Wahoo has launched its most powerful and largest cycle computer to date – the Elemnt Ace. With a monster 3.8in touchscreen and claimed 30-hour battery life, the Elemnt Ace is designed to “change the way riders think about cycling computers… by combining the size and usability of a smartphone with the fit-for-purpose form factor and features of a bike computer.”
The new Wahoo computer is the biggest in its category: by comparison the latest Garmin Edge 1050 has a 3.5in display that is a little narrower and Wahoo’s previous biggest screen, of the Elemnt Roam v2, is a now-miniscule 2.7in. But it offers more than just supersize dimensions and a huge battery life: the Ace introduces a headline feature not seen before in a standard bike computer – an integrated wind sensor. This is, according to Wahoo, to measure the effects of air resistance in real time and post-ride, to quantify how wind and drafting are impacting your ride and measure one of cycling’s most critical forces. If this doesn’t sound like a particularly useful insight at the moment, Wahoo told us in a press briefing that there’s much more functionality to come in the future. Devices such as Notio Konect and AeroPod use pitot tubes to collect wind speed and then, in conjunction with data from other sensors such as power meters and wheel speed sensors, can provide analysis of a rider’s drag that can be used for aero testing.
The TFT (thin film transistor) screen is Wahoo’s first touchscreen, though the Elemnt Ace keeps the familiar three buttons underneath, as used by the existing Bolt and Roam, which incidentally will both stay in the range. The Ace’s screen has the same matte look and signature washed-out colours as the non-touchscreens of those two models rather than the glossier, more intensely coloured Garmin 1050 screen. Additionally, it can be operated with non-touch-enabled gloves and in wet conditions.
As you’d expect, the enormous screen is intended to make navigation much easier, and additionally the Ace has been upgraded with improved navigation features. If it’s still not big enough to read on the fly (or if you don’t want to take your eyes off the road) there’s now turn-by-turn voice prompts that you can select instead of the more familiar beeps.
As for app integration, something Wahoo has always been renowned for, the new Ace uses the Wahoo app rather than the Elemnt app which was used by the earlier computers. Wahoo says it will move the Roam and the Bolt over to the Wahoo app and will end-of-life the Elemnt app in the future in an effort to simplify the user experience. A new version of the Wahoo app – not yet released – will be able to navigate users to a POI (such as a cafe or bike shop) shared from Google Maps. However, users can already navigate to a point directly from the device.
And finally, not to be outdone by its rival, the Wahoo Elemnt Ace, like the Garmin Edge 1050, has a digital bell – and its ‘ting ting’, activated by double-tapping the screen, is incredibly piercing.
Wind sensor: for better aerodynamic understanding
Wahoo’s head of product management Ryan Williams explained some of the new features of the Elemnt Ace. First up, the wind sensor. A dedicated data field gives you your wind speed in a colourised zone, even when on the map page as an overlay. Afterwards you can analyse time spent in ‘Airboost’, neutral or ‘AirDrag zones. Why not simply tailwind and headwind? How does it help training? “AirBoost is also drafting,” says Williams. “That’s one of the most powerful use cases – it will help you understand how much of your ride you spent drafting. When you’re in a draft you’re going to see the field go green and post-ride you’ll look at the distribution of your ride time and you’ll see all the time you were drafting. In a competitive scenario when you’re trying to save energy, this can give you information about group riding dynamics. It’s like a power meter – I could tell you whether my ride yesterday was hard or easy, but if I have a power meter I can tell you how many watts, how it compares with the ride before that… it’s a quantification of something.” Williams emphasises that the function is at its starting point. “It has all the hardware it needs to be much more, but we’ll follow it up with software and continue to expand on it.”
The Ace’s wind sensor knows your ground speed and compares the air speed. Could it in the future be used for a Wahoo CdA calculator? “From a hardware perspective it can do anything,” answers Williams. “Specifically with CdA, I think there’s a high probability that we’ll be able to help riders better understand the role of aerodynamics in their riding, but I’m not sure giving them a CdA number does that. It might create more questions than answers. Our focus at Wahoo: we always talk about ‘simply powerful’ which is this idea that there’s a lot of deep science, deep expertise built in, but it’s simple so that you can understand it and take action on it. So will we create a CdA calculator? Maybe, maybe not. Will we seek to use this to help riders understand how aerodynamics impact their ride? Absolutely. So there will be more that comes in the future there.”
