We tested the cheapest World Tour GPS; the Bryton Rider 420

Words & Images: James Raison

Bryton has been forging out a healthy respect in the bike GPS market for making units with plenty of features with competitive prices. They’re at it again with the Rider 420; a GPS unit that’s causing something of a crisis for me because it’s hard to crititcise (too much) something that has so much goodness for its low price. It is, in fact, the cheapest GPS unit being used in the Mens World Tour peloton with Israel Start-Up Nation at only $219 AUD for the head unit alone. But I’m going to criticise it anyway because that’s my job! Let’s dive in.

ABOUT

Features:

2.3” Display
Navigation with Turn-by-Turn
Power Meter Pedal Support & Calibration
Menu Access while Recording
Navigation Start/Stop while in an Activity
35 Hour Battery Life
GPS, Glonass (Russia), BDS (China), Galileo (Europe), QZSS(Japan)

Price:

Base unit $219.95
Rider 420 T Bundle price: $319.95

In the Box:

Rider 420 head unit
Tether
USB cable and manual
stem/handlebar quarter turn mount
Bryton Smart Heart Rate Monitor
Bryton Smart Cadence Sensor

HARDWARE

The Bryton Rider 420 is a sleek and slender unit but has made some sacrifices for the aesthetic.

The face is perfectly flat with reasonable screen to bezel ratio. There’s buttons on the bottom corners; page down/menu down, and ok/lap. The power/backlight and back/start/stop buttons are on the back of the unit. That button layout is challenging because you need to remember the functions of the rear buttons because there’s no indicators on the front. Its thrifty use of buttons means there’s a down button but not up so you have to do a full lap of all your screens to get to the screens above. It’s a small inconvenience and one shared with Wahoo hardware.

The unit back has a couple of buttons and the quarter-turn mount. It fits nicely into the sleek Sports Mount.

Other noteworthy features are the chopped quarter turn interface that is, shall we say, creatively “Garmin adjacent”. That means the Rider 420 will fit into Garmin mounts, but not quite perfectly, but Garmin head units won’t fit into Bryton mounts because their tabs are slightly too thick. Bryton ships a stem/bar mount with the unit and you can buy traditional outfront mounts. I used their Sport Mount which is quite good value and gives that premium and sleek metallic feel. My only gripe with the Sport Mount is the lack of rubber buffering so you’re clamping metal directly onto your bars. There’s a standard micro-USB port behind a chunky rubber stopper on the back to finish off.

SENSORS

I got the Rider 420 bundle that included a cadence sensor and heart rate monitor (HRM). The cadence sensor is totally adequate, with a strong resemblance to the generation of Garmin cadence sensors that shipped with the Edge 520. A appreciate a couple of things over the Garmin offering; it uses standard rubber o-rings and not the silly ones Garmin uses, and it has a nice piece of rubber to buffer against your cranks. i will happily ding my new Shimano GRX Di2 from riding, but I’d be annoyed if a cadence sensor left rub marks on them, so thanks for that politeness Bryton.

The cadence sensor is simple, functional and has a rubber backing to protect your crank

The heart rate strap is very nice too with plentiful comfort from its soft elastic strap. It uses both Ant+ and BLTE protocols so I had no problems connecting it to the Bryton, multiple Garmin, and a Wahoo ELEMNT Roam. The monitor unit itself is slightly chunkier than the Garmin alternative and has more pronounced edges. That doesn’t affect comfort but makes it more noticable through your jersey.

SETUP

Bryton’s ecosystem brings quality smartphone app setup to its low pricepoint - which I love because GPS units still tend to have clunky menu systems. Connecting to my Pixel 2 XL Android phone is patchy with a phone restart required often to get the Rider 420 to connect. In fairness to Bryton, I have to do the same thing for the premium Wahoo ELEMNT Roam. It’s possible that my constantly rotating GPS lineup confuses my phone.

Bryton’s “Active” app can control almost everything on the unit. You use it to manage your personal profile, sync your rides, create and house routes, set notifications, set data pages, analyse your activities, and plenty more. It didn’t take me long to wrap my head around at all. It’s a simple but much appreciated feature to see a display of the Rider 420 when you’re setting up.

The visualisation of your data pages makes setup simple

I like the Active phone app but there’s some annoyances that hold it back. First, the data page setup has some clunkiness that’s been present in the Bryton ecosystem for years now. Changing the number of data fields changes the fields you’ve already set. So, changing from 6 to 7 fields will not retain the 6 you already set and instead gives you 7 new fields. The fields that have been set are then saved to the quantity of fields though, so switching back to 6 fields will return you to the ones you’ve already chosen. It’s an odd system, and one that I didn’t like about the Giant Neos Track that was a re-skinned Bryton Rider 530. Second, you can have bike profiles but the data pages are a global setting and don’t change according to what bike you’re using. That’s annoying for me because I have multiple bikes with different sensors and don’t want globally set data pages. So riding my gravel bike with no sensors means I either have to alter the data fields on the pages I use, turn off and on other pages that have been set up, or deal with pages that have dead fields for sensors I’m not using. Third, there are only 2 bike profiles. I have more bikes than that and would like more profile space. Finally, the screen proportions are odd for some field quantities. For example; 4-fields will split 50%, 25%, and two 12.5%. I either want an either split or the ability to choose a split.

These are the small annoyances that hold the Bryton Rider 420 back for a user like me. A less nerdy rider with fewer sensors and bikes won’t share my struggles.

