Apologies for not reading through all the thread/s.
Is anyone using their Karoo with a SIM for live tracking and Messenger without needing to carry a phone?
I would like to ditch the phone for racing, but it’s kind of useful having the tracking for the family to try and see where I am for spotting. Messenger would be plenty for me in terms of race day communication.
I’ve read there’s some issues with battery life, which would be an issue as I have been trying to move to a device that’ll last the durations of long races easily. Will I have any chance of getting 8-10hrs with SIM/data going as well as a PM and possibly HRM connected? Screen brightness turned down low.
My Karoo uses between 7% and 11% per hour with screen brightness around 30%, two sensors (HRM and power meter) both on ANT+, with BT turned off, no SIM, no navigation. So I’m not sure that you could - but I could test it in a couple of weeks in a closer configuration!
Karoo 2, in and around Philadelphia and the suburbs.
Verizon SIM, with data active (some areas with great cell coverage, some areas with poor or no coverage).
Polar HR monitor
4iiii crank arm power meter (dual sided if it matters)
Battery used 25% in the ride.
Total time: 2 hours 40 minutes
First hour usage: 10%
Last hour and 40 minutes: 15%
Basically 9% - 10% per hour. Brightness varied (see below).
I think you could get 8 hours out of this setup easily. 10 might be tight, but you could use an external battery. My Anker PowerCore+ mini weighs 84 grams and more than doubled the Karoo 2’s capacity from 3200mAh (built in battery) to 5550mAh (the external battery has a 3350 mAh capacity).
I don’t have messenger installed, but as long as notifications are turned off, I don’t think it would use any battery life.
Note that Hammerhead suggests:
using ANT+ to conserve battery life
not using graphical display fields (I used two for the entire ride)
turning down the display below 15% Brightness (mine was at 50% for the first hour and 16% after that).
Details:
Settings:
All sensors on ANT+
BT turned off (I paired all of my sensors via ANT+. I turned off BT once, and it’s started off since then).
Brightness at 50% for the first hour
Brightness at 15% for hours 2 and 3.
No route or navigation
Climb R active, counted 4 climbs
Display stayed on a data screen (with two visual gauges, one for HR zone and one for power zone) the entire ride.
The battery burn rate on the K1 and K2 is borderline unacceptable. HH expecting people to become experts in knowing how to conserve battery is a bullshit ask in 2022, imo.
The standard minimum GPS battery life should be 15hrs. With navigation and sensors. That’s going to get 99.5% of people through every ride for a whole week without messing about with external battery packs.
Their only saving grace will be to do really cool things that we don’t see on other GPS units that makes the hassle of always having to charge the thing less of a hassle… a little like the Varia Radar.
My new word of the week is ‘excellence’… and fmd it’s something I can’t attribute to a lot of things I come across in the bike tech space at the moment. Though the HH on-the-fly climbing data does tick that box.
It looks like I spent about 20 minutes of that ride in an area without service, so at least some of that extra energy is accounted for.
Personally, I use an Apple Watch with cellular for emergency connectivity, so I only need the HH for recording the ride/race. And if something happened and the HH battery died (which would probably be near the end of the race anyway), I would probably start recording on my Apple Watch just to have all the ride data…
If this was about a wearable, I would completely agree with you. Wearables that don’t have long battery life are really annoying (yes, including my cellular Apple Watch).
But a bike computer isn’t something that most people use more than 3-4 hours every day (and that’s an extreme case). 99.5% of bike computer users are going to ride fewer than 15 hours per week (in many cases a LOT fewer), but can easily charge in between those rides.
Respectfully (especially knowing your profile and having watched - and learned - from a lot of what you’ve created), as long as the computer battery lasts through the longest ride, with sensors, navigation, and any connectivity in use, that should be plenty for anyone. Especially with USB-C charging, and it only taking 3 hours, it’s a pretty simple thing.
One thing we do agree on - that on-the-fly climbing detection and display is really freaking cool. It popped up 4 times for me today. It wasn’t perfect, but it was so damn close I was really impressed!
Also, I gotta ask:
If you’re going to be in an area where there’s no service, do you need the SIM card? Maybe just skip it and you get the better battery life of no-SIM usage…
I race XCM and my two primary races both have marginal coverage at best.
One is in a thick forest with very patchy coverage. One is in the open, so better, but still at the extremities of what the normal cell network covers.
I only want it for live tracking for my wife to be able to know where to take the kids to see me. I’m happy enough to not carry means of contact for racing otherwise.
With regards battery life. I’ve had two devices quoted at 15hrs, a Lezyne Micro and a Garmin 130+ and both I’ve had die before the end of my 100km XCM (admittedly the Garmin only died because we’d been out for 10 or 11hrs cruising at a mates pace).
