Elemnt Bolt Review

I posted this review of the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt as a reddit comment a while back:

I have a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt, and it's OK. I got it for recording my road rides and training more than for bikepacking, but I've used it for touring and bikepacking. 
The "route me anywhere" feature is garbage -- it says it uses Google, but it consistently uses a worse route than any that the Google Maps app suggests. It only offers you one choice of route, and no ability to edit or reroute around obstacles. It only works online, so if you're in the boonies, you're fucked. You can only send directions from the app, so MTBProject app or Google Maps aren't useful. It doesn't take your location into account when searching, so I'll get a full page of search results for Idaho, New York, California, etc when I'm trying to find some generically named restaurant in Colorado. 
Battery life is advertised at 15 hours. This is a "best case scenario" -- you need to have the backlight off (hope it isn't night-time!), Bluetooth off (so not connected to your phone, not connected to any sensors like HR or cadence), and... not doing a route, so I hope you know where you're going. With all features on, I get about 8 hours on a full charge. I've been pretty close to running out of charge by the time I rolled into camp on almost every day of every trip I've done with it. This is partially due to scheduling too many miles per day (one of these days I'll set up my tent in the daytime, that'll be awesome). 
The routing is OK. It works pretty reliably, most of the time. The main drawback is when you go off route. If you get off the route, it has no idea where you are, and it only draws the line on the map for a mile or two past where your last point on the route was. This means that, if you need to detour something, you've just got to hope that you get back on the route at some point, because it won't be visible at all on the device. There's nothing in the app to view for the current place in the route, either. 
It gets notifications for phone calls and text messages, but only if you use your phone's default texting app. I'm on Project Fi so it uses Google Hangouts, so I don't get text notifications. Not a huge deal. 
With that said, the thing works, really well. It syncs to Strava with 0 work on my part. I never have to plug the thing in, except to charge it, and it charges relatively fast. All told I like the device, it's got some issues though.
That was several months ago. My opinion hasn't really changed on it -- it's a fine device with shitty in-app routing and a slightly skimpy battery for touring/bikepacking.
 

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