Hammerhead K2 vs. Wahoo Roam
Hammerhead K2 vs. Wahoo Roam
The post office has brought my new Hammerhead K2 yesterday, so I immediately start a ~40km test ride. To do so, I mounted the K2 directly next to my old Wahoo Roam for a better comparison. Until now, the Roam's display has been my reference, especially in direct sunlight. The more I was surprised that the K2 could keep up amazingly well, and over the entire trip was actually always better to read. To be able to test the battery consumption, I charged both computers (Roam to 100%, K2 to 95%) before the ride. On the K2 I had - as on the Wahoo - three sensors paired (Heart rate, Cardence & Varia Radar) and set the brightness to 100%.
The first thing that happened right after starting the route was that the K2 immediately thought I was already at my destination. It was a round route with the same start and finish. While the Roam wanted to start dutifully with the route, the K2 was already finished. Only when I drove a few hundred meters, the K2 also started to show me the actual route = weird!
From the display of the K2 I'm really hard on. Nothing reflected and the readability as well as the resolution of the map is superior to the Roam. Also, the actual route display with the arrows is clearer than the Roam:
The beeps are higher than on the Roam, which I found annoying at first. The (new) climping function is great and the display of all notifications worked flawlessly for me. The re-routing is also better than with the Roam, since you can see immediately after the alternative route where the original one continues. That has always bothered me with the Roam: After driving off the blue route, you never knew how it continues afterwards:
It would be nice on the K2, however, if the red route would be displayed exactly as the yellow: so with all the directional arrows - just in red.
Here are the first positive points compared to the Roam, which I noticed on the trip:
- The display is great. During the next ride, I'll play with the brightness to reduce it as low as possible w/o loosing the clearity of the map.
- The route display and the map is also top. Could orient myself better than with the Roam.
- Changing the pages with touch gestures also works great. With the Roam, you always have to scroll through all the pages if you have missed one 8-). In addition, the pressure point of the keys is heavier on the Roam.
- Updating the data fields feels twice as fast as on the Roam.
- The K2 has some data fields that I have always missed on the Roam. E.g. the estimated time remaining or time of arrival.
- The radar warning bar is only shown when there are vehicles behind you. With the Roam, the display is permanently compressed by the width of the bar.
- The routing was confusing at one point. While on the map it was obvious that the route runs to the right, "left" was shown as a tbt:
And here are a few negative things about the Roam:
- The LED bars on the Roam are top notch. Time will tell if I will miss these.
- While driving, my heart sensor failed probably 20 times and the display then showed "Searching...". With the Roam, this didn't happen once (or it just showed the last known value). Interestingly, the sensor was always lost when the radar reported a vehicle.
- There are considerably more data fields on the Roam in certain areas, e.g. for displaying heart rate times.
- The evaluation after a tour is much more extensive. The companion app displays all recorded values for this purpose. The K2 evaluates almost nothing and not much is displayed on the dashboard. Here you have to have a paid Strava subscription if you want to see more.
Last but not least, the battery consumption:
During the 40km tour, the Roam used 20% of the battery (which could also be due to the age of the battery), while the K2 only used 4% more battery, and that at a brightness of 100%. Further trips will show whether this remains so.
Current conclusion:
I will probably keep the K2 (for now) 8-) Have still 44 days to return him if not satisfied with...
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Some great comparison images and points you’ve put forward Marc.
I’ve found the K2 to be well beyond any other device in terms of display and navigation. Battery life has never been great for me with the unit but to be fair, the likelihood of riding 10 hours without a bar bag or something I could store a battery pack in is Low - I would expect the ROAM to be superior here.
Tech aside, the HH team delivers fantastic service and the consistent updates are awesome (though sometimes a 2 steps forward, 1 step back) - the steady improvement of the unit and a team that implements feature requests is pretty great. -
Hi,
thank you for your feedback. Today the weather was better than expected, so I took another test drive. However, unlike yesterday, this one was quite frustrating in terms of routing features. I'm still comparing this to the Roam, which was also mounted today. In addition, yesterday I unlocked the trial period of Strave Summit, which you can use as a Karoo2 owner. Then I added the same route on both devices. This time, the K2 has not immediately notified me that he was already at the destination - that was a little bit weird yesterday.
