So,
Anyone else here try the Bryton Rider 530 GPS? Would love to know what others think.
I thought there was a thread on this but I could not find a single mention of Bryton on bikepacking.net.
I have now been using the Bryton Rider 530 for almost two months for bikepacking, backpacking and everyday use. Prior to that I was using the Bryton 310 as a basic tracking computer (it did does not do route following). At $180 and with 33 hours of battery life so far the 530 has been awesome so far as primary navigational means on a few quick touring and backpacking trips. It's slightly smaller screen cousin the 330 runs only $130 and due the smaller screen has a few more hours of battery life.
A pretty decent product page is at
http://corp.brytonsport.com/products/rider530?lang=enSo far I am extremely pleased. This is a very basic route following device. No color. No base maps, but then I don't need any of that silly stuff. Basically it just shows your route as a line, simple enough to follow and it has superb battery life.
Little details: Data on tight singletrack under trees seems a bit more accurate then Garmin whether overlaying routes recorded by both or comparing overall stats. I.E. it seems to loose less miles. Vertical footage seems to record about 5-10% less then garmin's but then Garmin have always registered high on vertical footage. This unit also does temperature which I really like.
Battery life: I used a Garmin Oregon on my Divide Trip in 2013. I was forever throwing batteries at it. About one set of lithium ion AA every day and a half of riding. A major chore to keep it in the juice. I have never been happy with Garmin's battery life and they are just so overly complex and expensive for my needs.
So far I can get at least two very full days of *recording* on the Bryton on a charge. That'd be sunup to sundown. (Technically past sundown this time of year.) Sometimes a third day if the days are shorter. Indeed I have recorded four days of hiking with it. That's very close to the 34 hours of longevity they publish. Note that route following may differ then route recording. I have still not put it through more then two days of "route following" so I haven't got a good estimate of how long it will last following a route.
I back it up with Gaia Application on my Samsung s5, a couple spare batteries which will give me up to 10 days of heavy use for photos and other needs on the S5 when it is in airplane mode. One of the things I like about the S5 in addition to the removable batteries is that the GPS works in airplane mode. I can not say enough about GAIA GPS + Open Hiking Maps integration. If you haven't checked out GAIA you should. It is potentially a revolutionary tool in planning complex multi-mode routes that may use trail, road, power line cuts and even bushwacking. It's ability to quickly plot out a route that "snaps" to road and trail (particularly with the Open Hiking Maps base layer) allows for the creation of maps that defy google, strava and others traditional notions of routes. I.E. google won't plot routes that don't use bike trail or road let alone plot a route that crosses a pass on a hiking trail or even follows a river via packraft.
So once you map out a route on the GAIA website you can share it publicly, anyone can download the GPX and drop it right in the "Extra Files" folder on the Bryton 530 where it will be parsed and made ready to follow. Even cooler routes saved on the website will automatically be sync'd to the 530 or 330 when you wifi sync the device to the cloud. Yeah, forgot to mention that the Bryton 530 and 330 have wifi built in and can at the click of a button sync all your data to their website and even automatically post to Strava. What's more Bryton has iPhone and Android apps that also automatically sync between the GPS and their website. So... extremely easy to sync data beween your smart phone, your GPS and the web.
But back on primary topic. The Bryton should do all the heavy lifting for quick visual reference on the handlebar while touring and then when you need extra details and data you pull out your phone with GAIA. This saves you killing the batteries in your smartphone turning it on and off constantly and all the general wear, tear, damage or loss that might come from putting a smartphone on your handlebar. Smart phones are to expensive, too delicate and to much of battery hogs to use as a primary navigation device. On the other hand smartphones are undeniably here to stay as informational aids, whether that be finding the nearest pizza place or bike when you roll into a small town or checking the weather.
In summary, I'm still waiting for someone to sell a service for daily drone delivery of pizza to me on my next bikepacking trip. No doubt this will be the post-millenial "nature" experience but in the mean this is a no frills unit that does exactly what I want it to do and nothing more. I guess that makes me a neo-luddite.
