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Bryton Rider 50 Review

 

Overview

The Bryton Rider 50 is the larger of two new cycling GPS receivers from Brytonsport of Taiwan, the other being the Bryton Rider 30.

It features a 2.2" TFT colour screen, a high sensitivity GPS receiver, compass, barometer and pan European mapping. Heart rate monitoring, speed and cadence sensors are also available which are read wirelessly using the ANT+ protocol. We are told the Rider 50 will support ANT+ power meters in future.

First Impressions and Basic Operation

The Bryton Rider 50 is a very well made product. It looks modern and stylish. The controls are simple to access and the external connectors are covered with properly fitting rubber caps. It is robust and waterproof to IPX7 (e.g. it can withstand immersion in 1m of water for 30 minutes), so riding with it in the rain is no problem.

The Rider 50 unit features seven control buttons. There are two on each side and three on the lower part of the front of the unit. They perform the following functions:

• Left hand side top - Turns the Rider 50 unit on and off.
• Left hand side bottom - Starts and stops trip recording.
• Right hand side top - Accesses the menus.
• Right hand side bottom - Switches between the map and several data screens.
• Front face left - Displays current position, distance and direction to selected waypoint and allows new waypoints to be marked.
• Front face centre - Multi-directional selector button that can also be pressed. Used to navigate menus and confirm selections.
• Front face right - Returns to previous function.

The control buttons are simple and intuitive. We never needed to look at the manual to understand what they did and how to use them.

On the rear of the Rider 50 unit is a mini-USB connector. This is used to connect the Rider 50 to a computer, but doubles up as the charging mechanism. The Rider 50 will charge all the time it is connected to a computer, but a wall charger is also included that does the job much quicker. The wall charger comes with UK and EU fittings. The unit has a built-in 1200mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery that can last for up to 15 hours with the backlight off.

The Rider 50 has approximately 1.6GB of free internal memory, but a slot on the bottom of the unit allows micro SD cards of up to 32GB to be used to extend the available storage space. This allows maps to be stored on the micro SD card, and the memory left free for trip recording, for example.

Initial Setup

Connecting the Bryton Rider 50 to a PC automatically installs the Bryton Bridge software. Bryton Bridge allows maps to be installed to the Rider 50, the Rider 50 firmware to be updated and training data and routes to be uploaded to the Brytonsport community website.

The Rider 50 is supplied with two DVDs containing maps for all of Western Europe. These can be installed to the internal memory or a microSD card on a country by country basis. The maps are sourced from OpenStreetMap, and look very similar to a Google Map. They include all metalled roads and many off-road rights of way.

OpenStreetMap is a project that aims to provide completely free mapping to anyone that wishes to use it. Members of the public who are skilled at accurately recording with a GPS receiver can supply data which then gets incorporated into later releases of the maps. That means that if your favourite local trails aren't shown on the map you can submit them to OpenStreetMap yourself, and hopefully they will be included in future releases of Bryton Rider Mapping.

What we love most about the Bryton Rider 50 is the ability to completely customise each of the displays. It is possible to specify how many fields should appear and choose exactly what data is displayed in each. There are more than 30 data fields to choose from, including an electronic compass. You can also choose how many data screens should appear, with up to four plus the map being possible.

A perfect Trailquesting setup could include speed, distance, countdown timer, heart rate and electronic compass on the same screen.

Mounting To The Bike

The Bryton Rider 50 is simple to fit. A circular mounting bracket is supplied which can be turned through 90 degrees, allowing the unit to be mounted to the handlebars or stem. Rubber O rings are used to fix the bracket to the bike and several different sizes are supplied.

The Rider 50 clips onto the mounting bracket and pressing a small plastic lever removes it. It is very quick and easy to clip and unclip the Rider 50 unit. The O rings keep the mounting bracket very securely fixed to the bike and there is no problem with using it on rough off-road trails.

Spare mounting brackets are available for your other bikes, and you can tell the Rider 50 which of up to two named bikes you are using, allowing it to keep separate odometer records for each one.

