NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST

SIX BAR-MOUNTED GPS UNITS THAT’LL HELP YOU FIND YOURSELF. OR REMIND YOURSELF WHERE IT WAS THAT YOU LOST YOURSELF.

WORDS AND PICTURES BY DAVID HAYWARD

If gadgets were people, they’d be those people who just need to change their bottom bracket and index their gears in the car park before a ride. Just a little suspension tune-up at the most weather-beaten point in the ride. Just one tyre change before we set off. Just three gigabytes of updates to download before you can ride. That sort of thing.

When it comes to tech I am capable but curmudgeonly, and, let me set your expectations now – while they’re all functional devices that work well in certain ways, and while some are better than others, not one of the GPS units in this test has software that’s well designed throughout. I go out into the great outdoors to get away from progress bars and notifications, so all of the set-up procedures required for six GPS units were not a welcome crossover into this part of my life. Nor the design philosophy of some of them, which seems to cater to people who absolutely must get every text message or social media gnat fart immediately delivered to their eyeballs like little doses of digital crack.

When I’m out on the bike, I want my brain and nature to gently poke at each other, a nice jolt of adrenaline on the downs, and to not get lost. If I can look at some numbers to measure my performance later then great, but it’s not that important. So I’m reviewing these not just on how well they function and not just on how good they are for navigation, but to an extent also how well they support my stated aims as a mountain biker.

An hour and a half spent looking at sunshine streaming in the windows while software updated on two of them was not a great start…

A note on accuracy:

This can be a difficult thing to judge, and dealing with data is rarely simple. GPS isn’t a flawless technology – at certain times and places you’ll always pass into satellite coverage shadows, and I’ve found that this seems to affect me most on or below steep north-facing slopes. Similarly, if the GPS tracks from a device seem to stick well to roads, this might be high accuracy, or it might be software shuffling data points around after the fact – plenty of websites and bits of software perform this kind of trickery while preserving overall stats. Since my brainmeat doesn’t have an atomic clock and sub-millimetre-accurate satellite positioning to benchmark against, it’s impossible to tell and I’ve used other ways to judge accuracy. For instance, how much a resulting GPX file wanders away from the trail or road I was riding, and whether or not it smooths out every kink and loop caused by a crash or stopping to look at a view.

CATEYE STEALTH EVO

Price: £79.99 // From: Zyro, zyro.co.uk

Tested: Three months

This is one of the most basic devices in the group test, being a bike computer that automatically records GPS tracks. It can’t pair with Ant+ sensors, though the more expensive Stealth Evo+ can.

The display is very legible in all lighting conditions, and the interface is simple with one button on the front and two recessed into the back. Being a simple liquid crystal display, the screen makes it feel a bit retro, and the menu has to communicate some things with oddly truncated words and letters.

It does give a very clear indicator of whether or not it has a GPS signal though, and seems to pick it up fast and maintain it reliably while outdoors. Pressing the orange button on the underside puts it into ‘stop’ and ‘go’ modes, which aren’t immediately intuitive. ‘Go’ causes it to automatically record GPS tracks as you move. If you don’t have a GPS signal, it’s not possible to put it in go mode.