300k with Hammerhead
Answered
A couple of weeks ago I did a 300k using the Hammerhead. Since I just got it, I also carried my trusty Garmin Edge 1030, just in case.
Random notes
- The battery life seemed quite good to me. I got to about mile 135 when the battery registered about 45%. At this point, I plugged it in to recharge and it had no difficulty recording the rest of the ride. I've heard from the forums that the battery is almost depleted at this level of charge. I was pretty diligent about turning off the display when I didn't need the unit for navigation (i.e. I knew where I was going). I didn't check to see how much of my USB battery pack remained, but I imagine the Hammerhead has a much bigger battery than my Edge.
- The route changed at the last minute and I updated it on my PC. Maybe I wasn't connected to my WiFi when I tried to update the unit, but it didn't seem to sync. I didn't want to dump the ride, and I wasn't sure what would happen if I tried to update the route while recording the ride. So at mile 135 when I recharged the Hammerhead, I switched to the Edge because I didn't know exactly where I was going.
- Navigation worked well, but it wasn't a particularly challenging route (no bidirectional segments for example). The biggest thing I missed using the Hammerhead versus the Garmin is the audible alerts for turn-by-turn directions. This is amplified when I turn the display off to conserve battery power as I could blindly miss a turn and go off course. A very useful feature would be to wake up the unit from sleep mode before the turn (maybe a kilometer) and flash the display when going off course. Maybe I would notice that.
- The display was very clear and visible through changing lighting conditions. It might be nice to have a data field span columns so important fields like speed and mileage could be still larger.
- I did not miss the Virtual Partner. I hate that guy!
David
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Hi David,
1) Glad to hear that you are happy with the battery life of your Karoo. We are constantly working to improve the battery drain rate on our every update.
2) I see that you faced issues with the unexpected route change and syncing the Routes to Dashboard. Sorry for the inconvenience caused. We haven't come across this issue so far. If you face this issue again, please write back to us at support@hammerhead.io. We will be more than happy to look into this and help you with the best resolution.
3) Karoo does not have an Audio beeper. We have considered this and are exploring ideas and ways. This is still in the works. As of now, we are not committing ourselves to a dedicated timeline for this but we love to explore that feature in the Karoo soon.
4) That's really a good suggestion to have a data field span columns to get a larger view of important data.
I really appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback and experiences with Karoo. This is a great appreciation for our team who is working rigorously to strive for the customer's requirements and I just want to say thank you on behalf of our whole company.
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Is Karoo planning to implement a virtual training partner feature, specifically NOT Strava live segments, but rather racing against an imported strava segment? Since the Powertap has gotten out of the gps unit business (Joule), Garmin is the only maker who has this feature. This is the feature I use more than any other. I'd love to have an alternative to Garmin.
Les Mc
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