XPLOVA X5 – Review of a high-end cycling Computer from Acer

There are a series of recent XPLOVA bike computers that neither you nor I probably knew much about – XPLOVA G5, G3 and E5 . Then, last year (April, 2016), some rather exciting images of the XPLOVA X5 appeared. These followed the acquisition of XPLOVA by ACER the previous year (Sep 2015). I finally got my hands on an X5 and below is what I think.

WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS

It’s a well-featured, well-constructed ANT+ cycling computer that navigates over OSM maps and supports power meters.

Nothing new there really.

BUT it has got a built-in video camera AND it can take your 3G micro SIM card and there is zero Bluetooth. In fact it runs on an Android (smartphone) operating system.

That IS unusual.

WHO IS IT AIMED AT?

I’ve included some  ads below so you can see whatever the current price is against those at a similar price level. It’s a convenient mechanism to show you up-to-date info. In March 2017 it’s not yet available in the USA but is shown in the UK as £429 – or £449 with an additional speed/cadence sensor. Apologies for putting an ad here but it helps you understand where the X5 is positioning itself in terms of price in the market. ie up against the likes of the Edge 1000/1030/820.

It’s price-positioning itself as ONE OF THE MOST expensive cycling devices on the market.

So let’s start off by saying that it has NOT got some of the fancier trainer-controls and it has NOT got Di2 nor muscle oxygen capabilities. So when I have my race helmet on and I’m there pedalling away next to you; neither of us are likely to have one of these on our tri bars. BUT if you or I were out for a Sunday training ride with friends or looking for a bit of holiday- or adventure-navigation then I reckon THAT is where the X5 will rear its pretty little head, I’ll be happy as it will record my power data.

If the idea of inbuilt video and inbuilt 3G connectivity appeals to you then maybe that is where the premium price might justify itself?

HOW WOULD YOU SELL THIS?

Perhaps the first thing you would do is pay the entertaining boys at GCN to do a sales job? Simon in this case, like this:

Nope.

Look at the comments on YouTube. They are 95% negative (and the YouTube ‘review‘ is still linked to on the XPLOVA site). It’s obvious to the readers that this YouTube clip is a paid-for advert using some high-profile, high-reach YouTubers. At least one of the material claims from Simon about the X5 is wrong (Bluetooth inclusion). People who spend >£400 on a sports device are generally pretty intelligent. Furthermore all the commenters then go off on several tangents either bemoaning the bouncy mount being used by Simon, which I don’t think is the XPLOVA one; or bemoaning the 720p, 9-second video clips. “WHAT!” you shout, that’s an awful spec 720p!!! etc. etc. and off WE go as well on a similar tangent without understanding the detail. In the context of what the X5 is trying to achieve it’s not so bad.

Enough speculation let’s get cracking with a closer look.

UNBOXING & CONTENTS

It’s a premium box!

You get: the X5; a micro USB cable; a seemingly Polar/Garmin-compatible mount with 2 thicknesses of rubber spacer; an optional ANT+ speed/cadence sensor (not shown/reviewed); and lots of bits of paper that you will never read.

FORM, SHAPE and CONTROLS

Let’s see how the size of the unit stacks up in terms of size and appearance.

It’s a generously sized device. Although bigger than the MIO Cyclo 505HC, the screen size looks a tad smaller.

I haven’t got an Edge 1000 but, if I had, the screen resolution of that would be identical at 240x400px (source: Garmin).  Indeed the MIO505HC is also 240x400px. Let’s not get into a pixel density argument; none of them are as big as your averaged-sized mobile phone! also shown 😉

Below is the underside compared to an Edge 820. The mounting points are VERY similar. Indeed the X5 fits into a Garmin mount and into a Polar mount. Although the manual advises against using other manufacturer mounts. It would though, wouldn’t it?

The rubbery USB-port cover rotates around quite nicely to provide access, I like that, nice detail.

I also like the addition of a tethering point. This was one of the things missing on the WAHOO ELEMNT, I believe the omission is corrected with the ELEMNT BOLT and, as shown below, I use the tethering point is the Edge 820.

A tethering point is handy for 3 reasons:

1. You can attach a cord of some sort and jauntily swing it around;
2. You can attach a plastic cable tie to avoid your cycling computer being stolen in transition or just when generally left on your bike. You will have to cut the tie to get it off, of course; and
3. In the event of an impact and a failure of the mount, you won’t send your expensive cycling computer off down the road by itself at 20mph. Instead it will probably bang into your revolving metal wheel. Sigh!

And on the right hand side of the X5, below, we can see where your 3G or 4G micro SIM card will fit. A 4G card will only work in 3G and don’t put your nano card in. Now you know. The wedge-shaped control in the middle is a page up/page down control for the screen.

There’s nothing exciting on the other/left side except the on/off and menu button. But of course you’ve been waiting to see the video camera lens and here it is, Ta da:

On top there’s the touchscreen, the stop/start/lap button and the record button. I found with clean dry fingers that the touchscreen works quite well and just about works with some gloves on for tapping and swiping. It’s certainly better than the Edge 820’s touchscreen but perhaps not quite as ‘good’ as the MIO’s. I don’t like touchscreens. But at least this one mostly works.

There is nothing particularly unusual about the thickness. It’s pretty much ‘normal’ (the specs are at the end).