Using Additional Sensors

The Rider 50 can be used with additional sensors which it reads wirelessly using the ANT+ protocol. ANT+ sensors are interchangeable between manufacturers.

Using the Bryton ANT+ Heart Rate Monitoring Belt allows heart rate data to be added to your ride statistics. The belt fits comfortably around the chest and works best if a drop of water is applied to either side of the transmitter unit.

Bryton also supply a sensor that can be used to record either speed or cadence. Setting a switch under the battery determines which it records. The sensor is designed to be fitted to a rear chain stay and records the passing of a magnet that is either fitted to a spoke for speed, or the crank for cadence.

If the speed sensor isn't used, the Rider 50 will determine speed from its GPS signal. The GPS derived speed readings update very quickly and we found them to be very similar to a calibrated wheel magnet computer. If you didn't know the speed was being derived from GPS rather than a wheel magnet we doubt you'd be able to tell the difference.

Planning A Route

Rather than just using the Bryton Rider 50 to record your routes and training statistics, you can have it guide you round a pre-planned route. Routes can be planned via the Brytonsport community website by drawing them on a Google Map.

You simply click on your starting point, and then again for each waypoint. The planner will draw a line between the waypoints. Using a new feature of Google Maps, the line between the waypoints will follow the underlying road, even round bends. This means you can put waypoints several kilometres apart and the line will snap to the road, providing there aren't multiple ways of riding between the waypoints. As Google Maps doesn't mark bridleways and other off-road rights of way, the planning feature isn't that useful for off-road riding.

Once the route has been planned, it can be copied to the Rider 50 unit via Bryton Bridge. The route shows up as a pink dashed line on the Rider 50 map, and you simply follow it round the route.

It is also possible to share routes with your mates, and to use a previously recorded tracklog as a route. For example, if your mate does a regular training ride and uploads the GPS data it to their profile, that can be shared with you so you can download it to your Rider 50 and follow the same route.

Out On The Road / Trail

The 2.2" TFT display is very easy to read whilst riding, even in direct sunlight, with data being displayed with large crisp text. The brightness of the display can be adjusted and tapping the centre front button will turn the backlight on. The backlight can be set to remain on for up to 2 minutes. You can also set the display to work in day mode (black text on white) or night mode (orange text on black) or to automatically change between the two.

Running the display at a higher brightness level and using the backlight a lot will, of course, reduce the run time of the battery, but with a high capacity lithium-ion battery built in, this would only be a problem on very long rides.

The Rider 50 obtains a GPS fix quite quickly and a satellite icon at the bottom of the display clearly shows you when this has been obtained. Once the GPS signal has been fixed, pressing the record button causes the Rider 50 to start recording data about the ride. A red tracklog icon at the bottom of the display shows recording is in progress. Pressing the record button again will stop recording, with a confirmation screen to stop this being done accidentally.

Pressing the mode button changes to the next screen, allowing each of the active data screens and the map to be cycled through. The displays update very quickly making the unit feel very responsive. Even data from the heart rate monitoring belt was recorded and displayed quickly and accurately. We didn't have a single occurrence where data dropped out or looked suspect.

Pressing the information button, displays your current position in Lat/Long format. If you pre-planned a route you will also see the position of the next waypoint and the distance and direction to that waypoint. From this screen you can record a point of interest, name it and save it into the trip history. This could be useful if you are organising a Trailquest and want to record where you intend to put the controls. The Rider 50 can also navigate you back to any stored point of interest.

Unfortunately it isn't possible to see your current position as an OS grid reference. The Rider 50 uses the common WGS84 projection for latitude and longitude as this is very well suited to displaying routes on Google Maps and Google Earth.

We found it easy to use the buttons on the Rider 50 while riding along. They need sufficient pressure so that you don't press them accidentally, but not so much that it makes them hard or fiddly to use.

