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feature
Wahoo Elemnt Bolt vs Garmin Edge 530 - which is best?
If you’ve got about 250 quid to spend on a new cycling computer then we have two very, very good options here in the form of Wahoo’s latest Elemnt Bolt and Garmin’s Edge 530. But which one is worthy of your money?
What you get
Out of the box, the story is pretty similar. With both, you get the computer itself, an out-front mount, a stem or bar mount, a charging cable and some instructions that most of you will never read.
That all sounds pretty similar but each does something a little better than the other. Wahoo’s mount is aero, apparently, and it does look very nice compared to the chunky Garmin mount. But the Garmin mount allows you to attach an external battery pack to the underside which is handy if you’re off on a multi-day ride. Out of the box, it's a dead heat and a good start for both.
The unit
In terms of physical features, the Garmin has a 2.6-inch display with a 246 x 322-pixel resolution. The battery is up to a claimed 20 hours, you get IPX7 water resistance and the unit weighs 75g. The charging cable is a rather dated micro USB.
The Wahoo loses out in terms of screen size slightly with a 2.2-inch display and it also just loses out on resolution with 240 x 320 pixels – although the difference is tiny. It’s a 64-colour screen rather than full colour, but you’re not going to be browsing photos on it so you should be okay there. The battery is also down at a claimed 15 hours but it matches the Garmin’s IPX7 rating.
Where the Bolt V2 wins is in weight. This thing is just 68g. You also get a more robust USB C system for charging.
So in terms of the headunit, the Garmin just edges this one. It’s a bit bigger, the screen is a bit posher and the battery life longer.
Setup
Setup needs very little discussion. Wahoo has been better at this for years and that remains the case. The smartphone app is simple to use and, along with making initial setup a breeze, you can customise the data fields from the app.
Garmin’s Connect app isn’t awful, but it isn’t the most user-friendly app and beyond initial setup and syncing, there’s little that you can use it for. All of your customisation needs to be done on the Edge 530 headunit which does take a little bit of time. So the points go to Wahoo here.
Looks
This one is going to come down to personal preference a bit and we’d say that both look pretty good. The Garmin’s screen is quite reflective so in bright sunlight, you do get times where the screen is a bit tricky to read but generally it is perfectly clear.
They’re fine. Whether you like the sleeker Garmin or the chunkier aesthetic of the wahoo is down to you.
Features
While the setup process and smartphone integration is dominated by Wahoo, Garmin easily takes the win when we look at features. Both get Strava Live for all of you keen KoM hunters and you’ll get a host of compatibility with indoor training apps.
Both will connect up to electronic gears from Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo and you can pull in training sessions from a selection of sites such as Today’s Plan and Training Peaks.
Garmin, however, just keeps the features going and really, you could just about replace your cycling coach with the built-in suggested workouts, dynamic performance monitoring and training status. This isn’t perfect, but it does give you a decent idea of what you should be doing day to day.
If you plan a route to follow using the Edge 530, you’ll also activate the climb pro feature. While this might sound like a bit of a gimmick, it is actually one of the most useful features that we’ve used on the newer generation Garmins and Climb Pro gets better as the hill that it's guiding you up gets longer or steeper. It’s a great tool to help you pace your effort and it is especially helpful when you’re riding a route that you don’t really know as you can also see how far from home the climbs are. You can also see how far you have to go until each of the listed climbs which is great for timing your energy-giving Mars, Snickers or, for the older rider, Marathon bar so that you’re fuelled optimally for each effort.
Away from going uphill quickly, there’s a host of off-road features too. Grit rates the difficulty of your ride and then Flow is great for trail riding as it gives you a score based on how smoothly you carved your way down the singletrack. Brake too much and mess up your cornering as we do and your flow score won’t be very good. As you get better, the flow score will improve and it has certainly helped us to stay away from the brakes like good mountain bikers do.
Navigation
The new Elemnt Bolt features what Wahoo calls Smart Navigation which was previously available only on the Elemnt Roam. This means that if you stray from a route that you’re following, the Elemnt Bolt will automatically re-route you. This is a pretty big step forward and that bit is working well.
Garmin’s Edge 530 does much the same thing. It also has a colour screen and the map is equally easy to read. Like the Wahoo, if you go off course the Garmin will get you back onto the right track and our testing has shown both devices to be great for this.
While the routing on Wahoo’s Elemnt Roam is very good, there have been some issues experienced by reviewers such as DC Rainmaker and our Tech Editor Mat Brett has reported some of the same issues. The Bolt has been slightly late on the turn notifications. Thankfully, Wahoo seems to have fixed the issue with some updates.