After about 20km I wanted to test how I can replace the current route with a new destination. With the Roam, you can use the function "Bring me to..." and select a point from the map (or select a destination from the favorite list). The Roam will always guides you to your destination - no matter how you drive. If necessary, a current alternative route is always calculated. This function does not seem to exist at the K2 at all!? Only the planning of a new route is possible (but a bad solution imho):
a) You need an internet connection to be able to plan the route at all (SIM card or cell phone hotspot).
b) The route is calculated once and must then be driven exactly as it is. If you deviate from this, a red line is calculated back to exactly this route - whether you want to follow the suggestion or not, does not seem to matter.
c) You can define an alternative destination in the map, but this route is then displayed in purple, and you have no advantage of the yellow route guidance (with the direction arrows).Okay, that's not going to work. So I decided to drive home. There is a corresponding item in the Quick menu: "Route to home". But what is that? Here, too, no real navigation to home is started, but a route is calculated once, from which one should not deviate. Otherwise, you are permanently led back to the calculated route via the red routes. This makes no sense at all. The Roam always navigates you home from the current position. If you drive to a different place, the route is adjusted accordingly. With K2, the beeping starts and you have to follow the red line back to the purple one. What is this? I would expect to get complete navigation support in the form of a yellow line (with the direction arrows), and not a thin purple line without additional information. In addition, the route should be automatically adjusted to the current position.
After the euphoria of yesterday, I am a little disappointed with the K2 today. In addition, the following points:
a) The Roam has displayed all Strave Live segments on the route - the K2 none!
b) Although in the settings the automatic upload to the linked services (Strava / Komoot) was enabled, I had to manually upload the ride by clicking on the icons individually. The Roam does this automatically once the ride is completed and I am in range of my wifi.
c) There doesn't seem to be a way for my ride to sync with Apple Health. Is this really the case? If so, that would definitely be a reason to send the K2 back. All my data ends up in Activities and Health, and is analyzed there. Can't be that this essential function doesn't work with the Karoo...!???
d) Today there were again massive problems with my heart rate sensor. After I had put this from my backpack I my jersey pocket, however, there were no more disconnections. No idea if the Roam had the same problems with this yesterday, but did not show this so obviously.Let's see what else I notice so....
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With the latest update, the Strava Live segments are working again. There was probably a problem in the last version, but that has now been solved. Also the third, about 40km long tour, I've made together with my old Roam for further comparisons. As before, I am very attired by the display.
In direct comparison to the Wahoo, the route display is easier for me to read - official bike lanes clearly distinguish themselves from the other road types and the yellow, large directional arrows help a lot while navigating. The heart rate sensor has now also no more dropouts (after I brought him out of the backpack to the front) and this time, I've enabled the audio notifications. Thought it only beeps, but it even reads out the street names as well as the direction (text-to-speech). Cause I'm cycling in germany, the pronounced street names were difficult to unserstand, so I switched off the audio connection during the ride.
As much as I like the straightforward re-routing, the algorithm should perhaps be reconsidered in one or the other places: I simply turned left at a road junction instead of cylcing straight ahead. The re-routing would have let me turn around for an estimated 3km, only to end up at the same road junction again. Since a simple "turn around" (as with other Navis) would have been more useful in this case. Maybe the number of kilometers for a re-routing versus a turn around should be included in the alogorithm.
The battery consumption is at 60% brightness so about 7-9% and is enough for my trips.
Have a nice sunday...
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Two week later...
...and I'm still impressed with the Karoo 2.
The weaknesses already mentioned above will hopefully be solved by further software updates. The sensor problems have largely been resolved, at least for me. On two rides, the re-routing was not quite as efficient as on the Roam - but I would not want to miss the possibility to see the upcoming (original) route after the re-routing. I also like the map display with the colors - much better than on the Roam, even if I found its rudimentary use of colors better at the beginning. Today's update has expanded the Climber function and now shows all future climbs in a list - top. Will definitely keep the Karoo..
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