And then there were 4.
Stages have now added support for the GARMIN VARIA Radar to the Stages Dash L50/M50 matching recent efforts with the Hammerhead Karoo and earlier moves from Wahoo and Garmin.
I need to do a few rides with JUST the Dash on the handlebars. I’ve tried all 4 and the multiple beeping scared the life out of me 😉 However, superficially at least the implementation looks good. Pairing was a doddle and the display looks nice enough and, like Garmin, the red/yellow warning bar overlays the existing display rather than taking up a part of the display solely for itself as with Hammerhead & Wahoo.
The bar appears on the right-hand side of the Dash’s screen by default and can be changed. I think I might like it on that side, I’m not sure.
As with other implementations of Varia, the Dash has yellow, green and red bars to indicate the alert state of approaching vehicles as well as car icons on the bar whose position indicates their distance from you from about 150m away.
Also Today
Today’s firmware for the DAsh is released alongside significant updates to the Stages LINK app. In short, the app now lets you do the following
- Change data fields on the Dash through the phone app
- Change settings, profiles and pages on the Dash through the phone app
- Manage courses and workouts on the Dash through the phone app
Notes: As of writing Varia is still on sale (in the UK it’s £99) here: links to a choice of retailers
I have a Stages Dash ‘first ride’ post to come at some point, although the first ride was while ago!
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I’d be very interested to see what you think of the Stage Dash. Whilst I generally like the unit if it behaving, I’ve had numerous crashes whilst out riding, I think always whilst displaying maps.
I rushed that post. It’s the Stages Dash M50 I have. and it’s the unit which freezes whilst displaying maps, rather than me crashing.
ha !
i’ll look more on the map side of things but it’s generally been good.
i’d say the button are poor and it seems that some of the sweeter functionality relies on a paid subscription to their analysis platform
iirc i had some issue with how it links to the kickr, ie not properly receiving all the data.
i like some of the fancy graphics (as i do on the hammerhead) but after a while i just want a boring old number.
and if you want boring old numbers there’s every device under the sun to choose from.