Getting pre-made routes from the likes of Strava and Komoot is really simple for both devices these days with proper syncing enabled so there’s no difference here.
Where we’d suggest that the devices differ is in, again, that smartphone app. The Wahoo is able to, mid-ride, take a location pin that you’ve dropped on the app and navigate to it.
The Garmin Edge 830 does solve this problem somewhat. There you get a touchscreen which is actually really good. It’s the same one found on the stupidly expensive Edge 1030 Plus that we reviewed and it allows you to pinch to zoom, rotate the map and drag it around until you find where you want to drop your pin. It’s very much like a smartphone. You can do this with the Edge 530, but the buttons make it a bit of a pain.
Summary
So, which one should you hand over your money for? Well, our non-scientific scoring has given us a dead heat and we think that it comes down to the classic divide between Garmin and Wahoo which is features vs functionality.
The Wahoo is easier to set up and customise and you do get a better app to support the headunit. The small details such as dropping a pin to navigate to from the app work better than Garmin’s system for the Edge 530.
If you’re buying for navigation then you’ll be happy with either device. The mapping is extensive and the colour screens make things very easy to read on both. We would, however, say that If you’re after a huge range of features, then the Garmin should take your money. Things like the Climbpro and coaching features are really good.
Still want to know more? Read the full reviews here...
Well, there are our thoughts but which one would you go for? Have you already bought one of these cycling computers? Tell us about your experiences in the comments below.
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25 comments
Wahoo Elemnt Bolt vs Garmin Edge 530 - which is better? Surely?
My thoughts as well, unless the premise is that they are the last two competing for the title over a wider range of devices.
Of the half a dozen people with whom I regularly ride I used to be the only one with a Bolt. Our rides were often beset with histrionics from the Garmin users as their units malfunctioned in some way. None of us now uses a Garmin, we have three Bolts, a Bryton something or other and a Mio while one of our number has given up on the whole 'smart' computer thing and gone back to her trusty Cateye. The common Garmin complaint is simply that they the units are flakey and the customer support nonexistent. For balance I work with one Garmin user who swears by his computer rather than at it, still there's always one.
Blimey. Most people I know have Garmin. Although my mate has just got a Bolt so will be interested to see how that compares.
I've always found Garmin service to be really good.
My Fenix watch hasn't missed a beat in all the years I've had it.
My 530 did fail after a small drop and they replaced it. It was in an aftermarket silicon case so you'd expect it to survive a 3ft drop.
Garmin's products just seem to be so...I'm struggling for the right word...capricious is probably the best word to describe them. My brother's a pilot and tells me that thier aeronautical products don't have such a reputation although of course the cost of a systems failure while airbourne is rather more serious than a few lost data fields on your homeward commute. It seems like Garmin have a persistent quality control problem, rather than deal with it they simply gaslight their customer base with a shiny new product (as do so many tech' companies). But I'm just old, grumpy and wouldn't touch anything made carbon, with disc brakes or electronic shifting so I'd really not take my word for anything!
Doesn't the bolt win on resolution, rather than lose? It's a smaller screen so despite fewer pixels has a greater resolution in terms of ppi
You're confusing resolution with pixel density.
As a Garmin 830 owner, I'd vote for the Bolt v2 being the better unit. Even though I've never used a Bolt.
The firmware on the 830 (and probably the 530) is a complete fucking mess, which Garmin doesn't seem capable or willing to fix.
I've had Varia radar problems for nearly a year, that's never been fixed by CS.
Altitude, temperature and Grade measurements are out, or are delayed by 20+ seconds.
Navigation and re-routing when off course is a joke.
The screen is hard to read in sunlight.
Constant sensor drop outs.
One positive, I know which hammer I'll be using to smashing the shit out of it when I get fed up of its fuck ups.
I don't understand this, Garmin car GPS systems are fantastic, so why didn't they simply make their bike GPS systems the same way?
Which is best...... Bryton 750 is.....
Wow, I paid £149 for the previous version Bolt, that's a chunky price increase
There are problems in the supply chain driving up costs due to lack of supply but increase in demand, and then add in inflation due to the massive debt that Biden keeps raising, inflation has gone up 7.7% this year alone, the average has been historically the last 30 years 1.8% per year. That is why your Bolt cost more, and that is why a lot of things cost more.
