A comparison of the good and bad between garmin 1030+ and the karoo2
My main bike is a bosch powered e bike with a Nyon display. It is more like a GPS computer than most bike displays. But it is limited in connections. It has my HR and it has a power meter and GPS mapping that can tell you how far you can go on a battery that includes elevation.
But it is not practical to record my rides in strava as every-time you turn off the bike it makes another ride. It gives you the info for the whole day but uploads it to the bosh webpage as separate rides and you have to manually upload to Strava. I had the garmin before I got the better display and used it to upload to strava and keep track.
But the I dropped the garmin too many times after I injured my hand and it was having issues from the rain (found out it was the silicone cover causing it). So I bought a Karoo.
I have setup several garmins and have it down well. The Karoo is far easier to get up and running updating is far easier too. I have to connect the garmin to my Mac to get it to update.
It easier to connect sensors to the Karoo as the garmin can be finicky especially with lights. The last update fixed most of the garmin radar issues.
For me the thing I really mis on the Karoo is you cant put it to sleep. Say you go into a store or stop for lunch the garmin you hit stop hit the power button and its asleep and the radar turns off. With the Karoo it's so slow at booting up its a pain to turn it off when I do that. Plus it wont turn the radar back on it you turn it off but don't stop the ride.
Thats an annoyance but not a huge one. I usually pause the ride and lock the screen but the radar is going off when I carry them into a store.
I cant really comment too much on navigation they work well on both but most of the time I use my Nyon the screen is a lot bigger and gives you better directions. But its routing sucks iff you don't have a route made up.
The garmin does pretty well at calculating calories without power meter. Maybe 100 calories less than my nyon calculates with HR and watts. But the Karoo does nothing so when the ride is uploaded to strava its strava that calculates it and on my last ride it was 800 calories more.
Then comes the data that is uploaded. The Karoo website is pathetic and has very little ride data. Gamins phone app and website has all the info. Its easier to add routes on the Karoo then it is on the garmin though.
The Karoo is far more buggy than the garmin does. The bugs on the garmin are more problems like uploading rides can be long and slow sometimes or not till the next ride. The Karoo is fast doing it. But the Karoo is not as streamlined at ending and saving a ride. Its only two steps to stop and save a ride on the garmin its 4 steps on the Karoo.
Screen size is about the same and the Karoo is usually easier to read. The bugs on the Karoo are far more annoying because they effect the ride data and accuracy. Like temp can be off and elevation can be off and such bugs are more often an issue.the one thing garmin is bad at is if it loses satellite signals it will just keep going. When I go underground shop the ride and end it it can think I am still moving and start a ride again.it can do that when I bring it into the house too like yesterday when I compared the rides and was waiting for the garmin to sync it kept starting a new ride. When it does that it can do turn on the radar if it is close enough and sometimes not turn it off and drain the battery.
The Karoo needs to improve the website to conclude all of the ride info its silly it doesn't to have that. Its silly it does not calculate calories. All my garmins do it pretty well and match each other and my Nyon.
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One plus point in favour of the karoo is gradient response. A major issue with the Garmin 1030+ is the response time to gradient changes, there are several major threads running on the garmin forums about this, and its something my own garmin suffers from as well, namely it takes up to 15 seconds to respond to gradient changes!, whereas the Karoo takes around 2-3. Maybe not a deal breaker if you are on a major climb, but on shorter undulating courses it can be a source of some annoyance!
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