If I wasn’t going to have anything with SIM then I’d way rather just stick with my 130+ for size/weight etc.
An AirTag would work well for what you need assuming there are other iPhones around to find it. I have one on my road bike and there’s no beeping except when I first move it.
But I defer to @GPLama who is the authority on this.
There’s a ride in Victoria called the Peaks Challenge. 240km or so and 4000m of climbing. The Karoo units are simply not going to last for the average participant. That’s a really shitty experience if you’ve slogged or 10hrs+ in the hills to have your ‘new’ GPS fail to record the full ride without having to resort to being a battery saving expert.
An AirTag won’t be suitable for live ‘realtime’ tracking of an activity (if that’s what you’re after?). Your alternates are expensive - Garmin InReach Mini or similar.
Agree here. 5 hours 20 of battery life yesterday on my K2. It died 140km in to a 200km ride.
I was pretty connected with sensors (power meter, speed sensor, HRM, Varia, Di2) plus using sim card, navigation, climber and screen on 20% brightness.
I therefore acknowledge I could have tried to be more battery efficient and I get this is a lovely screen and basically an android device - but really why should I have to cut functionality to maintain battery life. It’s crazy poor in comparison to other devices.
Thankfully my Epix 2 lasted the distance (by a massive margin) and course routing on that from my wrist was just about acceptable).
Actually to be fair to the Epix I had no missed turns when using that for navigation whereas I had 3 missed turns when solely using the K2.
I tend to find that unless you are on the map screen the very small arrow indicator is hard to read (particularly given the arrow has branches to the left and right and only a slightly more pronounced branch for the direction you are supposed to take). That means I more regularly have to ride with the full map screen on - which I think reduces battery life.
I used mine today. Popped up in all the right places but I’d estimate it thought 8 was about 200m further ahead than what I actually was and the gradients were way off. Like it was telling me there was a section of 17% and I’d say it was actually about 7%.
100% agree. It’s the main reason I returned mine. And for HH to have a bunch of suggestions to limit the battery drain is hilarious IMO. “Here’s a super computer as a head unit, with XYZ features, but we suggest that you turn off X and don’t use Y, and turn Z to 10% functionality if you don’t want the battery to die.” The features look great on paper and are great selling points. But if you can’t fully use all of the features, they’re worthless. The fact that there’s a thread in which people are discussing what features or sensors to turn off, and how to not have the computer die should tell you everything. Events are getting longer and longer, and people are riding longer. Sacrificing features so my head unit doesn’t die on a ride shouldn’t be a thing in 2022.
I think about it this way - battery life is the only feature on a cycling computer that is user-upgradeable - easily and inexpensively too! Lipstick batteries cost between $15 and $30 (about 5% - 8% of the device cost, less than sales tax or VAT in most places), and cables are cheap and plentiful.
A few years back most Garmin computers couldn’t easily have their batteries extended because plugging them in would switch them to charging mode and shut off recording!
So HH has chosen to prioritize display quality, speed and relevance of software updates, and integrated connectivity (just pull the SIM card from your phone, twist the Karoo cap and place it in the slot - takes about 2 minutes) over battery life. The current Karoo probably has enough battery life for 99% of recorded cycling rides, and if it doesn’t, an extra battery and cable will run it for the rest of the ride.
I’m happy to extend the battery life of my Karoo 2 with an external battery on those once-per-year times when I need to go beyond an 8-hour ride…
It seems like HH’s choice has really struck a nerve though, since so many people post so decidedly against it.
Spot on. I charge my watch 1x every week or two depending upon (non-bike) activity levels. I charge my K2 and running lights 1-3x a week during outdoor riding season to be sure they’re topped off and good to go for whatever ride comes next. 98% of all my rides are sub-six hours and not once have I ever run out of battery, and that’s with a bluetooth HRM, ant+ PM, GPS, and screen brightness at least 50%. Once a year I do an 8+ hour supported fondo, for which I strap a small back-up battery the size of pack of Lifesavers beneath my stem to keep the Karoo @ 100% until the 80-mile aid station, where I then leave the battery behind in my go-bag for retrieval after the ride. Easy peasy.
Prior to the *30 series of garmins the standard battery life of head units wasn’t any more than what the K2 provides. I remember having the same battery issue on my 1000 on long rides too. The 1030 was the first head unit to massively increase battery time. It also came with a shit screen. When everyone complained, garmin even admitted that they used a shit screen for battery reasons. Do i want a unit that frustrates the hell out of me because it’s not responsive or freezes all the time? No thanks. Or a unit that has features that don’t work? No thanks. I’ll stick with my K2 that is a solid unit with a super responsive screen and has features that just work. Notice we don’t hear about K2 users feeling like beta testers the way garmin users do.
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