Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 review: a gloriously simple bike computer, but I wish it had a few more features

The Elemnt Bolt 3 is Wahoo’s cheapest, smallest and simplest bike computer.

Compared to its predecessor, the Elemnt Bolt 2, the Elemnt Bolt 3 boasts an upgraded colour screen, improved battery life, upgraded GPS capabilities, and greater internal storage and processing capacity.

The pared-back featureset might leave data-hungry riders wishing for more, though, particularly those coming from Garmin Edge bike computers.

Likewise, riders looking for a one-stop shop for mapping and reviewing post-ride data may find the reliance on third-party apps and platforms frustrating – especially given the price.

All things considered, the Elemnt Bolt 3 is an ideal companion for riders who value ease of use above all else. It's priced at £299.99 / $329.99 / €329.99.

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 specification

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Pitched as the racer’s choice, the Element Bolt 3 has a compact form factor designed to integrate with the brand’s aerodynamic out-front mount.

It measures 83x47x24mm, compared to 96x53x24mm for the larger Elemnt Roam 3.

Its closest competitor, the Garmin Edge 540 (£309.99 / $349.99 / €369.99) is almost identical in length, but is wider and thinner than the Elemnt Bolt 3, at 85.1x57.8x19.6mm.

The Edge 540 also has a slightly larger 2.6in / 66mm (diagonal) screen, compared to the 2.3in / 58.4mm screen on the Elemnt Bolt 3.

Although the Elemmt Bolt 3’s screen is only marginally larger than the 2.2in / 55.8mm screen found on the Elemnt Bolt 2, the resolution has made a big jump from 240x320 pixels to 480x720px.

The Elemnt Bolt 3 can also now display 64 million colours, compared to only 64 on its predecessor.

In terms of weight, there’s little in it. The Elemnt Bolt 3 weighs 85g (according to my scales), which is 16g more than its predecessor and 5g more than the Garmin Edge 540, but those aren’t differences anyone will detect while riding.

At launch, Wahoo claimed battery life was “up to 20 hours”, although it now lists it as 25 hours on its website.

As before, the Elemnt Bolt 3 doesn’t feature a touchscreen. Instead, it uses a combination of six physical buttons – three on the front, one on the left side and two on the right, with context-dependent functionality.

The move from single to dual-band GPS, for improved tracking accuracy, is a notable upgrade.

The Elemnt Bolt 3 also gets twice as much internal memory and 2GB of RAM for faster processing speeds.

The recently launched Garmin Edge 550 costs appreciably more at £379.99 / $499.99 / €449.99.

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 setup

As with all Wahoo bike computers, setup is handled off-device via a smartphone.

The process is simple – you turn on the device and scan a QR code in the Wahoo Elemnt app to connect it to your smartphone via Bluetooth. 

From there, you connect it to your local Wi-Fi network, download any firmware updates or additional maps – and that's it, you’re essentially ready to ride.

Excluding setup, the initial startup time was around two minutes, which feels like an age. 

This improves substantially if used regularly, but I found that if I left the Elemnt Bolt 3 unused for a couple of weeks, it took a similarly long time to load everything up again before being ready for use.

From there, you can adjust or add and subtract the various data pages (called ‘Workout pages’ in the app) you want to see while riding, and what data is displayed on each.

You can also configure certain pages to only display when a relevant peripheral is connected, such as a cycling camera or music device, if you’re doing a planned workout or have Strava Live Segments enabled.

Within each page, you can add all the usual data fields and reorder them to change where they sit on the page.

Unlike with Garmin Edge bike computers, though, there are no specific ‘layout’ options beyond this. 

All you can do is change the order in which the data fields appear on a page, and use the side buttons to zoom in (displaying fewer, larger fields at once) or out (to display more, smaller fields) while riding. If you want to change a data field, for example, you’ll need to pull out your phone to do so.

Standard ANT+ or Bluetooth sensors, such as power meters, heart rate monitors and electronic drivetrains, can be paired via the device itself, though.

