Hammerhead Karoo 2: Part 3

After a promising beginning, things went downhill.

 Readers may remember that at the end of last year I got a Hammerhead Karoo 2 GPS computer from Mrs. Guitar Ted for a gift for Christmas and our anniversary. There was the introductory post here, and a follow-up here, but I haven't written about this unit in quite some time, and there is a good reason for that- Specifically, it has been a very frustrating, very complicated device to use in the way that I want.

The first strike was when I did the Gents Race back in April. Supposedly you were capable of having turn-by-turn directions with the Karoo 2. Well, I got the device to upload the route ahead of the event, and I figured I was good to go. However; the device did not work as I expected and the route would not load. In fact, the head malfunctioned and I ended up turning it off. Here's a bit of what I wrote about that experience last April concerning the issues Ihad.

"I tried starting it as we rolled out of town, but it wasn't very intuitive to use (in my opinion) and so the Gents Race course I had would not start. I bailed on that and tried to just start a ride. The ride screen would come up, start compiling data briefly, then the screen would go blank. Meanwhile the thing was randomly barking out turn prompts (with the screen totally dark) and I got frustrated and just canned any notions of using it for the time being."

That experience soured me so badly on the computer that I put it on my desk and forgot about it until recently. The Hall of Fame Ride would be a good reason to use it again, right? So, I went to Strava, where N.Y. Roll had the route, and tried to upload the file for the ride to my Hammerhead. Nope! Gotta be a Strava account holder for that! Well, I don't want to open a Strava account for any reason, so I copied the route by hand over to Ride With GPS which I do have an account on and which is linked to the Hammerhead dashboard. 

No problem, right? Wrong! I had to go through all the Hammerhead prompts and it still wouldn't work. I finally figured out you have to restart the computer you are using to get the file to upload. Yeah....thanks for not telling me that, Hammerhead! Well, now, THAT should have done it, because Hammerhead claims that you do not have to do anything else. Your route, once uploaded to your dashboard, will automatically be found on your Karoo 2. Right?

WRONG. No route for you! Despite trying all the tricks, nothing would show up on my Karoo 2 head. I spent three to four hours on this and nothing to show for it. 

I remembered liking this page. It was gone in June- couldn't find it.

Well, I remembered a page on one of the ride files that I liked as a computer and it showed elevation, speed, time of day, and kept a graph of your climbing. Kinda neat, right? 

Well, that was gone in June. Was it an update that took it away? Did I somehow erase that page? I don't know, but what I did have to work with was garbage. I did not like anything about the readouts, and I had not edited anything. 

Then I had Mrs. Guitar Ted look into my problem. She was able to determine that the unit was having issues staying tethered via Bluetooth to the computer, and this perhaps was why my route was not getting uploaded to the Karoo 2 head. NOTE: This is the same computer I used back in April when the route for the Gents Race did auto-upload. After spending about 45 minutes trying different things, she gave up and suggested that perhaps the Karoo 2 has a bad chip.

I also had Hammerhead sponsored athlete Amanda Nauman chime in via Twitter asking about my problem and once described to her, she was at a loss as to why the dashboard and head unit weren't communicating with each other as well. She suggested I contact Hammerhead, and so I have sent them a query as of Monday this week. 

So, the Hammerhead Karoo 2 has been a very frustrating, very disappointing experience. Initially it was seemingly easy to set up, but turn-by-turn navigation did not work, uploading route files was problematic, or not possible at all, and the dashboard was overly complex. The entire experience was maddeningly empty and devoid of any accomplishment or sense of knowing you knew how to make it work. I'm not sure if Hammerhead's recent sale to SRAM has anything to do with this, but I am extremely disappointed in what I have now. My old Lezyne Super GPS was a thousand times easier to use, but it did not support turn-by-turn navigation without it being tethered to a phone, which, at that point, I may just as well use a phone app. 

 More soon....
 

Note: Hammerhead did not know I was reviewing this and I was not paid, nor bribed for this review.