Beeline Velo 2 - Bike Computer With Navigation And Smart Routing

I was slightly underwhelmed when I first unboxed it. The screen didn’t seem as sharp as the advertising suggested, the build quality was fine and the navigation initially seemed confusing. However since using it two or three times I can say, it’s a superb bit of kit, packed with great features, backed up by a useful app allowing you to plan and generate routes. While using, it keeps you well informed on the route, it switches screens so you see the most useful and relevant information, ie gradient display, while climbing, directions once approach turns. It will also reroute you, if you decide to deviate from your route. Great value for money, well built, great battery life and easy to use.

I’ve been using the Velo 2 around London on my Brompton, and it fits exactly what I need as a new cyclist. I wanted something small that wouldn’t interfere with the fold, and I didn’t want my phone out because London has snatchers. I’m not into stats or tracking. I just want simple directions. The Velo 2 nails that. • The size is tiny and never gets in the way. • The minimal design is easy to glance at while riding. • It uses my phone’s GPS, which works fine for city riding. • The turn cues are clear enough that I don’t need a full map view and perfect for just taking a quick glance. It's nearly perfect for me but a few drawbacks stand out. • You have to plan routes in their app instead of using Apple Maps or Google Maps. I’d prefer more flexibility, but it’s manageable. • The main navigation screen doesn’t show ETA. You have to tap through a few screens to check it, which isn’t ideal in London traffic. • There’s no Apple Watch support, which would make a quick ETA glance much easier. Price-wise, I think it’s crept up a bit too much. I paid £99, and I’ve seen older reviews calling it expensive at £80. It’s still cheaper than most cycling GPS units, but the device itself is pretty simple and relies heavily on your phone. It feels like it should cost less. That said, I’m still happy to support a UK-based tech company. Battery life is solid and charges quickly over USB-C. After looking around, this still feels like the best option for a small, simple, no-fuss GPS that keeps my phone tucked away and my Brompton folding clean.

Overall it’s ace! Accurate navigation, easy to use, battery lasts for long rides, auto re-routing without any need for your phone, and easy to load new or adjusted routes on the go - pull out your phone and your current position will be instantly there in the beeline app with greater mapping detail without any need to phaff around with other apps like google maps, or the painfully slow Garmin app etc. Beeline automatically syncs your routes from Strava and you can also easily upload GPX files to it. Yes you need to use it with your phone via Bluetooth but I found it doesn’t unduly drain your phone battery.. the main issue with using a phone for nav mounted on your bars is the constant screen use drains the battery fast and so the Velo2 removes that issue. It doesn’t connect to things like cadence and power sensors, so this isn’t a replacement for a full cycling computer with those features. Personally I use it alongside an older Garmin Edge 130+ when I need decent navigation for new routes - as the Garmin is great for tracking but terrible for nav - or standalone on my city bike. I would say the Velo2 is best suited to those who want great nav and only need basic tracking (speed / route etc), or like me use it alongside a basic garmin/wahoo to get better nav. Build wise it’s fairly solid, maybe not as solid as some other cycling computers, and being critical the mount “click” could do with being bit more robust like my Garmin mount, but that said I haven’t had any issue with it coming off. It also now comes with with the silicon protection cover that should prevent any issues if you do drop it. In short highly recommended.

This is a simple but effective bit of technology. The box is neat and well designed, it comes with the unit, a connector base unit, and flexible bands for fixing the base unit to fix it all to the frame. Key thoughts. It relies on the phone app to navigate and track rides. I appreciated the simple and effective display. The turn by turn navigation was really good, a simplified map shows the key road junctions and it beeps once to get attention and then double beeps when you need to turn. Battery life is good, I rode for 5 hours and it only lost about 25% battery so I am confident that it would be okay for a full day. Overall, this is really impressive and an excellent purchase.