As before, Wahoo supplies its own aero-profiled out-front bike computer mount with the Elemnt Bolt 3. It’s a nice-to-have, although in an era when round handlebars are becoming increasingly rare on mid- to high-end road bikes, not everyone will be able to make use of it.

A band-on universal mount is also included, although it uses cable ties rather than rubber bands to mount, making it less useful if you want to be able to transfer it between bikes.

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 performance

In use, the Elemnt Bolt 3 continues with its theme of simplicity.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of specs, but does offer tangible upgrades in most areas compared to its predecessor.

The high resolution of the screen is a particular highlight, helping text and maps appear sharp and legible, despite its relatively small size (and my poor eyesight).

The Elemnt Bolt 3 is quick to locate satellites once powered on, and the tracking accuracy is excellent, even when riding under trees or around tall buildings.

You can also set up different ride profiles to display specific data fields for certain kinds of riding, whether that’s training, racing, road, gravel or indoor cycling.

Once riding, though, it largely fades into the background because there’s relatively little you can do to interact with it, other than swapping pages and triggering laps.

Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable – do you want a bike computer that you actively engage with during your ride, or to record data and not distract you from it?

There’s no right or wrong answer, but the Elemnt Bolt 3 leans towards the latter, whereas Garmin Edge devices sit more towards the opposite end of the spectrum.

As someone who’s into power meters, aero sensors and so on, I instinctively lean towards Garmins for this reason, but it’s fair to say there’s not a right or wrong approach here.

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 battery life

Wahoo claims the Elemnt Bolt 3 has a battery life of 25 hours, but that looks to be a best-case scenario, rather than something you should expect from everyday use.

With the display mode in dark, screen brightness on ‘auto’, navigation on and a few sensors connected, I found it typically consumed around five per cent of battery per hour.

In the real world, the battery life should last up to 20 hours with similar settings.

That’s similar to what I get from my Garmin Edge 830, and for someone like me – whose rides tend to max out at around three to four hours for the most part and rarely go beyond six – that’s plenty to see me through a few days' worth of riding.

If you’re an ultra-distance rider who wants to go on epic adventures away from charging points, though, you may want to pack a power bank for battery top-ups.

Alternatively, you could look for something with solar charging capabilities, such as the Garmin Edge 540 Solar or Coros Dura.

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 navigation

Navigating with the Elemnt Bolt 3 is decent, but not without its flaws.

For a start, Wahoo doesn’t offer a route builder. This leaves you reliant on third-party options for anything beyond routing back to the start of your ride, or searching for an address on the Wahoo Elemnt app and generating a route to that specific location.

You can create routes to share with Wahoo devices for free via RideWithGPS, but there’s no guarantee that platform won’t follow the likes of Strava and Komoot and put these features behind its paywall at some point.

If you’re an active and happy user of one of those (or any of the others that Wahoo supports), then this won’t be an issue. Linking the Wahoo to my Komoot account proved easy, and my routes synced without trouble.

If you’re not, though, you might baulk at potentially needing to sign up for a subscription to unlock the full functionality of the Elemnt Bolt 3.

In contrast, Garmin’s Connect web app provides a free route builder. It’s not the best available, but it is free to use and works well enough in my experience.

Garmin could, of course, also decide to put route building behind its recently launched Connect Plus paywall, but it is at least something Garmin is in control of.

In any case, once you’re following a route on the Elemnt Bolt 3, Wahoo’s updated map is much more detailed than before, and the increased display resolution is welcome.

Wahoo’s signature chevrons make the route direction clear, and the colour-coding for gradients is useful for letting you know what’s coming up ahead.

However, the small screen size is a limitation compared to larger bike computers, especially if you want to view the map and ride data simultaneously.

That's a trade-off for most small bike computers, but as the contextual labels for each of the three face buttons take up a small amount of room on the Elemnt Bolt 3’s screen, there’s little room left for the map once you’ve got a couple of data fields and a turn notification showing.