NAVIGATION

The Bryton Rider 420 has a breadcrumb navigation system but doesn’t have mapping capability. Breadcrumbs are an adequate way to get around, but maps keep trickling down into cheaper units which puts the pressure on Bryton’s value proposition. The Lezyne Mega C and Mega XL for example have the ability to manually add maps through their GPS Root platform and those units have been on the market for 18 months now with RRP at $300.

On-road you’ll get a line showing you where to go, and peeps of sound when you need to turn. There’s no recalculations so you’re either on the route or stopping to investigate an “Off Route” warning. It can be hard navigating with this system because you don’t get the maps around your breadcrumb trail for context. Sometimes the line you’re following doesn’t properly indicate where you need to go, particularly on trails or in unfamiliar locations.

Ultimately for road biking it’s a fine navigation system. I’ve done a lot of gravel and adventure riding in new areas over recent months and I wished for maps quite often. Again I need to keep reminding myself of the pricepoint we’re at. Sacrifices have to be made and maps is one of them.

INTEGRATION AND ROUTE CREATION

2019 was the year hardware companies started playing nice with route creating platforms and Bryton’s right on trend with Komoot, Strava, and RideWithGPS integration. Garmin and Wahoo offer the same integrations so kudos to Bryton for putting the same feature into a value-focused unit.

There’s a Bryton native route creator in the Active app too. It’s adequate enough for knocking together a route and directly trasferring it to the unit but there’s a long calculation lag between adding waypoints. Avoid it if you’re tight on time.

Routes can be loaded onto the device from the Bryton Active app which lists all synced routes from the integrated apps with the appropriate icon of what app it was created in. You can scroll through the lest, select the course you want and send it to your device. Once sent to the Rider 420, it’s available under the “Follow Track” menu item. I like always having access to my long library of courses made on Strava and Ride With GPS. No more plugging into a computer and manually dropping gpx files in.

TRAINING

Bryton has squeezed a structured workout builder into the unit and included some templates in the Active App but is not full integrated quite yet with the unit so you’ll have to wait a little to use it.

You can build your own training sets that target FTP zones and are tied to either time or distance. I built a couple just to test the system. It’s a decent system overall that’s easy to follow and could be particularly interesting for people using indoor trainers. Personally I run my own structured sets without unit guidance because I find it easier and on-road conditions don’t always suit rigid timing.

Like so many Rider 420 features, it’s impressive to see it on a unit so cheap and its builder implementation is good enough. Equivalent systems from Wahoo and Garmin are a bit more sohpisticated, and have integrations with TrainingPeaks and Todays Plan but come with a much larger pricetag.

THE RIDE

I found the Rider 420 to be reliable and unobtrusive to use. It starts up quickly, connects to satelites fast, and is ready for the ride. I never noticed it waiting for satelite which reminds me of how far we’ve come from Garmin Edge 500 days where you might lose the first 15 minutes of your ride while it futilely searches.

The 2.8” screen is pleasing to the eye with plenty of contrast and is very readable for its relatively small size. Its backlight is bright and can be adjusted with a deep dive into the menu. The sounds are subtle, being more of a chirp than the Garmin screech.

Battery life is massive for such a small unit. I don’t run formal tests on battery longevity because they’re boring and I don’t know what settings brands use to stretch out their numbers. I focus on “regular use” and found that most of my riding never put a meaningful dent in the battery. Up to 5 hours of use would see the unit around 80% still - which is a rough guess because the battery indicator is small.

An improvement over previous Bryton units is menu and course access during the ride. The old days saw much blocked off once you’d started an activity which was thoroughly inconvenient if you forgot to load up your course or need to connect a sensor. Making changes to the unit on the bike can be fiddly with the menu and back buttons hidden behind the unit face but at least you can do it now. You need to remember which button is which and hook your finger behind the unit to get at them.

At ride’s end I had mixed experiences with auto uploading. The patchy BLTE connection with my phone meant I’d have to restart my phone before opening the app and seeing the sync happen. Once it had uploaded it’d be shared to Strava and the activity would be available in-app to review ride stats and data.

MARKET POSITIONING

The Bryton Rider 420’s market position defined by its $219 price is interesting to unpack. It’s got so many features that it can realistically cover a broad range of riders from those wanting just the basics to the nerds wanting things like structured training or left/right power data. I think the first group will be well pleased with the Bryton Rider 420 but it falls just a little short for the nerds - like me. I love how much they’ve managed to put in, but it falls short in a few areas; too few bike profiles, no maps, no Strava Live Segments, and a screen that’s on the small side. It shows the difficulty of trying to cater to so many people with a value-focused unit rather than cramming everything into one that costs $500+ and pleasing (almost) everyone.

It’s also a lesson in how important maps have become.

WRAPPING UP

The Bryton Rider 420 has flirted with true excellence. In its pricepoint, it’s a hard unit to beat. There’s far more features than you’d typically expect for a $219 head unit. If your requirements are; simple interface with smartphone integration, good screen visibility, structured training ability, and massive battery life then this fits the bill perfectly.

Its current form is a little uneven for the performance oriented, multi-bike nerd like myself. It’s oh-so-close to getting it right and many things could potentially be tweaked to fix some of my gripes. A few of the features haven’t quite been implemented as I’d want though, and maps have become too important in the age of gravel and adventure cycling.

It is, nonetheless, a formidable bang-for-buck unit.

Disclosure statement: This unit was sent by Bryton for review. It’s not a paid review and we don’t receive any funds from the sale of Bryton units.