Hobby Reviews: Wahoo Elemnt Roam Long-Term Experience
The Wahoo Elemnt Roam is designed to ... roam ... long distances, and we appropriately give it a long-term review
Look, I’ll be honest, I am not a bike tech person. Sure I had to pretend to be one when reviewing stuff at Cyclocross Magazine, but my road bike still has 10-speed 105, and save the generosity of friend of the Bulletin Chad Brown, my cyclocross bike would still have rim brakes.
However, it is still fun to play with things and try them out, so now that I have embraced my inner hobby blogger, I feel okay being a hobby reviewer. For more in-depth tech content, I would recommend checking out the DC Rain Maker, James Huang at CT, and Brown Tie Dan at Velonews, among others.
One product I have had for review for a while now is the Wahoo Roam. Wahoo was most recently in the news with the release of the Roam’s sister product, the Bolt, and the Roam head unit is not exactly new. I got the Roam for review shortly before leaving Cyclocross Magazine, and now, with a new home at the Bulletin, I now have a place to write about it for what has proven to be a rather long-term review.
I have done some roaming with the Roam on long rides, training rides, the trainer, trail rides, and even some cyclocross races. Does it live up to its name? Excellent question!
The Roam
As James Huang wrote a few years ago, “Garmin” has become synonymous with “GPS Bike Computer,” for many cyclists, but in recent years, Wahoo has been slowly growing in popularity thanks in part to disappointment with Garmin products—I mean, how many of us held onto our 500s until the bitter cracked-screen, USB-port-won’t-work end?—and the relative simplicity of Wahoo’s platform.
The Roam is obviously an acronym for Ride on Adventures … something something—or more likely, it is named to harken to roaming on long adventures far afield. With the growing popularity of the gravel discipline and its far-reaching “epic” adventures, the bike computer market has quickly caught up by offering more battery life to allow gravel grinders to avoid having to come up with ways to charge their computers mid-ride. The Roam is Wahoo’s entry into this market.
I reviewed the Wahoo Elemnt for CXM a few years ago, and found that I really liked it. Since that review, Wahoo has revised its lineup a bit, discontinuing the Elemnt and now offering the Roam at the high end and the Bolt as the company’s basic computer. One thing I really like about Wahoo’s products is they have developed a relatively simple, easy-to-use interface and kept it consistent across their product line.
The Roam features a relatively large rectangular screen with easy-to-read displays and maps similar to the Elemnt. With the Roam, Wahoo added a gorilla glass screen and a little bit of color to the maps, enhancing what was already a solid interface on the Elemnt.
The biggest addition, and why you would most likely want to upgrade to the Roam, is the battery life. The Roam gets a claimed 17 hours on one charge, which is a claim I am willing to buy. My first ride with the computer was a 9.5-hour elapsed-time haul that still left me with nearly 50% battery life, and I just completed a 7:45 moving, 8:40 elapsed ride that left the computer at 53% battery.
To be fair, I have not reviewed it yet, but friends have told me the new Garmin 530 gets a comparable battery life, so if you are looking for a Roam comp from Garmin in the long-distance adventure space, that is likely the one to look at versus something like the Edge 520 Plus that ostensibly replaces the old 500.
There are no free lunches in life, I guess except perhaps lowering your weight in Zwift just because you can, and with the extreme battery life of the Roam comes a few tradeoffs. One is more weight, with the Roam checking in at 101 grams, which compares to the Bolt’s claimed 68 grams. The other is the price, with the Roam priced at a hefty $380, compared to its $280 Bolt cousin.
My thought on the weight is if you are getting the Roam for long rides, you are already likely putting tons of food and gear on your bike, so what are a few extra grams for extended battery life? The Roam screen is also larger, so if you like an easier to read interface, that is another plus of the Roam. As for the price, yeah, it is definitely a costly computer. The Roam gets a claimed 15 hours of battery life for $100 less, so that would be a consumer decision each person would have to make.
Data Options
Unlike some other computers, Wahoo’s computers are set up entirely via a smartphone app. At first I found this a little weird, but I have since found it really easy to choose data fields and set up my own pages even in the middle of a ride. Wahoo’s software offers the full suite of what I think most of us need in terms of data fields, including the usual such as distance and speed as well as power, heart rate, elevation change, TSS, and even a nifty calories burned calculator based on heart rate data.
An upside of the biggish screen is the data fields are easy to read. I typically go with 7 fields, but you can upsize to as many as 11 if you want. Even trying out nine, I found the screen easy to read.
Then there is the mapping function…
The Map
Long gravel events have made both good battery life and good mapping a necessity. Wahoo has chosen to go with a relatively simple approach to mapping with the Roam featuring a largely black and white interface that shows streets and an impressive number of paths interspersed with a little color here and there. Zooming in and out takes one touch of a button, allowing you to get good detail for tight city streets and a bigger picture to see when that long drag into a headwind is (or is not) going to end.
The easiest way to upload routes to the Roam is by creating them in either Wahoo’s app or a third-party app such as RideWithGPS or Strava. When I reviewed the Elemnt, only RideWithGPS routes offered turn-by-turn cues, but since mid-2019, Strava’s route editor has offered the same.
I have tried all three of Wahoo’s app, RideWithGPS, and Strava. I typically waffle between Strava and RideWithGPS for creating routes, but have recently tended toward using RideWithGPS because for some weird reason, I have to unpair and then repair Strava in the app to get new routes to sync.
Once you start a route, the Roam provides you with arrows showing you the way along your route. If you have your cell phone along for the ride and connected via Bluetooth, it also offers a nifty rerouting tool. If you get off course, the Roam will show you a blue line to get you back on your route. For the first few hundred yards after you miss a turn it will tell you to turn around, but eventually, it will re-route you back to your planned route. And if you want to bail, it also offers a take-me-home function to get you back where you started.
