BRYTON RIDER 420 GPS

£134.99

SPECIFICATION Weight: 78g (including mount) • Size: 84x50x16mm • Contact: zyrofisher.co.uk

Some consider riding an escape from screen time, but there’s no denying GPS units can broaden your horizons.

If the idea of hanging several hundred quid’s worth of touchscreen device on your handlebars is a worry, the Bryton Rider 420 packs many of the functions of fancier units into a smaller, more affordable package. If you’re serious about your training you can also connect a heart rate monitor or cadence sensor and create your own workout programmes, though as a mountain biker you’re more likely to lean on a GPS unit for navigating out in the wilds.

In this day and age the old-school ‘breadcrumb’ navigation and lack of mapping feels a little basic, but you get what you pay for and I successfully followed routes ripped from Strava GPXS, created on third party apps or in Bryton’s own online portal. The accurate GPS is quick to shout if you’re going off-route, so you don’t go too far wrong if you miss a turn, though a paper map and some sense of your surroundings would be sensible if you’re really venturing into the wilds.

Thanks to the pretty basic menus, your main interface with the Rider

420 will be through the phone app, to which you download your GPX files and then transfer them to the device via Bluetooth. This should also enable calls and texts to appear on the unit, though I couldn’t get that to work with an iphone. I fared better with Strava, rides automatically uploading after linking my account through the Bryton app. Trainingpeaks and Selfloops are also supported. The app should also manage firmware updates to the device, but it froze on me when I tried, leaving me unable to follow a preloaded route. I plugged it into a laptop to finish the update but my Mac blocked the Bryton application as malware, so there were some hoops to jump through.

It’s worked perfectly since, but issues like this might put people off taking a punt on a relative unknown like Bryton, especially when the similarly priced Garmin Edge 130 Plus offers comparable functionality, plus mtbfocused features like a jump logger.

Hardware-wise I appreciated the compact size and understated appearance of the Rider 420, the main buttons are easier to operate with gloves than a touchscreen, even if the supplementary ones on the underside were a little fiddly. Battery life was impressive and the screen was easy to read in all conditions, with manually selectable backlighting handy for strong sunlight as well as after dark. The simple quick-release mount also held the device securely, though you’ll need to fork out another £15 for a packet of two additional Brytonspecific mounts if you want to share it across bikes, given it’s not actually compatible with similar looking Garmin mounts you may already have.

In conclusion I appreciated the Bryton’s no-nonsense vibe and the fact it offers an incredible package of features for a very reasonable price. Given the dominance of the big players in the GPS market the Bryton looks a leftfield choice, though, and the lack of mounting compatibility and the software wobbles shook my confidence a tad.