The Keeper: Wahoo Elemnt Bolt

Price: $230 | Countries visited: 8 | Group ride faux pas avoided: 1

When I first got my bright pink Elemnt Bolt, I pulled it out of the box about five minutes before a group ride. As arms crossed and eyes rolled all around me, I scrambled to avoid being that guy who holds up the start of the ride. It took me approximately three minutes to find an Allen key so I could install the mount, and about one minute to get the computer set up via the smartphone app. 

I had one minute to spare for smirking and gloating.

That’s one of the beauties of the Elemnt Bolt: It’s so user-friendly that you can get up and running in minutes. Learning to use the computer takes little effort; pairing power meters and other peripherals takes no time at all; and Wahoo made navigating the menus easy enough to accomplish even when you’re seeing double during an endless climb. My favorite feature is the QR code that you scan with your phone to set up your new computer. All the information from my other Wahoo computer automatically went straight to my new Elemnt Bolt, in seconds. 

Beyond the features like navigation, easy to download maps, customizable screens, integration with Wahoo smart trainers, and Strava integration, the Elemnt Bolt hits the perfect balance between a manageable overall size and a screen size that I can actually read. It’s quick and easy to customize the screens too, so if you want the individual fields to be larger, that’s possible. Want to cram as much data onto one screen as possible? You can do that too — and you don’t have to search through endless menus to do it. Just hit the external buttons and do it on the fly. 

For the training-obsessives, you can integrate the Elemnt Bolt with Training Peaks and Today’s Plan so you can load up your structured workouts and execute them out on the road.

I’m on my second Elemnt Bolt. There was nothing wrong with the first one, except that it wasn’t hot pink, like my current one.  In a world full of plain black computers, hot pink seemed like a worthwhile investment.

K-Edge’s Aero Race Mount for the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt ($65) is the ultimate upgrade to this reliable GPS computer. While the Elemnt Bolt does come with a mount, the K-Edge’s CNC-machined version is much more stable, much more durable, and way cooler-looking. It maintains the aero sleekness of Wahoo’s original mount, too.