Drain on phone battery is quite significant (only about 50K on slow ride) so needs a phone battery recharger(with long cable) for long rides. Simple navigation screen and has worked well on planned routes. Struggled to record routes; seems to stop recording (especially at cafe stops) and you need to restart from phone app by pressing grey rectangle and then the green arrow. Have spent a lot of time with phone settings (I use a Samsung Galaxy) enabling it to work. Struggle with buttons which often don't work e.g. just switching on and off can be difficult. I often just let it do it's own thing and not try to change screens and it settles down. Like the simple info (distance, speed, time, total time and ascent) and the climb screens while riding are helpful. Am a big distance guy (12,000 mile per year) and have liked some of the routes produced from the app (I use 'balanced' routes);not too many cycle paths. Pros : good simple navigation; interesting routes; Cons: buttons don't work so well; recording routes problematic; lots of fiddling with phone settings. On a recent tour I did manage to share planned routes with fellow cyclists using the app & exporting to whatsapp. Like it when it works; wish buttons were a bit better - expect it won't last that long but not expensive.Old roadie.

Absolutely excellent! Really makes GPS work brilliantly on a bike

Excellent in almost every way. The screen is clear, the map and directions are intuitive, and it is soooo small and light. Amazing. My only negative point is that it requires a smart phone to be nearby, as it's really just a display for the app. It won't do anything without it. I started recording my journeys on a smart watch so I didn't have to use phone battery doing GPS stuff. In that one sense, this feels like they've really missed a beat on all the other devices out there.

The device is certainly a vast improvement over the Megene device I sent back, but the App and PC software are heavily flawed. And the device is nothing without the software. For long complex trips both the app and software are cumbersome to use with the base map being very poor, and the route choosing being questionable at times. The PC software has got an incognito save, ie I cant save my route!. the app being on a small devices with no physical keyboard is not as they claim the best experience, or shouldn't be. No where near really good enough for purpose. The typing in of a place name is laughable, and needs even a tiny bit of intelligence. If I am in Cumbria, my next waypoint wont be a restaurant in Korea. Was the software an afterthought? You'd think importing a GPX file would do the trick, after all the files produced by the OS software are very detailed, but NO, even in breadcrumb mode there are large discrepancies in some places .. maybe because a road has been voted as not a good route. Thats the way I HAVE to go. This really is not good enough probably because the programmers think they can write software that thinks it knows better than me what I want. Just keep it simple! copy the route exactly. Its only got 2 stars because it works better than the megene device I had. Add On. Reduced to 1 star. They have obviously been fiddling with the software because its now even worse. The web based software wont work out a route and there is no SAVE function - laughable. The app is fiddly to use if you want to modify you route. I cant get the NCR route I want. What a waste of money. Stop spending my hard earned dosh I coughed up on advertising and fix the software.

初めて使った時に、ちょっとどうかなと思いましたがルート情報をビープ音で教えてくれて、とってものんびり自転車で散歩ができます。 コンパスモードは、好きな道をその場で決めて走行できます。これいいですね。スマホの電池もなくならず。軽くていいですね。bromptonで使ってます。おすすめ。

Tengo un Gatmin Explore 2. Va bien, pero es tosco y limitado. Este beeline es mas sencillo, tiene menos prestaciones y es totalmente dependiente del mòvil, hasta el pinto que si no lo llevas encima, el rquipo no funciona. Tampoco sabe buscar rutas, hay que hacerlo desde el móvil. Si quieres que mida tus datos biométricos, tampoco vale. Pero si aceptas que vas a llevar el móvil, entonces las cosas cambian: es pequeño, es fácil de utilizar, las instrucciones de ruta son sencillas, lee ficheros GPX, se ve bien en todo tipo de luz. Y el precio. Resumiendo, si no necesitas la biometria, y lo tuyo es hacer salidas casuales donde a lo sumo necesitarás que te indique, este puede ser el producto a utilizar. A mi me sirve, y muy bien!

