Wahoo TRACKR RADAR

The Wahoo Trackr Radar is the cycling tech company’s entry into the radar rear light market. The radar works well, the tail light is bright and the unit uses USB-C charging. The mount is sturdy, but proprietary. Comparing it to the best-in-class Garmin Varia, it’s not quite as good, the battery doesn’t last as long and it costs £10 more.

Radar rear lights have been around for 10 years now. Garmin’s first generation Varia was launched in 2015 and the current, third generation, was launched in 2020, and is widely regarded as the best-in-class radar. If you’re reading this review, I’m going to assume that is expressing an interest in buying a radar. You’ll want to know which one is best for your specific needs.

I haven’t used every single radar that is available on the market, but I have extensively used the Garmin Varia RTL515, the Magene L508, which I own, and the Trek CarBack.

Radar light?

Briefly, a radar rear light is both a rear light and a radar that detects objects approaching you from behind and alerts you of their presence either via your head unit or through a dedicated companion app on your phone, visually on-screen and audibly with an alert sound.

I use one all the time, and find it incredibly useful. A good one almost always alerts you to a car before you have seen or heard it.

Radar reliability

The radar spec for the Wahoo Trackr Radar says it detects objects up to 150m away with a 35° degree field of vision; the Garmin detects up to 140m with a 40° field.

Both are decent radars. Of the four radars I have experience of, the Wahoo works slightly better than the Magene and much better than the Trek – but the Garmin still has the edge.

I know this because I spent three long days on the road doing the PPP with Dave, and with Justin, a long-time Varia user. This meant there was ample opportunity to compare detection distances and battery performance.

There were no false negatives, by which I mean, a car approached but wasn’t detected. This is the kind of false you don’t want, so that’s good. Both radars detected all oncoming objects in plenty of time, but the Garmin was quite often 1-2 seconds earlier, especially on winding roads. Justin and I both use a Karoo head unit, so I think I’m fairly safe to say it’s the radar.

There were some false positives, by which I mean there was an alert, but nothing dangerous was approaching. I was riding in a little group, so most likely it detected one of the riders. The Wahoo did this more than the Garmin, though it didn’t happen often enough to be annoying. As a radar can’t tell the difference between a car and a bike, I can’t fault the radar for this.

In summary, the Garmin has the edge when it comes to detection, but the Wahoo is a close second and in reality, there was no instance where the Wahoo’s slightly later alert would have resulted in an unsafe situation – it was still plenty early enough.

Connection options

As I mentioned above, you can’t use the radar on its own, you need to either pair it with a head unit or… well, in Wahoo’s case, that’s it. Magene, Trek and Garmin all have companion phone apps that the radar can connect to, which means you don’t have to use a head unit. You don’t even have to mount the phone on your handlebar as you could just use the audio alert. If you’re somebody who listens to music or podcasts through headphones while you’re riding, this could be important.

I don’t typically, and almost always use a head unit anyway, so this wasn’t a problem for me. It’s entirely possible that Wahoo will launch a companion app for use while riding, but at the time of writing, there wasn’t one.

The actual connection to your head unit is via ANT+ and bluetooth, which means it pretty much connects to everything out there in terms of head units. I haven’t tried them all, but certainly on the Karoo, it was as easy as the other radars I’ve used, which is to say: very.

The radar does connect to the Wahoo app, which allows you to change certain settings, and also allows you to update the firmware. There’s been a firmware update twice in the few weeks I’ve been using the radar, and I think it’s great to see active development.

This could also mean things like battery life and detection distance parameters are improved over time.

In summary, the Garmin has the edge in terms of connection options. If you listen to podcasts or music while riding, this could be important to you.

Battery life and charging

I almost always use a rear light in its bright flash mode. Garmin’s High Flash mode’s claimed battery life is 16 hours, which I found to be about right when I reviewed it. Wahoo’s claimed battery life in High Flash mode is 15 hours, which I didn’t find to be accurate. Again, on the PPP ride, the battery life on High Flash was less than 10 hours, and it wasn’t even cold; in cold conditions you might get even less riding time out of it. Justin’s five-year-old Garmin lasted a couple of hours longer than this brand new Wahoo on each of the three days.

