New Wahoo Bolt replacement

[SCJKJ]

I have an Elemnt Roam and am very happy with except for a few points. I list them here because I'd think there are a fair few people here who, like me, have a roam but are always on the lookout for the newest gadgets.

-Laggy data, which isn't a huge inconvenience
-Not the greatest GPS, but again, not a huge inconvenience since all my workout data for my coach comes from my Polar Vantage V2 wristwatch anyway.
-Battery life, although this is really reaching, but since the new garmin ones are even better I mention it
-Startup times, but let's be honest, the only thing we need to change is turning it on before taking our bike out instead of turning it on at the last minute, not that of a deal
-Recovery after crashing takes a while, but happens very rarely.
-Mine has recently developed a 1/10 chance of displaying a blank(but still active) screen with the upper lights flashing when shutting down. You press 'yes' for shutting down and it's like the screen doesn't display pixels but the backlight is still on and the upper lights keep flashing. I've found no other way than to let it drain the battery. This is the biggest annoyance to me since I sometimes go for a 1h-1h30 ride in the evening and then go back out in the morning. By then the battery sometimes isn't drained if it was fully charged the night before... Somebody else experiencing this?

It seems like the new bolt has more issues than the old roam, which is a fine product. I'd contemplate buying an Edge 540/840 if it ever came out, but I just don't like the visualization of data on Garmin, especially maps. It's a fine product, but it's just not my style. A lot of people probably think the same. I also really like the super easy integration with RideWithGPS(or other programs if you use another).

[willvousden]

-Mine has recently developed a 1/10 chance of displaying a blank(but still active) screen with the upper lights flashing when shutting down. You press 'yes' for shutting down and it's like the screen doesn't display pixels but the backlight is still on and the upper lights keep flashing. I've found no other way than to let it drain the battery. This is the biggest annoyance to me since I sometimes go for a 1h-1h30 ride in the evening and then go back out in the morning. By then the battery sometimes isn't drained if it was fully charged the night before... Somebody else experiencing this?

Yes! I have an original ELEMNT and it's had what sounds like the same problem since some time in April:

• Sometimes I'll try to turn it off and the screen will go blank but the backlight will stay on. Pressing the power button again I get the device menu immediately, as if it had never switched off.
• Sometimes the top lights flash in the above sequence.
• Only way to avoid is to do a hard reset by holding the power button.
• Seems to happen more often after longer rides.

Also, around the same time, another problem developed where after around 150 km/5 hours, the ELEMNT would start to be very slow to respond to button presses and I would see intermittent sensor dropouts (HR, power, etc.). After a few minutes like this it would eventually crash and restart, requiring a full recovery of the ride (which takes aaaaaages).

I realised that I was able to avert these crashes by ending the ride preemptively when I saw these symptoms, but would still have to do a hard reset because of the above "won't turn off" problem.

Seems like these problems are linked somehow?

[SCJKJ]

-Mine has recently developed a 1/10 chance of displaying a blank(but still active) screen with the upper lights flashing when shutting down. You press 'yes' for shutting down and it's like the screen doesn't display pixels but the backlight is still on and the upper lights keep flashing. I've found no other way than to let it drain the battery. This is the biggest annoyance to me since I sometimes go for a 1h-1h30 ride in the evening and then go back out in the morning. By then the battery sometimes isn't drained if it was fully charged the night before... Somebody else experiencing this?

Yes! I have an original ELEMNT and it's had what sounds like the same problem since some time in April:

• Sometimes I'll try to turn it off and the screen will go blank but the backlight will stay on. Pressing the power button again I get the device menu immediately, as if it had never switched off.
• Sometimes the top lights flash in the above sequence.
• Only way to avoid is to do a hard reset by holding the power button.
• Seems to happen more often after longer rides.

Also, around the same time, another problem developed where after around 150 km/5 hours, the ELEMNT would start to be very slow to respond to button presses and I would see intermittent sensor dropouts (HR, power, etc.). After a few minutes like this it would eventually crash and restart, requiring a full recovery of the ride (which takes aaaaaages).

I realised that I was able to avert these crashes by ending the ride preemptively when I saw these symptoms, but would still have to do a hard reset because of the above "won't turn off" problem.

Seems like these problems are linked somehow?

Fortunately I don't experience your other problems, and thanks for the 'hard reset' solution! Weird I didn't think about that.
Seems like these issues are relatively new, and as thus should be fixable.

[Ritsuke]

Up until today I had no problems with the Bolt V2. Today I wanted to connect a PM with BLE but couldn't find it. Internet teaches me that the Bolt has issues with bluetooth ...

[thirdsun]

Up until today I had no problems with the Bolt V2. Today I wanted to connect a PM with BLE but couldn't find it. Internet teaches me that the Bolt has issues with bluetooth ...

That's a very vague conclusion. Bluetooth is notoriously fragile and by that logic everyone has issues with Bluetooth.

However, yes, you should always prefer ANT+. It's much more robust in my opinion.

[elliotb]

-Mine has recently developed a 1/10 chance of displaying a blank(but still active) screen with the upper lights flashing when shutting down. You press 'yes' for shutting down and it's like the screen doesn't display pixels but the backlight is still on and the upper lights keep flashing. I've found no other way than to let it drain the battery. This is the biggest annoyance to me since I sometimes go for a 1h-1h30 ride in the evening and then go back out in the morning. By then the battery sometimes isn't drained if it was fully charged the night before... Somebody else experiencing this?