As for the wind speed data itself, Williams says it will be written to the .fit file, as will the colourisation of the zones. “It’s all open,” he says. “I would love nothing more than if some smart person said ‘I can build an amazing app that leverages all this data’.”
Navigation and improved features
Second, the navigation, which Williams describes as a “big upgrade compared with the Elemnt Roam v2.” Obviously the 3.8in screen [compared to the Roam’s 2.7in] helps with that but, says Williams, “the other thing we spent a huge amount of time on, it’s called map feeling – the colours, the size of the lines, the labels… we built that four times before we landed on the final one. This was trial and error to get it perfect. We think the mapping is remarkable and then the voice turn-by-turn speaker is completely new.” Voice control is switched on via the Wahoo app within ‘workout profiles’, where settings and data fields can be customised for each type of activity in the Wahoo app. It’s not possible – at the moment anyway – to choose between voices, Siri style. The voice is softly spoken, male, American and more laid-back than Wahoo’s usual beeps, which can sound unnecessarily urgent if you’re just on an easy ride.
Williams goes on to explain that being able to have different sets of settings is in itself another key upgrade over the Roam. “You might have electronic shifting on your road bike but mechanical gears on your gravel bike, meaning there are different types of data you want to see. You can configure each – it’s a quality-of-life improvement.”
In the app you can choose from ‘off-the-shelf’ profiles (cyclocross, mountain biking, e-biking etc.) or make a duplicate and name it yourself – useful since gravel biking doesn’t exist in the stock settings in the latest software.
For attaching it to your bike, an aluminium mount is included in the box for a round 31.8mm bar (plus a USB C charging cable and a tether in case the device jumps out of the mount) but Wahoo says bicycle companies who produce their own integrated bars have had the dimensions in advance in order to release compatible mounts for the Wahoo Elemnt’s launch date of December 3. However, in length it is similar to the Garmin Edge 1050 and it’s likely that a mount designed that that dimension will also be compatible with the Wahoo Elemnt Ace. Wahoo also says third-party mount companies such as K-Edge and KOM Cycling will be launching their own.
Next let’s address the elephant in the room – or, on the bars as weight weenies might see it. Why so big? “The biggest thing that’s driving the dimension is the size of the screen for the X and Y,” says Williams. “The thickness – the battery is roughly twice the size of the battery in a Roam 2. We did that because the tagline is ‘ride epic’... your biggest, most epic adventures, it’s ready for that. So we wanted a 30-plus hours battery life. The other piece of inside belief that we have is that once you take it and mount it on your bars you don’t notice the thickness, the dimensions, it integrates into your bars in a way that doesn’t bother you at all. So we didn’t have a lot of feedback from customers that they were concerned about weight, but they were concerned about battery life. And really concerned about having a screen they could see.”
What about Wahoo’s sponsored pro teams – what do they make of the Elemnt Ace? “They are very interested in it,” says Williams. “Next year we expect them to ask for two computers: one for training and one for racing. How many Aces are we going to see on the startline of the Tour de France next year? I don’t think too many. A lot of Bolts or Roams but in training we’re going to see a lot of Aces. I was meeting with the Lidl-Trek leadership team and we had a long discussion about the device. They’re very intrigued about the aero sensor and the insights they can get with that.”
Ace or Edge 1050?
And finally – Wahoo has its loyal ‘Wahooligan’ followers, but comparisons with the Garmin Edge 1050 will be inevitable. Is Wahoo ready? “We think this device goes head to head well with Garmin’s flagship Edge 1050. There are key points of difference – the first is screen area. We have 20% more screen area than their device and we specifically chose that ratio of the screen to make it wider. We think that when you’re using apps it gives you more peripheral vision for a great experience.”
Williams also points to battery life: “Ours is rated for 30 hours whereas theirs in normal usage is 20 typically.” And then the aero sensor: “It is completely unique and novel; we think it’s not just what you’re getting on day one with the data but day two, three and the future where more will come.”
