Submitted by
Rider Rick
a Weekend Warrior
from Raleigh, NC, USA
Date Reviewed: August 11, 2007
Strengths: Inexpensive, Lots of functions
Weaknesses: Unreliable. It did not work for the past year but then started giving readout again. However, it has been better than the Cateye I paid 3X the price for. The display is hard to read and response is slow.
Bottom Line:
For the price, I can't complain. It worked great the first 6,000 miles.
Submitted by
Wm
a Cross Country Rider
from Portland, OR
Date Reviewed: March 24, 2005
Strengths: cheap
Weaknesses: non-functional on arrival (twice)
Bottom Line:
Bought the first for $19 - it worked for first 10 miles, then reset automatically; this blanked my 30 minutes of setup. So, I stupidly bought another for $12; this one was dead-on-arrival and had the same problem. My bottom line- this is cheap junk. I'm going with a Cateye for my next.
Submitted by
Doug
a Weekend Warrior
from San Diego, CA
Date Reviewed: September 9, 2002
Strengths: Cheap
Weaknesses: Product is unreliable. Even when it worked it would no toggle through screens until you pressed the button multiple times and then it would go rapid fire through all of the ones just missed. The connection to the wheel pickup is fragile and now no longer works. It is now useless. This thing sucks.
Similar Products Used: Avocet with Altimeter (crashed and broke it).
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
Mark
a Weekend Warrior
from Richmond, Va
Date Reviewed: October 24, 2001
Strengths: Inexpensive, good basic features, dual bike mount
Weaknesses: None that I have found
Bottom Line:
This is a decent product, especially for the price. I have used it for about a month, on two different bikes, on road and singletrack. The setup was pretty easy, and have not had to make any adjustments since mounting it. I did, however, use electrical tape to more securely the mount the sensor to the fork to prevent any slipping. I probably would have done this with any computer sensor. This is my first bike computer, but feel like it is a lot of bang for the buck. I'm sure there are better bike computers out there, but not for that price!
Weaknesses: sensor mounting bracket- there isn't one
Bottom Line:
Do not buy this computer. They no longer include a sensor mounting bracket, but instead include a couple of zip ties to attach it to your fork. Even if I attach it to the inside of my fork, it will probably be too far away from the magnet to record anything. And even if it did, it probably wouldn't stay in place long enough to matter. Cheap, cheap, cheap.
Submitted by
Jonathan Rodgers
a Cross Country Rider
from Ann Arbor, MI
Date Reviewed: July 19, 2001
Strengths: Cheap
Weaknesses: Difficult difficult to maintain proper adjustment on bar mount and fork, mount exceptionally poor quality and fragile
Bottom Line:
Junk. It stops recording velocity (at first seemingly randomly) above 40kph, goes to zero, then revives. Often it will not come out of sleep after inactivity. It's toast now, in the trash.
Similar Products Used: Cateye, Avocet 35/45 (now dead)
Bike Setup: Trek 7500FX
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
stefan
a Cross Country Rider
from boulder, CO
Date Reviewed: May 31, 2001
Strengths: Few, if any. Oh, just one: two cycle mounts.
Weaknesses: Cheap construction, terrible installation instructions, very low tolerences.
Bottom Line:
I will never buy a non-brand name computer again. Tolerences, most notably, are 1 mm. Try acheiving 1 millimeter of clearance on a fat front fork with disc-specific hubs! Its impossible, short of mounting the sensor on the spokes of the disc itself (obviously NOT and option). The little rubber buttons fell off when I removed it from its packaging. The mount may break at any given moment, but it wont have the chance: its been on one ride, and im sending it back in favor of something made in Taiwan! DEFINATELY not worth the $13 I paid for it; save your money.
Similar Products Used: Cateye, lots of others. Never a non-brand name.
Bike Setup: KHS Alite 3000, XT, Marzocchi Z4, Syncros riser, Selle seat
Overall Rating:
Value Rating:
Submitted by
Matt
a Cross Country Rider
from Tulsa, OK USA
Date Reviewed: May 18, 2001
Strengths: Cheap, Works, 2 mounts
Weaknesses: fragile mount
Bottom Line:
It's cheap and it works. Yeah it has a fragile mount, but they sent a second one with the computer. It's a good computer for someone who wants a computer that tells them how far they've ridden and how much time they actually spent riding and doesn't want to drop a load on a high end computer.
Mount it close to the stem and angle it as far back as possible. This prevents computer damage in wrecks. I've endod my bike several times in rocky areas since in installed the computer a little over a week ago. It hasn't taken any hits. It got rained on before I ever used it and it worked well.
Yeah, wireless is nice, but don't expect your less expensive wireless computers to turn on when your front wheel begins spinning. Also you won't know how nice this feature is until you use a computer that doesn't have it.
Submitted by
chester thomas
a Cross Country Rider
from fort polk, la
Date Reviewed: February 4, 2001
Strengths: low cost, 2 bike set up, lots of bells and whistles
Weaknesses: it's PURE CHEESE, slow feed-back
Bottom Line:
I really liked the computer prior to going out riding. I liked the scan feature and the 2 bike set up most. It looked kind of fragile though. About two weeks later after a wet ride, no display, water had invaded my computer. It came back after a few days but yesterday I had a mild wreck and before you can say KA-BOOM I now have two half-computers.Did I say something about PURE CHEESE. Save your money for a good computer.
Although the price is inexpensive ($20), you would have to question the durability of the product. I guess you get what you pay for. The the little man on the bicycle with wheels spinning in the same direction your bike is going is a cute idea! But you always have to clean the contacts before every ride in order for the computer to work, otherwise nothing will be registering. The computer is good as a starter, but it's best to get the one you really want!
Ditto on what Todd from OH said. It's a fairly decent intro computer with two mounts at a really great price. Wireless would be nice because getting the cable on the fork at the right place is a problem (you need 1mm gap or less between spoke magnet and sensor). Saw a version (single mount and another wireless version) like this one in retail dept store going for about $20. The slowness sort of bothered me at first, but it is not that big-o-deal because I don't spend a lot of time looking at it anyway. The set up wasn't all too intuitive, and took me a good hour on both bikes. The tire size input, odometer init and other variables erase all together--that is, if you want to change one, you have to redo all of them (and it is a little pain). the mount does feel cheap, but I haven't seen any problem with mine yet (only a few rough rides on it so far).A last good thing: It does at least turn on automatically once the tire spins. I'd give it about 3.0 for what it is, but going to a 4.0 because it is so darn inexpensive.
Bike Setup: Specialized (rigid fork) and K2 (cross link)
Overall Rating:
Submitted by
Todd
a Weekend Warrior
from Alliance, OH
Date Reviewed: June 3, 1999
Strengths: Cheap, lots of functions, dual bike settings.
Weaknesses: Cheap, seems fragile, mount does not seem sturdy enough to withstand a fall, speed display is slow to update
Bottom Line:
Great computer at a great price. Has almost every function you could ask for including current speed, average speed, maximum speed, timer, clock, pacer arrow, speed tendency (little guy on a bike whose wheels spin forward at different rates to show acceleration and backward to show deceleration), resettable odometer, scan (displays each function for a few seconds), and dual bike setting.My only complaint is that the display only updates ever two seconds. Not a big deal though as the computer is very accurate when compared with a higher priced Cateye. If I spin my front wheel with my hand, the computer actually shows acceleration while the wheel is slowing down. Of course this is not how most of us ride but it does show its lack of processing power.