Yes! I have an original ELEMNT and it's had what sounds like the same problem since some time in April:

• Sometimes I'll try to turn it off and the screen will go blank but the backlight will stay on. Pressing the power button again I get the device menu immediately, as if it had never switched off.
• Sometimes the top lights flash in the above sequence.
• Only way to avoid is to do a hard reset by holding the power button.
• Seems to happen more often after longer rides.

Also, around the same time, another problem developed where after around 150 km/5 hours, the ELEMNT would start to be very slow to respond to button presses and I would see intermittent sensor dropouts (HR, power, etc.). After a few minutes like this it would eventually crash and restart, requiring a full recovery of the ride (which takes aaaaaages).

I realised that I was able to avert these crashes by ending the ride preemptively when I saw these symptoms, but would still have to do a hard reset because of the above "won't turn off" problem.

Seems like these problems are linked somehow?

Fortunately I don't experience your other problems, and thanks for the 'hard reset' solution! Weird I didn't think about that.
Seems like these issues are relatively new, and as thus should be fixable.

This is very useful, I've been having the same problems with my bolt this year too, after a couple of years of successful use. Seems like maybe a bug in a recent software update?

[Ritsuke]

Up until today I had no problems with the Bolt V2. Today I wanted to connect a PM with BLE but couldn't find it. Internet teaches me that the Bolt has issues with bluetooth ...

That's a very vague conclusion. Bluetooth is notoriously fragile and by that logic everyone has issues with Bluetooth.

However, yes, you should always prefer ANT+. It's much more robust in my opinion.

I didn't know. Always figured Bluetooth was a stable connection (phone in car, hotspot for laptop, wireless headphones, ...) and therefore made more sense to me to only use one type of connection. Now I have to use BLE for Zwift, ANT+ for Wahoo Bolt.

[willvousden]

Dunno if it's related to the above mentioned problems, but since the last update (WF48-14851) I have yet another issue.

Loading long routes seems to slow the ELEMNT down hugely. I loaded an 800 km route the other day, and switching pages and zooming in/out on the map was taking around 5 seconds. Data fields were only updating once every 3 seconds or so. Almost unsuable! In the end I had to stop the route and just use my phone for navigation instead.

A 400 km route was slightly more manageable, but still not great. Less than 200 km seems OK-ish.

Anyone else experiencing this in the last week or so?

[cyclespeed]

Upgraded my Bolt V1 to a V2 yesterday.
However, speed is very erratic - where I know I was at a steady 30kmh before I am now at anything between 25 and 35, it just doesn't stand still....
Also, temperature is at least 5'C below reality. All my friends with Bolts and I have always been within 1'C of each other. Now I am 5'C below them.
I wrote to Wahoo; they just cut and pasted saying, keep away from trees, buildings etc. and that temperature is accurate to +/- 10' Fahrenheit. WTF?
I'm sending it back.

[RDY]

Upgraded my Bolt V1 to a V2 yesterday.
However, speed is very erratic - where I know I was at a steady 30kmh before I am now at anything between 25 and 35, it just doesn't stand still....
Also, temperature is at least 5'C below reality. All my friends with Bolts and I have always been within 1'C of each other. Now I am 5'C below them.
I wrote to Wahoo; they just cut and pasted saying, keep away from trees, buildings etc. and that temperature is accurate to +/- 10' Fahrenheit. WTF?
I'm sending it back.

Sounds about right for the V2 and Wahoo customer service.

[TLN]

Sounds like I'll stick with Bolt V1 for a while

[Treptay]

Upgraded my Bolt V1 to a V2 yesterday.
However, speed is very erratic - where I know I was at a steady 30kmh before I am now at anything between 25 and 35, it just doesn't stand still....
Also, temperature is at least 5'C below reality. All my friends with Bolts and I have always been within 1'C of each other. Now I am 5'C below them.
I wrote to Wahoo; they just cut and pasted saying, keep away from trees, buildings etc. and that temperature is accurate to +/- 10' Fahrenheit. WTF?
I'm sending it back.

That is a quite large temperature range. Do they also say our speed taken from GPS is also accurate to +- 20 km/h ?
Or our measured distance is accurate up to +-20 km?
What a joke.

[TheDoctor]

There's a lot of hate here for the V2. Just my 2 cents: working flawlessly since I have it (from launch). I don't understand why there is such a variation in user experiences with it.

[SCJKJ]

Upgraded my Bolt V1 to a V2 yesterday.
However, speed is very erratic - where I know I was at a steady 30kmh before I am now at anything between 25 and 35, it just doesn't stand still....
Also, temperature is at least 5'C below reality. All my friends with Bolts and I have always been within 1'C of each other. Now I am 5'C below them.
I wrote to Wahoo; they just cut and pasted saying, keep away from trees, buildings etc. and that temperature is accurate to +/- 10' Fahrenheit. WTF?
I'm sending it back.

Sounds about right for the V2 and Wahoo customer service.

Seems a lot of products have gone downhill. Pedals, the bolt, ...

'keep away from trees and buildings'. What kind of solution is that. So basically don't live in a city & don't go mtb'ing?
I get that the customer service department can't fix cr*ppy hardware, but if they resort to advising this, it must mean it's reaaaally bad.

For my next one I'll be considering Garmin & trying to get the maps view more like a wahoo...

[willvousden]

There's a lot of hate here for the V2. Just my 2 cents: working flawlessly since I have it (from launch). I don't understand why there is such a variation in user experiences with it.

I'm super confused by this as well.

I'm in the market for a new bike computer (my trusty 5-year-old ELEMNT has become un-waterproof), so I decided to give the Bolt V2 a chance. I bought it directly from Wahoo, so any sign of trouble and I'll be sending it right back under their 30-day return policy

I'll report back on my experiences!