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Up til now I have ridden with Strava running on my mobile phone sitting in a special mobile phone holder which sits up on my handlebars.

Now I am looking for a better solution, both more aerodynamic for my new bike, and also with longer battery life (My present phone only lasts 2 hours with gps running).

How do I select the lightest / best device that runs Strava? It obviously needs to be GPS capable.

What features do I look for? Is it a smart phone? A smart watch? A garmin device?

The device being light, comfortable, reliable and able to record rides of 4 hours or more would be ideal.

Thanks for any suggestions.

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  • Depending on what you'd want to upload to Strava, just the track or the Full Monty with cadence, heart-rate... If it's just the track you can find USB-stick-sized GPS-recorders that fit in your pocket. – Carel Sep 12 '14 at 7:58
  • I just want the track, never have been worried about heartrate... thanks, I'll check out the USB stick sized ones. I guess I have to upload the stick to my pc and then to strava? – vikingsteve Sep 12 '14 at 8:45
  • I draw your attention to Rule #74, closely followed by Rule #6 :-) – andy256 Sep 12 '14 at 9:03
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    Question changed, should be on topic now. Please review. – vikingsteve Sep 12 '14 at 12:47
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    The question is still too broad and primarily opinion-based. Things like "what features should I look for" are going to be highly dependent on individual preferences. As far as selecting the "lightest/best" device, I recommend checking the device specs to see which one is the lightest and reading online reviews to determine which is the best. Ultimately, what is best is also going to be primarily opinion-based. – jimchristie♦ Sep 12 '14 at 14:11
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The 'best' is fairly subjective and probably not compatible with lightest. For what it's worth I remember reading somewhere that the Edge 510 is widely used through the pro peloton.

I use a Garmin Edge 810 and would recommend it in an instant but it is possibly bigger than it needs to be if you're very worried about weight and size (I chose it for its navigation and live tracking).

On the smaller scale, the Garmin Edge 200 or slightly larger 510 might work.

Also the Cateye Stealth 10 (or 50 if you want Cadence) are supposed to be highly rated.

I'd be surprised if any of them struggled with lasting far longer than 4 hours. My 810 handles 5 hour rides with about 50% battery left and that's using bluetooth for live tracking for the whole ride.

The downside of a pocket type GPS tracker is that you don't get the data (like speed, cadence) in front of you while riding.

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  • Thanks Trengot. With the Garmin edge, does it show the present speed on my handlebars? Does it tell me my segment time at the end of each segment? I'm fine to upload later via pc, but I want to see immediately if I get a personal best time. – vikingsteve Sep 12 '14 at 9:00
  • Garmin doesn't show live segments from Strava but I'm not sure of any that do. (Not sure if the phone does with a pro account - I don't have pro and my phone stayed in my pocket when I used the strava app). The Edge 1000 will show you live segments but only from Garmin Connect which, from what I gather, isn't as well populated as Strava. – Holloway Sep 12 '14 at 9:07
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    For detailed reviews of most cycling stuff, look at dcrainmaker.com. He posts very detailed writeups on most cycling devices. – Holloway Sep 12 '14 at 9:08
  • The Edge will show you as much data as you can handle while riding. I use combinations of HR, Cadence, mph, time and distance while riding but you have a huge variety of metrics to choose from. – Holloway Sep 12 '14 at 9:10
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    +1 for dcrainmaker.com - many a good geek-out session had there. Thorough reviews bordering on information overload! Like the product comparisons. – adey_888 Sep 12 '14 at 15:15

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