Omata One bike computer

$550 (approx £415), omata.com

first thing’s first – this has nothing to do with any secret conspiratorial bicycling code. It’s pronounced ‘ om-at-ter’, as in thermometer, because the Omata One is in fact a precision GPS device. Despite its appearance, however, this is more than just a steampunk Garmin.

The idea, says co-founder Rhys Newman, was to create a highly accurate instrument to measure what Omata sees as the crucial metrics of cycling – speed, distance, time and total ascent – and to display them in a way ‘designed not to distract but to show’. Thus the Omata’s innards are part GPS chipset and barometric pressure sensor, part clockwork mechanism, where digital data is converted to the mechanical movement of the hands – a bit like an analogue quartz watch.

This might seem like a retrograde step, but Newman insists the Omata represents a brave new dawn for the modern cyclist, where enjoyment-sapping metrics such as power and cadence are eschewed for the bare essentials. ‘The more you leave out the better the product,’ he says. ‘Right now we have little more than consumer electronics on our bars.’

To that end, the One syncs to a companion app that autouploads to Strava and will connect via ANT+ or Bluetooth to heart rate monitors, power meters and cadence sensors, but all that extra data is only recorded, not displayed in real time. Whether that concept appeals is up for debate, but it’s certainly a novel idea, and it’s executed quite exquisitely. So much so that one might say you never really own an Omata, you merely look after it for the next generation.