But inflation won't end with the end of 2021, the forcast of inflation for years to come will be around 2.8% a full 1% more than the last 30 years averaged per year.
I like this bit "Where the Bolt V2 wins is in weight. This thing is just 68g" Err, the Garmin is a mahoosive 7g heavier
Might be worth showing the key data in a simple comparison table?
7 grams more? that's only the weight of 2 pennies combined.
points go to wahoo for needing a smart phone to adjust settings rather than adjusting them on the unit directly?
I've also noticed that wahoo users seem to need the phone app to put a route onto their device, rather than being able to store several routes on a garmin and launch direct from the head unit. Which can even be done while moving, where I wouldn't want to get a smart phone out.
So if your phone battery dies then you lose the ability to change routes on the head unit.
With my (1st gen) Bolt, if you have a route saved on the device, then you can select it directly from the device. If you don't have it saved on the device, you can send it from the phone (via bluetooth). Even if the route is on the device somewhere, if you have lots of routes it can still be easier to find the right one on the phone app then scolling through them on the device.
can you save a gpx file to your phone as a file independant of any app (komoot, strava, wahoo, ridewithgps? i.e. if you recieve one by email, can it be sent to the unit?
Nope, not true. My first gen Bolt has a load of routes stored internally, easily selectable on screen, no need for a phone. This came up on another group recently and a couple of guys answered to had over 100 routes on their Bolts. Is that enough for you?
As for your comment about settings? Liam used the term "customisation", not "settings". Which "settings" do you think are not adjustable on the Bolt that you are likely to need on a ride? Please do tell. I mean sure, if I want to change tyre sizes, I need to fire up the wahoo app and have the benefit of a bigger screen and a full keyboard, but I've never needed to do that half way up a climb!
1)this is just what I've observed when I'm about to start a ride with someone, and they are messign about trying to get a route from their phone to the wahoo. If this is not required. I don't understand why they are doing it. Maybe it's just users making life difficult for themselves.
Also wahoo users "I've got a gpx file - how do I get it onto the device?" Isn't a simple drag and drop while plugged into a pc like the garmin? Rather than needing to use a smart phone and app?
"customise data fields from the app" no mention of whetehr this is also possible directly on the unit. pPesumably this is about selecting which fields are displayed. and there are reasons why you may want to change this on a ride. Like when switching between a bike with ant+ di2 and one without, so choosing whether or not to have fields displaying gear and di2 battery level.
Or you may go for a long climb and decide you want to display heart rate, which is not routinely useful on the commute. Sometimes I'm following an course and 'distance to end of course' is very useful, but just going for an ad hoc ride without a course this field is useless.
To some extent planning ahead will enable changing these before starting the ride, but sometimes people forget or are in a rush.
all the 'benefits' fo the wahoo seem to be around what you can do "with the app" making it seem like use of the device without combining with a smart phone is severely limiting what it can do.
You mean like it says in the Wahoo Bolt manual? "Route files (in GPX or TCX format) can be imported either by opening them with the ELEMNT Companion App on your mobile device, or through a direct (micro) USB connection to the ELEMNT/BOLT from a computer."
With respect, if you are not familiar with the device, best not to comment. (Just as I would woudl feel unqualified to comment on the detailed operation of a Garmin)
It's the exact opposite of limiting.
You don't even need to drag and drop anything to the device, my routes simply sync automatically.
You can have mulitple pages with whatever data dispays you want to swap between say commuter page, map page workout page or whatever you want. As well as also being able to display more of less of the data on each page on the fly.
As already said, by Griff500 you don't know how to use something and keep complaining about you you think it does or does not work.
I've used both Garmin and Wahoo kit. Currently use both on a ride [Garmin watch and Wahoo computer] and have had three other Garmin GPS devices, a watch and two computers. All the Garmins are really difficult/frustrating to use compared to Wahoo kit. A large part of that is using the app for the fiddly stuff that is either very clunky or not even possible. You rarely need to use the app, but when you do need to it's zero effort to easily tweak something that would drive you mad on a Garmin.
Garmin now also use an phone app, but in keeping with Garmin UIs, it's painful to use and simply failed to work properly with the last Garmin computer I bought.
Very nice to see a factual, drama free, article. Garmin vs Wahoo, too often, has become one of cycling's emotionally divisive 'discussions' a la disc/rim brakes.
Mmm - article on disc brakes; article on Garmin vs Wahoo. Maybe road.cc think they're not getting enough comments.
Add views, more likely. News outlets want to publish.
Thanks for the article next to the video.