Lezyne Super Pro GPS cycling computer

Lezyne's Super Pro GPS is stuffed with functions and connects easily to other sensors/apps, plus it's light, securely mounted and stays charged for potentially weeks. The navigation is poor, though, and it's not a huge step on from the older Super Navigate GPS.

• Pros: Highly customisable and clear display, reliable, long battery life
• Cons: Rather unintuitive controls, stiff buttons, clunky website, poor navigation

First things first: out of the box, the Super Pro didn't work. Attempting to record a ride led rapidly (in just 0.08 miles, I can accurately report) to a frozen screen and a completely unresponsive unit. Repeated hard resets saw it fare no better. Happily, a free quick and easy firmware update via the Lezyne site fixed the problem entirely, although it was only made available a few days after I received this unit. It's good that the solution was so rapidly available, but it's not impressive that a £130 device can ship in a non-functional state in the first place.

> Find your nearest dealer here

The firmware update doesn't disrupt existing settings, so I recommend navigating to the Support section of Lezyne's site as a matter of course. Here you'll get a taste of the company's awkward labelling, as the updates are listed by corporate jargon (Year 10, Year 9 devices and so on) and even the afterthought model year info doesn't include 2019. At least there are pictures so you can remind yourself if you have a Mega, Super, Micro, Macro or Mini...

Figuring this out might be a one-off, but the Super Pro's four physical buttons are more regularly awkward. They're stiffer than before (though a good size for gloved use), and while the waterproof rubber covers still have function icons embossed in them, they're still out of sight when riding. Worse, the written prompts on the case have moved to the side as well.

Choosing between buttons (and long and short presses) is a memory test in itself, even without the on-screen options looking like prompts to use the wrong button, which they sometimes do.

Hang on, this is all really negative! Truth is the Super Pro is excellent at measuring, displaying and recording the basic parameters of your rides, with a clear screen, a very secure X-Lock mount, barely-there weight and a battery that a) never seems to self-discharge and b) lasts for weeks at a time.

The black and white screen is easy to read even in the brightest sun, and there's a backlight for night use. Lezyne says contrast and resolution is improved... I honestly couldn't see a difference (bar the lack of a greenish tinge to the background), but the new one's backlight is a bit brighter.

Oooh, I'm veering towards the negative again. Having used the near-identical Super GPS on every ride for perhaps a year, I'm niggled that few – if any – of its existing niggles have gone. Bar the new landscape display option, a smoother case and better waterproofing for the micro USB port (which was clumsy but never a problem unless you dropped it in a deep puddle), little has really changed.

Routing

Creating maps for the turn-by-turn navigation remains clunky on the dedicated GPS Root site, for instance, and while you can import gpx and tcx files, they won't necessarily include the turn prompts. Whichever way you plan your route, uploading it from the app to the unit (your phone needs to be connected via Bluetooth) is disappointingly slow. It's also a given that the Super GPS's battery will outlast your phone by orders of magnitude.

On the bike the turning prompts are very good, with clear pop-up icons, useful audible warnings and distance countdown to each junction. Unfortunately – at least during testing in the hills of mid-Wales – they're as likely to be wrong as right. I encountered phantom junctions, wildly inaccurate countdowns and occasionally silence when the correct turning did arrive. If it was an issue with satellite reception the unit certainly never warned me, and as it sees both GPS and Glonass networks, it really shouldn't struggle. Even in Wales. I mean, we've had electricity ten years now.

While connected to your phone, the Super Pro also clearly displays new messages (do you want that?) and Strava Live Segments, and supports Lezyne's own live tracking function (Lezyne Track). The unit also gains FE-C Trainer and Smart Connect compatibility, and is friendly with TrainingPeaks and Today's Plan.

The ANT+ connection, meanwhile, remains for power meters, cadence sensors, drivetrain displays, heart rate monitors and indeed the whole array of beeping quasi-medical diagnostics we know and, if not love, then intensively care about.

These metrics are the Super Pro's strengths. Configure the five pages with up to eight parameters each (four or five is the optimum for clarity), turn it on at the start of the ride and off at the end, and the Super Pro is fantastic. It shows you anything from time and temperature to speed and altitude or power and cadence, at a glance, regardless of weather or light. It also shows all kinds of average, maximum or current values for extra insight (or confusion).

The results (up to 400 hours of them) can be saved and/or uploaded to the clunky GPS Root site, should you have run out of things to do on Strava.

> Buyer's Guide: 14 of the best cycling GPS units

The fly in everyone's GPS ointment is, of course, Garmin. In this bracket it has the simple but effective Edge 25 (£140), and while it doesn't quite match the Lezyne's feature set, it's not hard to find the more advanced Edge 130 (£170) discounted to a similar price.

Alternatively, Giant's NeosTrack GPS is a pretty good match for the Lezyne, right down to the clunky route creation and iffy route-finding, and while it's a little more expensive (£150) it's been out longer and is also easy to find discounted.

Verdict

Excellent at the core functions, but navigation is poor – and it's only fractionally better than older models