Bike Accessories Reviews

Trimble Outdoors allows you to kill two birds with one stone: Make that cell phone you always carry double as a powerful GPS unit with a host of useful tools to map rides, record data and even trade routes and virtually race against others. We use Motorola Boost Mobile phones as our base units (there are multiple options and plans available) and once you pick up your GPS signal it generally maintains reception even when you are out of cell range. With about five hours of time from the phone battery you can map a ride and get cool info such as distance, time (ours records resting minutes for a true ride-time stat), speed and elevation. It'll also map the route, show elevation and speed profiles, and store ride info on the phone. Trimble, in conjunction with our sibling magazine, Bicycling, has a GPS website to store data, compare notes and download recommended routes with other readers. It has average and top speed, which is good, but the elevation screen shows only a graph and has high/low elevation numbers. Ultimately this means little to most riders because it's hard to fully comprehend the difficulty of a ride without total elevation gain and pitch. Both Trimble and Allsport are working on adding this feature.