It is pretty difficult to give accurate numbers on real-world battery life for radar rear lights as it depends on the number of detections as well as the other usual variables like weather conditions, which is why I decided to lead with the head-to-head comparison above. If you are interested in claimed numbers, here they are: high steady (21 lumens): 10hrs, low steady (10 lumens): 15hrs, high flash (53 lumens): 15 hours and low flash (18 lumens): 20 hours.

The Wahoo charges via USB-C; the Garmin is still on micro-USB. This means that the Wahoo charges faster, and a top-up from the power bank every time we stopped for a coffee or fish and chips or a tuna melt easily kept the Wahoo going, as even 20 minutes of charging tops up the battery a meaningful amount. This was audax, so there was no shortage of stops.

The Garmin lasts much longer, the Wahoo charges faster on USB-C. Up to you to decide which is more important here really.

The rear light

The Wahoo has two LEDs, which might have something to do with my battery life experience. You could also argue it makes the rear light more effective than the Garmin, which has only one LED. I’m not sure I buy that as I’ve always thought when riding behind some with a Varia that is one of the best rear lights out there. Let’s say the Wahoo is as good for the purposes of the comparison.

As you’ve connected the Wahoo to your head unit via ANT+, you can control which mode the light is in from your head unit. As I mentioned, not a big deal for me, as I always have it in the most visible mode: high flash. You can also see the charge level of the battery on your head unit.

The Wahoo does have a couple of rear light features that are interesting – and that you can set from the Wahoo app. ‘Quick alert’ gives a quick flash when a car first appears. Perhaps useful in steady mode, not so useful if you’re already in a flash mode. You can probably guess what ‘brake light’ does: it increases brightness when you’re braking.

The app also has a battery saver mode that you can enable: this reduces the brightness of the selected light mode to conserve battery life when nothing is detected. I didn’t use this for two reasons: the main one is that I don’t want to be less bright. There are always situations where you couldn’t trust a radar to detect a car, for example when a stationary car comes out of a junction, or a car joins a roundabout.

The second reason is that I wanted to test battery performance; Wahoo’s product instructions don’t specify that you should use battery saver to get maximum performance, and it felt more equal to compare with the Garmin which doesn’t have this feature to have it switched off. Anyway, you might get more battery life with battery saver on than I did, depending on traffic conditions.

In summary, you could say that the Wahoo has the edge here as it has two LEDs and a brake light mode. The Garmin has a quick alert equivalent, but no brake alert. I’m not convinced that a brake light feature is useful, so this is not a dealbreaker for me.

Mounting it to your bike

The Wahoo uses its own proprietary Elemnt-style quarter turn mount. It looks a lot like the Garmin-style mount, but isn’t quite and is rotated through 90 degrees. Which means you can’t use the plethora of aftermarket Garmin-style mounts out there. Bah.

With the radar, you get the mount, a short and a longer strap and three rubber inserts to suit your seatpost. The bracket works well, looks well integrated with the light and holds the light steady. If anything, it’s a little over-engineered. It’s certainly a lot better than the Trek CarBack’s proprietary mount.

If you want to mount the radar anywhere other than your seatpost, then Wahoo recommends KOM Cycling radar accessories which ‘should include a replaceable Wahoo style quarter turn puck’. Or Wahoo could have just gone with the Garmin standard. Shrug.

In my opinion, Garmin wins here for compatibility, although Wahoo’s mount is sturdier.

Value

Wahoo’s Trackr Radar costs £179.99.

The market-leading Garmin Varia costs £169.99, Trek’s CarBack costs the same, but is hard to recommend.

The iGPSport SR30 Smart Radar Taillight costs £119.90 and while effective as a rear light, we didn’t feel the radar was effective enough.

Magene’s L508 currently costs £99.99, and is not quite as good as the Wahoo or the Garmin, but still much better than not having a radar rear light – and it is the one that I own.

Conclusion

I’ve enjoyed using the Wahoo Trackr Radar – it’s a really good unit and it works well, even if the battery life doesn’t live up to the claimed times.

But Garmin’s Varia detects just that little bit earlier, has more aftermarket mounting options, a longer battery life, can be used with a phone app and is £10 cheaper.

However, it does use the outdated micro-USB charging standard. And this is where the Wahoo Trackr Radar is objectively better. And it has a brake alert, which might be important to you.

Verdict

Decent radar rear light with quick USB-C charging, though it lacks a companion app for alerts

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