Using The On-Screen Map

When using the on-screen map a large arrow shows your current position and direction of travel. The arrow is always at the centre of the display and the map scrolls automatically as you ride. If you want to see further than the current view, the front centre joystick button can be used to scroll the map around at the current zoom level. By changing a setting you can opt to have the map always orientated to the direction in which you are heading.

Pressing the front centre button allows the zoom level to be changed. We found the ideal level to be one step down from maximum zoom. This put enough of the route ahead on the map, while still allowing the current road or trail to be clearly seen. We had no difficulty in navigating our way round the local country lanes.

The map does include some off-road trails, but these aren't comprehensive enough. Hopefully more of these will be added to the Bryton Rider 50 map as more and more people contribute to the OpenStreetMap project.

We are not sure the map would be a great advantage in a Trailquest, but it could be useful for a general sense of location on the road sections and for quickly identifying when you have gone the wrong way.

Downloading and Analysing Data

At the end of the ride you can view your statistics by selecting History from the menu, but you get a much richer experience by viewing them online. It is a simple matter to connect the Rider 50 to the computer, and firing up Bryton Bridge automatically reads the data from the device and uploads it to the Brytonsport community website.

Upon selecting a ride, and clicking 'See Detail' you instantly get to see the route you took on a Google Map, with graphs underneath for speed, altitude and heart rate, plotted against distance or time. Running your mouse over these graphs shows the point on the map where the data was recorded.

This makes it very easy to see exactly where you hit that maximum heart rate or where the highest point on your route was. The graphs can be blown up to full screen for even more detailed analysis.

To the right of the map and the graphs, there is wealth of information. This will tell you such things as time spent in each heart rate zone, how many calories you burned, how hard the course was (from the altimeter), how much time you spent riding up and downhill etc. etc. The information is beautifully presented and easy to read, and removes the need to keep a separate training diary.

You can choose to publish individual rides if you wish, in which case anyone looking the Brytonsport community website will be able to see your data. If you don't wish to generally publish you can still click the link button and share that data with anyone you care to send the link to. This feature is particularly useful for sharing your route and statistics for an MTQ event, by putting the link on our forum for example.

Using The Rider 50 For Serious Training

If you are serious about improving your fitness and performance, you can use the Rider 50 to plan, execute and analyse serious training sessions, including interval training.

The planning screen on the Brytonsport community website, allows training sessions to be planned and added to a personal calendar. They can also be automatically set to recur at given intervals. So if you plan to do interval training every Thursday, you can set it to do that.

When planning a training session you can set specific objectives in terms of speed, distance, time etc. For interval training you can set interval and recovery durations. If you want to follow a particular training route you can either plan a route or use the trip log from a route you have previously recorded. These training sessions can then be downloaded to the Rider 50, and when you conduct them and upload the data back, you can compare the result you achieved against the planned objective. It is also possible to plan simple training sessions on the unit itself.

Another really useful feature is the ability to race a virtual buddy. You can set how fast your virtual friend will ride a particular course, and then while riding that course yourself the Rider 50 will tell you how far up or down you are on the virtual friend. This is a great way to train hard and have a bit of fun at the same time.

Other Features Of The Bryton Rider 50

A unique feature is the ability to transfer data wirelessly to a friend who also has a Rider 50. You can send or receive planned routes, historic routes and data and recorded points of interest. This is achieved simply by putting the units next to each other and setting one to send and the other to receive.

Although primarily intended a Bike GPS, you can use the Rider 50 as a general GPS receiver. You can walk or run with it and easily operate it handheld.

The Rider 50 has a step counter mode to allow it to be used like a pedometer. It will tell you how far you have walked, how long you have waked for, how many steps were taken and the number of calories burned.

Overall

The Bryton Rider 50 is such a feature-packed, stylish, well-made and easy to use device that it is very hard to find fault with it. We absolutely love its configurability, how simple it is to set up and start riding with, how much data you can see on a single screen and the wealth of route data and training statistics it gives you. For its price point it's definitely a 10/10!

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED