Beeline Velo II GPS

[SRD]

I recently asked for opinions on this before buying to replace my Garmin edge touring. Opinion seemed favourable so I bought one. Had a good test of it today.

The beeline is a little display unit that goes on your handle bars and links to your phone which does the navigation using the beeline app. The advantages are the the phone screen is off so it doesn't eat battery, plus the phone was safely stashed away in the pocket of my cargo shorts.

Planned a c. 35mile route through the city centre using main roads, side roads, segregated paths, shared use path, park paths, tow paths, and bits of random land that weren't designated as anything. So a pretty good test with some complex junctions.

Using the app to plan a route was ok, it managed to pickup most cycle paths. One annoying thing was for out and back routes it didn't like coming back along the outward route- may have been new user not knowing how to do it.

But I'm used to using Plotaroute so used that instead, and imported as gpx. The 35 mile route was less than a 1/4 of the max allowed, so i shall never have capacity issues, but if you did you can just do it as two routes and load the second when half way round.

Out on the road, I have to say that my expectations were surpassed. The screen was easy to read....in both bright sun light and in and out of shade it was much easier to read than either of my Garmins. Also the little map was easier to follow than the sometimes almost invisible Garmin purple line.

It shows a white line along the route you are to follow, with side roads etc shown as hollow lines. Easy to read. It got major cycle paths but missed a few lesser ones that I crossed.

Staggered junctions were handled well as the little map makes it clear you are going straight on (unlike the Garmin that sometimes thinks it's a turn).

Only once did I have to stop and check the route on the map on the phone -when there were cycle paths on both sides of the road and I wasn't sure which side to be on.... however most situations like this it was obvious, for instance it was clear when to swap to the other side of the canal.

Got caught out once on a right turn when there was a cycle path in the angle between the side and main roads which I should have taken rather than the side road....but it quickly navigated me back on path.

Also liked the audible warning, one beep as you approach a turn, then two at the turn. Plus you can set it up to use metres for short distances and miles for long.

My three and a half hour journey used a bit over 10% of its battery and 20% of the (rather old) phone battery. It also does speed, average, elevation etc. but not that well....at one point it thought I'd done 800m of climbing (in Birmingham?) and my top speed was 104mph!!!!!

It uses simple inbuilt rocker type switch to change modes - i found this loads better than the little side buttons and touch screen on the Garmin.

Given that it was perfectly useable on city roads/paths, with loads of junctions coming at it thick and fast, I think it will be excellent for touring on country lanes (what I got it for).

So far, very happy.

[hamster]

It also does speed, average, elevation etc. but not that well....at one point it thought I'd done 800m of climbing (in Birmingham?) and my top speed was 104mph!!!!!

Remember that's down to the GPS in the phone - not all phones are equal.
GPS is not designed to be much good at height measurement, the error is high. It also looks like the satellites were in a bad orientation, then the GPS switched satellites causing the glitch. Marine GPS units warn of poor position accuracy, more phones do not.

I'm also a very happy Beeline Velo 2 owner, good review - especially the trick about mixing metres and miles.

[mjr]

Marine GPS units warn of poor position accuracy, more phones do not.

Most phones do give the accuracy, but not all apps bother to use it and tell you if it's a warning. Of those I use often, SatStat shows the error distance and draws a circle around the map pin to denote it, GPSLogger can be told not to log points if the accuracy is too low after a given time of trying, TrailSense has a traffic-light indicator in the corner of the radial compass display, but AAT and PocketMaps give no hint of the accuracy (unless you can tell you're not where the map marker is).

[cyclist]

The original Beeline was designed to use compass mode as the crow flies for short urban commutes. Velo II still has this option and uses the turn by turn for routes as well. It has a clean uncluttered look, and it is easy to follow. I guess its elevation display is not great. On the Beeline app it showed my elevation as zero, but when the data was imported to Strava elevation appeared. There was a difference of about 2mph in the speed between Beeline (higher speed) & Strava (lower speed).

As mentioned before the accuracy of Beeline depends heavily on the phone. The device is essentially an extra screen for the app.

A fellow rider uses it, and enjoys it. I was informed that the fellow rider, finds it too much data on other bike computers, and the Beeline minimalist attitude matches their expectations.

[MrsHJ]

I’ve been using one on my recent tour too. I checked a colleague’s before I bought and he was happy using it all over Devon and then I believe he took it to Taiwan for his tour using a hired bike. I used it in London, Amsterdam, and then on the Drava route and into Hungary. Actually this little device is taking over amongst our workplace cyclists- it was first tested by the IT guy and I take it as a good sign if the techies like a device.

It did the job well- anything I mention here is a small niggle compared to having a clear route to follow even in bright sunshine plus I haven't really figured out how to use it beyond the switch it on and go approach that I'm currently taking so some of these things will probably sort themselves out with more user experience/reading the instructions! . Basically I took it out of the box in the first morning of my tour and sat at my hotel figuring it how to attach it to my bike and set off without reading the instructions. It navigated me (using my cycle,travel routes) 500 miles from Italy to the Serbian border with very little complications- it felt a really good choice for touring where you probably don’t care about stats other than how far and what speed and you know nothing about the roads and need a readable screen and good battery life.

My top tip is to make sure you have your daily sleeping place marked as the start/end point of the route (this is a touring thing where you’ll be in a strange town). (Edit: there is an article on the beeline site explaining how to easily change the start point that I’ve just found). Some days I hadn’t done that and it meant a couple of minutes figuring out where on earth the device thought I was starting from (eg the town centre) without having that obviously set out in a phone screen in front of me like when I use the cycle.travel app. That’s a minor inconvenience btw to dealing with a phone on my quad lock that is totally unreadable in bright sunlight in southern Italy or has gone on strike due to heat. The phone on the quad lock might stay though for inner city riding- I need to do a side by side test to see which I prefer.

As per the contributor above I’m not sure about the elevation gain too and I was mostly doing 80km days and sometimes it seemed to have measured me from only part way (maybe my lunch break?) so the total distance was wrong or maybe I wasn’t correctly clearing the previous day.

I imported my route from cycle.travel and that worked well but on a couple of days I got very few turns(see photo-it wasn’t 28km until my next turn), fortunately the breadcrumb thing still accurately showed me the route so I could see turns coming up even if I didn’t get a beep. Richard F suggested checking the type of route I was selecting when doing the gpx download so I’ll experiment with that,

I also had a small number of occasions when I needed to check the route- sometimes if there were two roads close together (I need to check that thing about getting a faded version for the road you’re not taking as mentioned by the other reviewer as I don’t think I got that). Could be my sunglasses or a screen brightness issue.

Anyway I’m also pleased with battery usage on my phone (on my previous tour I was using my battery pack daily), screen visibility on the beeline and simplicity of information showing. My phone remained safe in my bar bag - I did come off once due to a jammed cleat and I’m very conscious that a smashed phone in that situation could put a real crimp in my trip. The beeline also used very little battery and was quick and easy to charge. I might get the stem mount which is what my colleague has. I am much happier than when using a garmin (I’ve had a couple of fancy ones and don’t get along with them and not just due to never reading instructions )- I realise that it has a different purpose to an extent but I only ever wanted to see where I was going rather than using complex features,

[SRD]

Still happy with mine apart from one niggle (which may be user error). I'm importing a route made on plotaroute. It's mainly road and cycle path so I'm turn by turn navigation . The problem occurs on short sections that are not roads or designated paths. While I can plot the route along them on plotaroute, and my Garmin will show the correct route, the beeline just tries to reroute around the non designated section. Would be nice if it could do a hybrid mode that switches to breadcrumb when it can't do turn by turn.

The other niggle (which was user error) was that I couldn't get the head unit to turn off. Turns out it won't turn off until you stop the route on your phone.