4 Expert Picks: Best Wireless Bike Computers

Customer Review: “OK… it is a ‘Five Star’ rating in part because give me a break… a wireless cycling computer with calorie count and thermometer for around 16 bucks? That has to count for something. So the not-great stuff first… it has three menus of stuff to select from as far as the display goes and what you get on each screen is what you get. You can’t customize the lines of data that get displayed. So for example, I would like the speedometer with the thermometer, but I can’t get that. Instead, if I want to know the temperature I have to toggle through the second screen to the third screen to read that. That screen displays ‘Maximum Speed’ in place of your current speed, which is pretty useless for me… it might be nice to know after a ride what your fastest speed was… it just isn’t anything I need to know on an ongoing basis. Secondly, the instruction sheet is very detailed, very involved, not super-well-written and a bit confusing. When you’re setting up various lines of display, you’re not always sure what it is the line you’re working on represents… if you start reading the instructions, you’ll eventually figure it out… but by then it has timed-out of the set up mode and you have to start over again. Third, you can’t cram in lots of lines of data in a unit this small without the font being on the small side. Again, it isn’t the unit’s fault that the lines are as small as they are, but it can be annoying. Good stuff… the back light feature works well. There are a number of different settings, but I haven’t set up anything different from what it came with and you push ‘Mode’ at night to get a good 3 seconds of light. And it does light up the whole display despite originating on the left side of the unit. The thermometer works! I used to have a ‘puter by Planet Bike that was a wired unit that I bought specifically for the thermometer and it was terrible. I’d leave my house on a day I knew was in the 30’s and it would read 74 degrees or some-such and by the time I got to work some 25 minutes later it would read like 56 degrees. This one seems to work well and in the moment… you can program Celsius or Fahrenheit… also kilometers or miles for the other measured settings. Set up is straight forward and easy. Honestly, all the sturm und drang people are raving about in the reviews has me flummoxed. I mounted mine on the left side of the bike, made sure the magnet was centered on the wheel sensor, turned it on and it had a pulse right away. A tip: I didn’t have to do this because the magnet on this unit is pretty strong… but you can buy the tiniest of the neodymium magnets and attach one or two to the wheel magnet to increase its strength and range. Then you won’t have to adjust the distance to the sensor to within a micron of its life. The dimensions for these craft magnets are like 2 mm diameter and 1 mm thick. Accuracy of the speedometer… yeah, I’m not sure. It seems accurate based on how far away a destination is and the trip distance, which seems to correlate well. The instructions do give you some common measurements for different diameter wheels… it doesn’t have 700 x 25c however and so I can’t see how well my measured / calculated circumference ‘stacks up’ with their estimate. The calorie count feature keys off your mass in kilograms with one pound = about 2.2 kilograms. Personally, I think any and all calorie count features are pretty worthless. How fast you’re going and therefore how many calories you’re burning just has too many variables to account for. Durability, water resistance, battery life, etc. are all unknowns at this point. If these wind up being ‘bad’ I’ll post updates.”

Customer Review: “Do not buy that think! It simply doesn’t work!!!! Very bad design and user experience !”

Customer Review: “After 5 mountain bike rides, totaling almost 7 hours of ride time, I’m impressed. The Bikevee BKV-310 wasn’t difficult to set up and mine has acquired GPS quickly and worked well. The included handlebar mount has gripped it firmly through plenty of rough riding. It has backlighting and tracks speed (including average and max speed), distance, elevation, and ride time (both trip and total). Battery life is WAY more impressive than my old Garmin Edge 150: I had almost 7 hours of ride time, spread over a couple of weeks, before the Bikevee’s battery-charge indicator dropped from 5 bars to 4 bars, so plenty of charge left. It does not have a lot of advanced features (does NOT connect to Bluetooth or phone, provide map info, connect to heart-rate monitors, etc.), but it’s only a fraction of the price of computers that do all that. Based on my experience, if you just need a basic computer at a great price, you won’t go wrong with the BKV-310.”

Customer Review: “Five stars because it works as advertised. I would give it 6 or 7 stars if it had a compass function too. I mean, why not? It has a GPS already. How difficult is it to compute the bearing from the last two GPS location samples? Oh well. It works well as is. They’ve packed a lot of functionality into this inexpensive device.”

Customer Review: “This is a great wireless bike computer. Nice to have biking statistics as well as time available on my handlebar. Big plus to be wireless, ie uses navigation satellites for statistics. Battery lasts long and has many accessible biking informations. I mounted on the stem, directly in the middle. Nice large screen, easy to read…so far quite accurate too. This is an excellent bike essential at a decent cost.”

Customer Review: “This GPS speedometer works well and is accurate for the functions I am interested in; distance traveled, speed, and time traveled. Battery life seems quite good and the device is quite readable while traveling. Things that are not so good are not important to me but I will mention them. Altitude reading is around 30 meters too low and the temperature reads around 5 or 6 degrees F too high. For a basic speedometer/odometer and time traveled the Bikevee delivers and is worth the price.”

Customer Review: “A very simple wireless computer that just works. I previously had a Sigma, but it burned through batteries and had some other issues. The batteries in this computer last 4x-5x longer than in the Sigma, and it is rock solid. Not many features, but has the ones I care about.”

Customer Review: “Great basic cycling computer! It was really easy to get set up and fits well on my bike with a display that is easy to see even in bright sunlight. It tracks all the basic things I need (speed and distance) without additional annoying features. The magnet has stayed securely fastened to my spokes through multiple rides. Will definitely be buying again for my other bike.”