not used yet. Beside being bigger the Roam seems to have a better screen than the Bolt. I do not have a Garmin 830 so I cannot give you a direct comparison but if it is anything similar to my old Garmin 1000, it should be an awesome feature rich head unit. Okay, with that out of the way, following are things that I do not like about the Roam (applicable to Bolt as well).

-The unit is huge with a thick frame around which makes the sreen looks small. The frame to screen ratio actually is much better on the Bolt. Nowadays with frameless designs on smartphones, TVs, etc. Wahoo's latest gadget seems out of touch.
-The data are not centered in the fields, as they are off to the right. The top field only has one data field leaving a lot of wasted space on the left. That is one dumb design if you ask me.
-Notification fuction do not work on both my Bolt and Roam without the App running on my Android Samsung Note 9. The App does not run in the background so it must be activated every time I go for a ride. Even with the app running there is no email notication available for Andriod, only text. They told me email noticfication only works for iphones. That is another dumb design.
-The Roam has a noticable lag when scrolling from one page to another but that is not a big deal for me
-As mentioned, maps do not have street names. What's up with that?
-The bottoms on the Roam look bigger than the Bolt and they are actually harder to operate for some reason.

I think these are cons for me. I have not counted the hours of battery life of my Roam but it seems to take a long time to run it down, that is one thing I am very impressed with the Roam.

[Sojodave]

I too am struggling with the decision between Garmin 830 and the Wahoo Roam. I think Wahoo has better software and Garmin has better hardware. The feature I am most interested in is having the map feature re-route you if you go off course. I am currently using the Wahoo Bolt and I've had half a dozen rides this last year that I got off course. One century was supposed to be 102 miles, it turned out to be 112 with 1200 feet of more climbing.

From my research, the Garmin 830 has a touch-screen, and is supposed to have turn-by-turn for re-routing. The Roam does not have turn-by-turn directions on re-routing but does show you a path.

At this point, I'm leaning towards the Garmin 830, but I wish their software was better and they had a phone app like the Wahoo...it's still a tough decision. If my Bolt could do re-routing when you get off course, I'd stick with it.

[dem]

As a confirmed Garmin hater, if your criteria is dynamic, on-the-fly mapping and routing.. Garmin wins hands down.

You then get to suffer all the OTHER terrible Garmin-isms.. but you pays your money and you takes your chances.

[Kentf14]

First, the new 830 is dramatically different from previous Garmins (even in the 800 range). It's different enough that prior experience with Garmin devices shouldn't be used when comparing to Wahoo in this case. I've owned an 810, and 820. I just bought an 830 because my 820 was having issues and have to say that *so far* the 830 is in another class.
*The improved processor speeds make everything work much faster. Maps, calculations etc.
*The new touch screen actually seems to work It's not smartphone quality, but pretty close
*The added on-board metrics are pretty cool if you follow that sort of thing.
*Adding routes via ridewithgps is available with the Garmin Connect IQ App
*Adding routes via Strava is pretty seamless.

There's a lot more, but these are things that I've appreciated. That said, I bought an 830 because I'm already in the Garmin ecosystem (Vector3 and Fenix devices also). I would have picked up a Wahoo simply to try it out because I've heard great things from peeps that have them, but I took a risk on another Garmin and am totally happy so far (about a month in).

[kramnnim]

I was happy with my 1030, even happier when they replaced it out of warranty without hassle when the screen had a faint halo around it.

Tried a Bolt and don't understand why they are so beloved, sold it immediately.

[R3awak3n]

I have an 830. It has been great so far. I agree that the 830 is a different kind of beast compared to older garmins. That is not to say that it does not have garmin problems, it does. Once in a while it bugs out but Its a really nice unit. The new processor really speeds things up, its fantastic. Touch screen works good (but then again I never had a problem with garming touch screens) and the battery life is KILLER.

I do like wahoo too, never had one because the garmin varia did not use to work with them but now it does so I will consider a wahoo again next time. The roam imo was kind of a disapointment though, as far as a new wahoo goes.. its not really that different than anything they already have. I think the next big wahoo unit will be super nice though.