Thanks Andrew.

RidewithGPS has a particularly good route planner, with app and browswer versions.  At least in my part of France it does a great job finding cycle-friendly routes.  When you have created a route, it is there on your RWGPS account.  You can easily download it and the relevant maps onto your phone ready to use offline.

I usually use another map app as well, for the map viewing experience.

The Elemnt has always supported turn by turn navigation, but only the recent Roam product supports re-routing on the fly. The Garmin unit still seem way better than my Roam  as far as re-routing, but I rarely use that feature - detours on the rides and tours I do usually are pretty easy to figure out.

I moved away from phone apps for several reasons. The biggest was I want my phone to be available to use as a phone in an emergency and on long rides the apps and having GPS running drained the battery. Carrying the extra weight of a charging pack wasn't for me. I also wanted the display available and visible when riding in the rain. Finally, the phone mounts just took up too much room on my bars.

I was looking specifically for maps visible on screen.  I don’t like cue sheets when I’m cycling. 

The original Elemnt I bought in 2017 had maps on screen and cue sheet views. My wife now uses that one but Wahoo now sells the Roam which has a bigger color screen and re-routing added, and the Bolt which is smaller/lighter/more aero and has a black and white screen - the Bolt is more aimed at racers or exercise type riders.

True.  But I bought my Garmin in the summer of 2013 and Wahoo released the Elemnt, their first GPS bike computer, in 2016.

Paper maps for the grand view and my phone for the details. When on Forest Service back roads I can add a sighting compass. I’ve come to junctions where the FS maps give one id for a road, Google maps a second and the actual wooden signpost a third. That’s when the compass comes out. I should add my bike computer, which can let me know when I’m close to a turn, etc.

Dedicated GPS units seem to serve best those who want to be guided to follow the routes the GPS unit knows about.  Usually with cues.  Usually small and thoroughly weatherproof.

Phones or tablets are more attractive for people who want to see a route on a map and use that as a general guide.  They use the on-screen map, which can be just as detailed as the best large scale paper maps, to help them interpret the landscape around them, and decide exactly what route to follow and which deviations may be advantageous.  The on-screen map may include national topo maps, OSM-based maps of which there are many but I like openCycleMap, aerial photos, cadastral maps, all of which are useful to glean where there may be interesting sights or navigable roads/paths.  My favourite app can blend two maps together, for example to see maps with an aerial photo overlay.  Such joy for a map-lover!

Battery charge consumption, I find, is mainly driven by size of screen and how much you look at it.  Modern GPS receivers are not particularly heavy battery users.  Being a map lover, I love looking at my on-screen map, so I pay the price of needing to feed it electricity.

I'm a map lover - a friend and I would take turns buying USGS quadrangle maps of areas near Washington DC where we live and we'd look for interesting ridges or valleys and bushwhack our way through the woods and trying to figure out where we were on the maps (pre-GPS days) we carried with us. When we were about 1/2 way out of time, we'd turn around and head back - many times losing our way and taking much longer to find the car!

For biking, I generally sit in front a big screen device (and paper maps), with all those different views you mention, and plan out my route which then goes onto the GPS for navigation during the ride. For the occasional "bikewhacking" kind of ride, I'm mostly using the GPS device to record my route to help me find my way back to where I started, or if I may want to recommend that route to someone else or duplicate it.  Very rarely am I looking at maps while I'm biking, though - even when I was using an app on the phone with a bar mount.

Hi John

Navigation is not the challenge it once was.  O for the simple life of the past, when you had to learn to interpret your surroundings and relate them to your map . Or be lost.    And if you were lost you had to find your own way home, because you could not phone for help.

Having real maps with me, albeit in electronic form, allows me to continue to relate what I see while I ride to what is shown on the map.  I guess there are worse things to be addicted to...