Box Of Tricks

For years, the world of GPS bike computers has been ruled by one brand, but now its rivals are finding ways to challenge its dominance

- Sam Challis

It’s safe to say bike computers have come a long way since Curtis Veeder invented the Cyclometer in 1895. A simple mechanical device, it counted wheel rotations and sent this info to an analogue odometer on the handlebars that then calculated distance using a formula based on the circumference of the front wheel.

Fast forward 122 years and the bike computer has evolved into a truly sophisticated piece of hardware. Just as Veeder realised, few sports are as easily measured or quantified as cycling, and technology companies have sought to exploit this ever since. Today’s products can collect, plot and analyse just about any performance metric you can imagine while tracking you anywhere in the world. It’s hardly a surprise that the bike computer has become as essential to a road rider as their favourite bibshorts.

Lie of the land

‘The development of new technologies and a cyclist’s understanding of how metrics can help them improve their performance means bike computers have increasingly become a basic requirement,’ says Maria Townsley, product manager at Garmin UK. ‘When paired with a power meter, GPS computers allow riders to know their own bodies and quantify the impact that training has on their fitness levels. I’d also argue that it’s just fun to record and share what you’ve been doing with your friends.’

Drawing on considerable financial and technological resources, as well as experience in other areas such as car sat-navs, Garmin was the first company to really establish itself in the bike computer market, to the extent that, like Hoover and Sellotape, the brand’s name has become a generic term for the category itself.

Yet for all the ever-expanding array of features each new generation of device offers, Townsley argues that the key to Garmin’s success has been its focus on getting the basics right.