The best bike computers on the market today offer an incredible array of options and features. You’ll find long battery life, excellent navigation, a plethora of training help, and most options on the market will manage an indoor trainer also. Some of the options are touch screens and some of them use buttons but no matter what you choose, they allow you to keep your smartphone safely tucked away while still seeing the info you need.
As you continue to research the category, what you might find is that there are three main players these days. The giant in the category is Garmin and the brand dominated for years until Wahoo came to market. At the time, Wahoo offered a user experience unlike anything else available by integrating with smartphones in a way that Garmin still hasn’t fully implemented. More recently though, a new name has started to make waves as a viable option. That name is Hammerhead and today the brand stands in front of the full backing of SRAM.
Hammerhead still doesn’t have the user numbers of Wahoo or Garmin but the Hammerhead Karoo 2 is a product worth considering. Our team has covered the Hammerhead Karoo 2 with a full review in the past but as we come up on two years later should you still be considering this bike computer? What if I told you that you could get the same hardware for 35% less?
Design and aesthetics
Unlike the other market leaders, Hammerhead uses a modified version of Android as the operating system for the Karoo 2. Instead of being a custom built system, it’s a smartphone with a very specific use case and matching hardware design.
On the hardware side, that means things start with a glass-filled polycarbonate chassis that is roughly 100.6mm x 60.8mm x 19.3mm. There is a custom mounting system with a unique outfront mount however there’s also an adapter that allows use with any Garmin compatible outfront mount. The water resistance rating is IP67 and the screen uses Dragontrail glass with a matte coating reminiscent of older Apple computer screens. Also like those screens, the glass pushes out to the edge encompassing sizable bezels.
Under the glass, you’ll find a 3.2-inch (roughly 81mm) display panel. If there’s anything that sets the Karoo 2 apart from the competition, it’s this panel. You may or may not find 292 PPI and 480×800 pixels groundbreaking but it’s bright and there are 16.7 million colours onboard. If you ever…
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