Admittedly, the rerouting function seems to work occasionally for me. Like, sometimes it will work at the beginning of a ride, then not work for a while, and then starting working again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Most of my rerouting happens in the city, so I don’t necessarily know if a poor data connection is the reason why.
One other cool feature is the live-tracking option. Again, if you are connected to a cell phone, the Roam will track your progress on a map you can share with friends and family. I tried using this function on a ride from Madison back to my parents’ house in the Chicago Suburbs, and admittedly, with my iPhone 2, my phone battery died like two-thirds of the way home, and my mom thought I was in dire straits and dead in a cornfield somewhere. I would recommend seeing how it affects your phone’s battery life before really relying on it, tbh.
Since Strava segment hunting seems to be over and no one really goes there, I will briefly touch on that feature instead of giving it its own section. The Roam will give you cues, elapsed time, progress versus PRs or goals and more for Strava segments you want to target. You “star” the segments in Strava, and then when you sync the Roam, those segments will be loaded to your computer and you will be given a heads-up when they draw near so you can then go do your segment-hunting thing. Definitely a cool feature, but haven’t we all moved onto Everesting and Zwift and other stuff? IDK.
Speaking of Zwift
For those of us who live in cold places, riding the trainer is a way of living and having a computer can definitely help when doing intervals. Not surprisingly, the Wahoo is designed to work with the Wahoo family of smart trainers. Being a CycleOps man myself, I have found both the Roam and Elemnt to be a bad pair with the Hammer.
One thing I definitely liked about the Garmin Edge 520 Plus is it offers both indoor and outdoor training options. If you use the indoor option, the is capable of functioning like a passive reader of heart rate and power data. The FE-C connectivity that allows you to control trainer resistance is also an option, but only when you choose to use it.
Trying to connect the Roam, I had to try to finagle a connection to just the power output from the CycleOps Hammer and not the controllable Ant+ FE-C connection. I thought I had it working, but then in one Zwift race, the computer jacked my power to 2,000 watts and sent me flying off the front in embarrassing fashion and then in another, caused a drop out at a key climb. I had similar issues when I reviewed the Elemnt, and I contacted Wahoo reps about the issue, but I was never able to reach a resolution.
Maybe my experiences are unique in the dropouts and power surges, but IDK I can really recommend the Roam as an indoor training tool if you are not using a Wahoo smart trainer.
Roam in Action
As someone who does a mix of riding, I have used the Roam in a lot of contexts over the past few years. I have used it for everyday training, mountain bike rides, cyclocross races, gravel races, Zwift rides, and even the occasional #crossiscoming run (woof).
From a big picture perspective, I really like Wahoo’s products. Switching to the Elemnt after using a few different Garmin products was a bit of a revelation, thanks to the ease of use and simple interface. The Roam is no different, with the display easy to read and the maps easy to use. I don’t know if having a good mapping function is a must for all riders, but for me, living in a new metropolitan area, having the ability to plan routes and easily follow them has been a godsend.
The large display has also been useful for displaying a decent amount of information with the map. I have always been into maps and geography, so I typically stick with the map and am still able to see both ride data and the roads with four different data entries displayed.
Compared to the Garmin Edge 520 Plus I have, the Roam seems to connect to GPS satellites quicker when I leave my apartment, and after a ride, the Bluetooth connectivity instantly uploads rides to the Wahoo app and Strava.
Most of the drawbacks I have experienced with the Roam are more nits than anything major. The Roam comes with two different mounts—out-front and stem. The out-front mount is definitely sturdy, if perhaps a bit over-designed for the weight weenies out there, and the stem mount is held by zip-ties instead of a rubber ring. The whole zip-tie thing is pretty annoying if you ride multiple disciplines and are frequently switching bikes.
The row of buttons that allows you to switch between data pages is surprisingly hard to press and can get more challenging than you might expect from a simple function like … pressing a button.
The biggest issue I have had with the Roam is one that has come out only because this was an extended long-term review. At some point, a large, dime-shaped blank spot in the LCD screen developed. It started small and was annoying and eventually moved to blocking out an entire data field when I run my beloved map screen.
I contacted Wahoo’s marketing department about the issue, and to their credit, they immediately offered a replacement. I think this is a good sign given I described it as a review unit, and hopefully, the company has addressed the issue since my computer was manufactured.
The Roam Verdict
Overall, I really like the Wahoo Roam. It is an excellent, easy-to-use bike computer that is versatile across disciplines. The large screen is easy to read, routes are easy to follow, and the battery life makes it an option for long rides that venture into the century-plus length. If you have not yet given Wahoo’s products a spin, I know I have been happy with both the Roam and the Elemnt.
As for the question of the Roam versus the cheaper Bolt, it is likely one of personal preference and economic situation. With the revamp of the Bolt, the Roam only gets a few more hours of battery life, but it does offer a bigger screen that is easier to read. I personally like bigger bike computers, so I would probably opt for the Roam at the price premium, but if the Bolt is anything like the Elemnt and Roam (which it likely is!) it would be tough to go wrong with either option.
Elemnt Roam Specs
Price: $380
Weight: 103g
Dimensions: 2.1″ x 3.5″ x 0.7″
Connectivity: Ant+ FE-C, Bluetooth
Battery: USB Rechargeable, 17 hour battery life (claimed)
Accessories: Three mounts, USB cable
More Info: wahoofitness.com
The Roam is my first, and thus far only, GPS bike computer, and I've really enjoyed it for the past year-and-a-half or so. I mostly picked it because I had a Kickr and Tickr and figured keeping my bike tech in the same family would be good. So far, so good.