I also found navigating while not using the dedicated map page tricky.

Text-based navigation alerts pop up on other pages while riding, with an arrow indicating the turn direction and distance-to-turn counter. The dark blue on slightly lighter blue progress bar is tough to read at a glance, though, especially while wearing sunglasses.

The distance-to-turn counter isn’t always a problem solver for this either, because it can be tricky to work out exactly which road you need to take if there are multiple options within a short distance.

The road name is given, but that’s likewise really only useful if you know the road you’re turning onto, or can see it in advance.

On a Garmin Edge 830 (my daily driver and a favourite of many here at BikeRadar), navigation alerts prompt the entire map page to appear on screen, showing the map, route and turn info. You can dismiss it as needed, or even turn this feature off if you don’t like it, but it makes wrong turns far less likely in my experience.

On the Elemnt Bolt 3, I found myself switching manually to the map page every time a navigation alert appeared, just to be sure I didn’t take a wrong turn.

I occasionally saw some phantom turn notifications on the Elemnt Bolt 3 too, even if the route on the map screen clearly showed I should carry straight on.

The route files (which were generally imported from Komoot during testing) could be to blame for those, but if so that simply shows another downside of Wahoo relying on third parties instead of building its own platform that’s better optimised for its devices.

One-way scrolling

And that brings me to another small frustration with the Elemnt Bolt 3 – that you can only scroll through the pages in one direction (to the right).

I generally have around five to six pages set up for road and gravel riding, with the two I use most often (live ride data and map) positioned in the first two slots.

Getting back to my live data screen from the map page takes multiple button presses, rather than a swipe or button click in the opposite direction as on my Edge 830.

It’s a small but frustrating detail, because if you rush and accidentally click the PAGE button too many times, you’ll scroll past the page you wanted and end up back where you started.

Sadly, there’s no option to customise the button functions on the Elemnt Bolt 3 (I could mostly do without the lap button on a day-to-day basis, for example), or assign an electronic shifter button to do it instead.

A few missing features

While the Wahoo Elemnt 3 covers all of the basics, there are a few missing features compared to Garmin's Edge bike computers.

Aside from the lack of a proper route builder, Wahoo also doesn’t offer the same in-depth post-ride analysis offered by Garmin Connect. You can view basic stats via the Wahoo app, but it’s a far shallower experience than with Garmin Connect.

There’s no equivalent to Garmin’s Connect IQ store for third-party apps and features, either. This means the Elemnt Bolt 3 isn’t compatible with devices such as the Aerosensor Aerodynamic Cycling System or BodyRocket, which rely on Connect IQ apps to function.

The Elment Bolt 3 also can’t record the platform centre offset data produced by newer power meter pedals, such as the Garmin Rally or Favero Assioma Pro MX.

Of course, it’s fair to say these specific devices and data points will concern a vanishingly small subset of riders. However, they’re worth mentioning because it’s indicative of how Wahoo bike computers are a relatively closed ecosystem.

Because third-party manufacturers can’t build their own apps for Wahoo devices, you’re reliant on Wahoo choosing to build in support for new data types and peripherals.

For popular devices, such as the CORE body temperature sensor – which is used by many WorldTour riders and teams – that isn’t an issue. But if you have more niche interests, there’s no guarantee support from Wahoo will be forthcoming.

Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 bottom line

The Wahoo Elemnt Bolt 3 is a step up on the previous-generation version, with an improved screen, decent battery life and excellent GPS accuracy.

If your main interest is in recording data with a device that fades into the background of your ride, the Elemnt Bolt 3 could be your ideal companion – although it comes with a relatively high price tag for its featureset.

However, if you’re the kind of rider who interacts frequently with your bike computer, whether to switch back and forth between data pages, to navigate and follow routes or use third-party devices, I’d opt for Garmin’s Edge 540 for similar money.

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