We love getting a gadget for Christmas. If you’re buying one for a cyclist then we’ve got a great selection of ideas in the £100 and over category. You can get some seriously nifty gadgets for bikes and we’d love to get any of these ourselves.
Christmas afternoon rolls around. You’ve had a gargantuan lunch and your body is 90% pigs in blankets. The Christmas day post-lunch family walk is done and it is going dark outside. But the best part of the day is just about to occur. As Grandad falls asleep in front of the Queen’s speech that he made you record, you settle down to set up the gadget that you got from Santa.
Quite frankly, getting a gadget for someone is a great way to ensure that they’re quiet for the majority of Christmas day but a gadget isn’t just for Christmas. These gift ideas will be in use long after the big day.
GoPro Hero 9 Black - £429.99
Slick edits of gnarly descents, data overlays of your Strava KoM hunting or just looping video of your ride to work, GoPros are brilliant little bits of kit that we use a lot here at road.cc.
The Hero 9 Black is the latest and greatest, boasting a host of handy features. The one we care about is the HyperSmooth 3.0 which ensures that our riding footage is buttery.
Now, all you need to complete your riding edits is some dangerous riding and 2008's music genre of choice, dubstep. La Roux, anyone?
Tacx Neo 2T Smart Trainer - £1,199
Ok, we’re kicking off with a big one. In the days and weeks following Christmas, a lot of turkey and festive drinks generally get burned off and as January approaches, us cyclists start to look forward to those warm summer months.
Training will ramp up for those of us that are aiming to do a few events or races and a great way to get fit when working training around family time and work is by training indoors.
The Tacx Neo 2T is one of the best training gadgets around boasting a max resistance of 2200w, a max simulated slope of 25% and easy connection to training apps like Zwift, Rouvy, The Sufferfest, TrainerRoad and many more.
Garmin Fenix 6S Pro Solar GPS Watch - £739.99
Watches do far more than just tell the time these days and if we had to list what this smartwatch can do, we’d be here until Christmas.
The Fenix 6S Pro Solar can run, as the name suggests on the power of the sun. This boosts the standard battery life from 9.5 days to a whopping 10.5 days.
For multi-discipline athletes, having a watch for tracking performance is generally easier than having different devices for each discipline. So if you know a budding triathlete, someone that likes running as well as cycling, or an adrenaline junkie that throws in some casual bouldering too, this would be a rather fancy watch for them.
Wahoo Kickr Climb Grade Simulator - £449
If the cyclist that you’re shopping for has the popular Wahoo Kickr then an upgrade to their indoor training setup could be the matching gradient simulator.
The riser will lift your bike’s front end by up to 20% to simulate gradients on apps like Zwift and Rouvy. It’ll also do the descents, dropping the front end of the bike to simulate -10% slopes.
Saris MP1 Nfinity Trainer Platform - £799
If you want to go even further towards making indoor riding as realistic as possible then a rocker plate can simulate the natural movement of a bike when it is out on the road.
Keen indoor trainers say that these rocker plates help with power delivery and also comfort.
Set this up on Christmas day and you be rocking around the Christmas tree…
Cycliq Fly 6 CE Gen3 - £199
If you’re looking to combine a rear light and a camera, Cycliq has just the thing with its Fly 6 CE Gen 3.
Many riders fit these to record dodgy driving on their commutes, but the Fly 6 is also suited to general riding with 5-hours of continuous recording in camera-only mode or up to 4 hours with the light running too.
Should you buy this for a loved one, hopefully, you won’t have to sit through replays of their commute.
Garmin Edge 1030 Plus - £494
Want to chase those Strava KoM’s but got dodgy eyesight? What you need is a stupidly big cycling computer.
The 1030 Plus is an excellent bike computer, but it comes at a very high price, so getting one for Christmas would be absolutely brilliant!
With Santa’s speed, he’d be setting some suspicious Strava times if he had one of these running on his round.
Wahoo Elemnt Roam GPS Cycle Computer - £299.99
Quite frankly, we can’t believe that Santa doesn’t also get lost when delivering to half the world in one night.
Maybe he’s got a Wahoo Elemnt Roam for the reliable mapping?
As soon as this one is unwrapped, you can get busy setting up the data screens via the smartphone app. In fact, it’s so simple that the fun will be over a bit too quickly.
Stages Shimano Ultegra R8000 Power Meter - £349
How much power is Rhudolph putting out at the front of the sleigh? Is Vixen losing form? A power meter could help. If they made them for hooves. Or sleighs.
While Dancer and Prancer prefer the old school metric of heart rate for their training, you can get power data on your bike at a pretty reasonable price these days.
This Stages Ultegra left-hand crank simply bolts onto the non-drive-side of your crankset and before you can say ‘functional threshold power’, you’ve got power data to train with.
Just don’t try to do a 20-minute FTP test after Christmas lunch.
Beeline Smart Navigation Cycle Computer - £100
As much as full route guidance is brilliant, it does take some of the fun out of finding your way around. The Beeline computer takes a grid reference position that you specify on the smartphone app and then it simply points you in the right direction.
The computer shows you the direction that you need to head and the distance to your destination, so you can pick the route. The Beeline will record your ride so that you can share it on apps like Strava, making it ideal for adventure riders.
Exposure Strada Mk10 Super Bright - £300
In today’s breaking news, a certain red-nosed reindeer is fearing for his job after learning of the power of Exposure’s Strada Mk10 front light.
If the cyclist that you’re buying for will ride their bike right through the winter then chances are that a big front light like this one will be incredibly useful.
The Strada Mk10 is perfect for showing you the way on unlit roads and is also great for fast riding in the dark as the light is cast a long way in front, helping the rider to pick out things like potholes, other riders, pedestrians and other such obstacles that they’d rather not ride into.
Rapha Roll-Top Backpack - £100
We’re stretching the definition of ‘gadget guide’ to include gadget accessories like this roll-top bag from Rapha, but it has space for your work laptop, so we’re squeezing it in.
The bag, as the name suggests, features a roll-top design that we generally find very useful for carrying different loads and bigger items.
Rapha says that the bag is “constructed with an abrasion-resistant fabric” that is also water-resistant. Internally, there’s a padded 15” laptop sleeve to protect delicate tech from the rest of the 25L contents.
De'Longhi Dedica Espresso Machine - £189
Coffee. It is the fuel of many riders both on and off the bike. Drink enough and there are performance benefits. Make it in a fancy way and you’ve got added style points if that’s even a thing.
Buy this gift for someone that you live with or see regularly and it’ll be a gift that gives back time and time again. Just don’t drink too many espressos once the recipient has it set up on Christmas morning as you’ll have a good job getting to sleep.
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