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I'm looking for GPS bike computer (for road bike) for affordable price and with reasonable battery life. I don't care about brand, I just basically need 2 functionalities:

  • map which is shown on the display and I could move along the route and generally work with the map during the ride
  • elevation profile which can be shown during the whole ride and which is real-time, so I can see if I am in the middle of the climb, on the top, etc.

The elevation profile is actually most important for me, but it looks that it's not standart for bike computers. I don't need heart rate and different fancy analysis as this my watches already do. I saw Garmin Edge, but people are often complaining about the ClimbPro function there and maybe I would prefer Open street map.

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  • Would you be open to running something on a phone? I think some apps do that (but not the one I like). A device with a barometer would be a good idea as it's more accurate than GPS for altitude.
    – Chris H
    Jun 14, 2020 at 10:03
  • How accurate are you expecting the elevation profile to be and what are people complaining about with ClimbPro? GPS height accuracy is severely limited by not seeing satellites below the horizon, most devices incorporate a Barometric sensor to help, but the starting altitude needs to be accurate for Barometric to work. There is no substitute for the user understanding the limitations of the technology.
    – mattnz
    Jun 15, 2020 at 4:21
  • The Locus Map App can do this by defining your own Dashboard, which also allows you to display various other info on top of the map. The on-screen elevation profile is limited to 20km width, probably because it becomes unreadable if there's too much to display. Example screenshot with elevation chart at the bottom; rather flat example.
    – Erlkoenig
    Jun 15, 2020 at 4:55
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    Thanks for all comments. @Chris H :Using of mobile phone is definitely possible, but with two problems - quite big size of mobile and not so good battery life, if the display is turn on for several hours. Than when I for ex. fall down, I need to call for help and I don't want to have my phone unusable. I see lots of pros and cons for mobile phone.
    – daky
    Jun 16, 2020 at 6:14
  • @mattnz As I know, the profile is showing only it the case you are going up the hill (and yes, in that case you need it most), but sometimes the hill doesn't show there (I don't know, I just read it somewhere), so you can't just choose when you will see the profile, the Garmin makes decision instead of you - so maybe it would be nicer to see the whole profile all the time. But yes, I know that ClimbPro is probably the best choice which we have now, I was just asking, because maybe there is any other device which can do it and I haven't found it yet.
    – daky
    Jun 16, 2020 at 6:17

2 Answers 2

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A Garmin Edge 820 or 830 (and probably the cheaper 530 as well) can do what you are asking:

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/04/garmin-edge-830-cycling-gps-in-depth-review.html

I just don’t really see the benefits of the elevation profile. Be aware that – at least on the 820 – the map and navigation is quite slow, at least with OpenStreetMap maps (though apparently the 830 has been improved in that regard).

The Edge 530 costs around 250€ right now, Edge 830 around 350€.

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i use my mobile phone and bought a universal bike phone holder which sits on the handle bar,i use 3 different apps (not at the same time) strava, relive and komoot, all have a free app or paid subscription personally i prefer strava because you can download the data to a pc then upload to relive to create an videomap of your trip, photos can be included along the route

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  • While your post is relevant it doesn't answer the question, which was about bike computers.
    – rclocher3
    Jun 16, 2020 at 23:37
  • @rclocher3 I see your point that a phone isn't a dedicated bike computer, but it is a valid solution, albeit with other drawbacks already discussed in other questions like bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/5968
    – Criggie ♦
    Jun 17, 2020 at 0:21

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