And a word on value for money? The Wahoo Elemnt Ace will retail at £549.99/$599.99/€599.99. “It’s a flagship device but we think we’ve built in a ton of value,” says Williams. “In the US it will be about $100 cheaper [than the Edge 1050], €100 in Europe, and £75 in the UK. So it sounds a little funny to say our flagship device pushes the value envelope, but I think it really does. Just those aero sensors alone can run into hundreds of dollars. So it’s a lot of features in a great package,” he concludes. For comparison, the Elemnt Roam v2 is priced at £349.99 and the Bolt v2 at £249.99.
First impressions
Here’s what I said about the Wahoo Elemnt Roam v2 when it was launched in October 2022: “So onto the things I’m not the biggest fan of. It’s going to be that battery life. I’m a bit disappointed that Wahoo stuck at 17 hours. It would have been nice to see an extra bit – or maybe even solar tech. Maybe that’s going to come in the future. I think Garmin are going to force Wahoo into needing to extend battery life. Screen size – 2.7 inches. I wish it was a bit bigger, especially when you’ve got such a fat bezel that runs around the edge.”
So it seems that Wahoo were listening… and then some. The Elemnt Ace is big. It’s huge. It has almost twice the battery life of the Roam v2 and the screen is 40% bigger. But it’s more than twice the weight at 210g on my scales compared to the Roam’s 94g. My first thought was that I should have been careful what I wished for. The entire frame of the new Scott Addict RC Ultimate only weighs three Wahoo Elemnt Aces. Why would anyone want to make it 33.3% heavier just by bolting a computer onto it? However, as Wahoo’s head of product management Ryan Williams says, the Elemnt Ace wasn’t designed for road racing and probably won’t be used for it. Training, yes, and more universally the kind of riding that more and more people are doing in 2024 and beyond, which is just getting out on their bikes, exploring and enjoying themselves. If you’re in the great outdoors in a wide open space with a bike loaded up with all your bikepacking gear, you might equally ask why you’d want to be squinting at a tiny, matchbox-sized computer to navigate. I know – real purists/tourists would say you should be unfolding a real map. With both Wahoo and Garmin both going large with their flagship units, either the two leaders in cycling computers have both seriously misjudged what riders want… or we’ve entered an era of big devices. I'm betting it’s the latter.
So there will be the debate over its size for sure, but there’s no discussion about the better useability of this bigger computer. The expansive touchscreen works beautifully – and it does actually work with non-touchscreen gloves as Wahoo claims. There isn't quite the same detail as with ungloved fingers but for swiping between screens it’s OK. And if you want to use the buttons instead, they’re bigger, more spaced and easier to hit with gloves than the Roam or the Bolt’s buttons.
The rest of the Ace is more familiar than you’d think. It’s as famously easy to set up with the app and is highly user friendly, just as Wahoo’s other computers have been. Although there are many more colours than before (the Roam v2 has 64 and the Ace has 16 million) it sticks to the same muted palette – the look and feel is the same.
At the moment I’m going to sit on the fence over the wind sensor. Currently it doesn’t add anything useful (or at least useable), but it doesn’t take anything away either and, as Wahoo says, there’s more to come with future software updates. Wahoo has cannily priced the Elemnt Ace below the Garmin Edge 1050 and for me that’s enough to head off criticism of a function that doesn’t at launch seem to have any practical use beyond just interesting data. Wahoo can justifiably say you’re literally getting more for your money and it’s hard to argue with that. I’ll be doing a lot more riding with my test unit over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for my full review.
The Wahoo Elemnt Ace is available to buy on launch day – go to Wahoo’s website for all the details.
Wahoo Elemnt Ace specifications
- Screen size: 3.8in
- Battery life: 30+ hours
- Dimensions: 126 x 71 x 24mm
- Weight 208g
- Screen resolution: 480 x 720
- Water rating: IPX7
- Storage: 64GB
- GPS type: Dual band
- Connectivity: Bluetooth, ANT+, WiFi
- Sensors: GPS, Glonass, Galileo, barometric altimeter, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, compass, gyroscope, dynamic wind sensor
- Price: £549.99/$599.99/€599.99