Routing options are pretty good, compass mode is actually kinda fun and helps you to discover new routes and also not worry so much about making the wrong turn and just head in the general direction (sometimes even faster than suggested routes). Accompany phone and app required to operate the GPS computer, which might be a deal breaker for some but perfectly find as I always carrying my phone with me on my rides. App is well designed and online route planner on Beeline website is a very good option, albeit still rough around the edges. All in, this is a compact and very neat device, especially if you don't want to mount your huge phone (I'm using a folding one) to the handlebar.

Ich fahre überwiegend Tagestouren zwischen 30 und 80 Kilometern auf Radwegen, Waldwegen und Nebenstraßen. Genau für diesen Einsatzzweck ist das Beeline Velo 2 für mich nahezu perfekt. Was mir besonders gefällt: Das Gerät lenkt nicht ab. Das Display zeigt nur die Informationen, die man wirklich braucht. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Dadurch kann man sich auf die Fahrt, die Landschaft und das eigentliche Erlebnis konzentrieren, statt ständig auf ein Smartphone zu schauen. Die Navigation funktioniert erstaunlich präzise. Egal ob auf Radwegen, Waldwegen oder normalen Straßen – die Wegführung war bei meinen bisherigen Touren sehr zuverlässig. Unterstützt wird das Ganze durch die akustischen Signale, sodass man oft gar nicht auf das Display schauen muss. Auch die Anzeige der kommenden Anstiege gefällt mir sehr gut. Sie ist erstaunlich genau und hilft dabei, die eigene Kraft besser einzuteilen. Gerade auf längeren Touren finde ich das sehr hilfreich. Die automatische Pausenfunktion funktioniert ebenfalls tadellos. Anhalten, fotografieren, etwas essen oder einen Kaffee trinken – beim Weiterfahren setzt das Gerät die Aufzeichnung automatisch fort. Solche kleinen Details machen im Alltag einen großen Unterschied. Die Beeline-App ist einfach aufgebaut und sehr intuitiv zu bedienen. Die Verbindung zu meinem iPhone 12 Mini funktioniert zuverlässig und ohne Aussetzer. Wer von Komoot kommt, kann seine Routen problemlos importieren und später wieder exportieren. Ein paar kleine Kritikpunkte gibt es dennoch: Der Akkuverbrauch des Smartphones ist spürbar höher, da das Telefon während der Fahrt dauerhaft verbunden bleibt. Allerdings ist das bei einer klassischen Smartphone-Navigation auch nicht anders. Mit einer kleinen Powerbank im Gepäck ist das für mich kein Problem. Außerdem erfolgt bei importierten Komoot-Routen keine automatische Neuberechnung, wenn man die geplante Strecke verlässt. Stattdessen zeigt das Velo 2 lediglich die Richtung zurück zur ursprünglichen Route an. Für kleine Abkürzungen oder kurze Abweichungen ist das völlig ausreichend. Wer allerdings spontan größere Umwege fahren möchte, muss die Route selbst wiederfinden oder neu planen. Ich vermute, Beeline möchte damit die Nutzung der eigenen Routenplanung fördern. Mein Fazit: Wer kein überladenes Fahrradnavi mit unzähligen Menüs sucht, sondern ein einfaches, zuverlässiges und angenehm unaufdringliches Navigationsgerät für Touren und Ausfahrten, sollte sich das Beeline Velo 2 unbedingt ansehen. Seitdem ich es nutze, schaue ich beim Fahren praktisch nicht mehr aufs Handy. Genau das war für mich der Hauptgrund für den Kauf – und genau das macht das Gerät hervorragend.

STAY AWAY! It was working fine, great solution for navigation! But... Yesterday as I open the app, they now moved to start making you pay a monthly subscription for simple features! I understand if they want to add premium, complex features, yeah, add a membership option, but not for stuff as basic as voice navigation (hey gmaps and apple maps are free and both have voice guidance) Now I see that after paying over 100eur for this device, it might become useless the moment they decide to move basic navigation into a monthly subscription as well...