SCREEN LAYOUTS – USER INTERFACE

You may have seen the fancy photo-shopped main screen which looks like this in the marketing literature:

In reality it looks a bit more like this (still nice) and cranking up the brightness a bit more than normal does help too as does getting a bit of colour from starting to cycle:

I like this screen layout. I can imagine myself as an IndyCar/F1 driver doing 15mph in my local cul-de-sac. But, in seriousness, it is a well thought-out layout and could convey your key bits of info in a very nice graphical way.

BUT. I could be wrong here. BUT. I just couldn’t find any way of configuring this particular screen. You get it EXACTLY AND ONLY as shown. Please someone tell me I’m wrong – I have looked. Why I would want SPEED as the main metric?!? I really have no idea.

Then there are the chart/graph layout screens. These ARE fully configurable as you would expect; so, against time or distance, you can plot LOTS of metrics such as power, altitude, HR and calories. I like these and I suppose they are relatively unusual charts, although becoming increasingly common in some form or other now even on sports wrist watches (think Suunto/Garmin).

The other screen types are more standard:

1. Map – you can overlay 2 configurable data metrics on it. It has pinch-zoom, compass heading, etc..
2. Tiled Data Pages – properly configurable with 2/3/5/7/8/9/11 metrics per page and a max of 4 pages

NAVIGATING AROUND THE SCREENS

I got lost with the device- & app-navigation at times. The device is fine when you are actually riding and flicking through screens but it is the logic behind the menus that I found sometimes-confusing. But, as with every device, once you’ve used it a few times it will seem to become fairly intuitive and I have no longer term concerns in this aspect.

You can swipe (L/R) between screen types and then page up/down between different versions of that particular screen type. Some buttons double up as providing the same function as a swipe but, for example, once you get to the navigation screen a swipe in any direction will move the map around rather than change screen types – as you should expect.

The hamburger/menu button gives context (ish) sensitive menus ie it will bring up navigational settings when on the navigation screen and training settings when on the training screens.

The buttons/controls feel good for switching the screens. Even with gloves on I’ve found them to be fine. There’s also a configurable audio feedback so you can hear when you are pressing a button or the when pressing the screen too. As said earlier, the touchscreen is usable – one of the better ones I’ve used. Which is no great compliment.

The screen’s page movements are good. The device seems to have a decent amount of processing power behind the scenes and the pages all flow nicely and smoothly from one to the next. There are never any errant Garmin CIQ app adding in some random slowness….it’s not a Garmin after all !!

SETTING UP

Other than creating an account, adding personal data, pairing various accessories and personalizing the screen, the device comes pretty much ready-to-go. You know how to do most of that or, if not, here is the XPLOVA X5 user manual (link).

Pairing to ANT+ -only sensors (not Bluetooth) was OK. It sometimes took several attempts to pair sensors but all types of supported sensor eventually worked (speed, power, cadence, combo, HR). Only one heart rate strap can be paired at a time but many bike profiles can be created each with their own ANT+ sensors assigned (not HRM). There seemed to be space on the screen as if some kind of sensor-pool was envisaged. There is no sensor pool.

GPS must be manually disabled for an indoor bike profile.

The extended out-front mount seems to be Garmin-compatible and the X5 seems to fit Polar and Garmin mounts. XPLOVA make a point of saying to use their own mount – I used a Garmin mount and a tether, just in case.

That’s all the basics. I’ll now look at some of the interesting bits

VIDEO

The MP4 video clips that are produced and stored on the device can be pre-configured by you to ONLY take for 3, 6 or 9 seconds. Obviously the image is ahead of the bike or wherever you might choose to point it whilst walking around.

The video concept is designed to capture ‘moments’ of your ride.

And that means ‘moments’ in the sense of nice things you’ve just seen rather than catching the act of an inconsiderate van driver cutting you up. If you take your hand off the handlebars to press the button to start the video to catch, on film, the van driver cutting you up…then you are MUCH more likely to crash into the van than if, instead, you’d used your brakes.

Similarly there is no rolling video capture which is permanently on and which would then save video in the event of some sort of impact. It’s not for that purpose.

For you techies: 120 degree wide-angle camera + HD 720p@30fps, MP4

One neat feature of the video, aptly called “SMART VIDEO”, is that the X5 can be set to auto-record at a trigger point eg at HR>170bpm then record what 3, 6 or 9 seconds of pain looks like. Those AUTO-RECORD triggers can also be on ascent, descent, speed, cadence, power, start, end or on a lap event. Several trigger condition can be met multiple times in a ride to automatically record multiple video clips.

The short-durations clips sound ‘a bit rubbish‘ (I generally agree). But when later woven into a replay of your run/ride it will add a nice, little extra aide memoire and you may well smile at not having to have stopped during the ride to get a camera out. There is a similar thing on Polar Flow at https://flow.polar.com/training/relive/<your exercise number> where you can replay some of the exercise’s highlights and that is overlaid with still photos of locations en route from Google images (or similar) – that Polar example is NOT with images you’ve taken, so it’s perhaps not as good!

I occasionally partake in a few long trail rides and no doubt you would be thrilled to be invited round to the 9 hour post-ride video replay (actually there’s one on my YouTube channel speeded up however many times…it’s still a turgid view, don’t do it). Xplova’s take on a post-ride review would be that a MUCH shorter overall video-replay time is better when interspersed with your video clips at key points in the ride. That’s kinda nice for my annual ride or perhaps very handy for your week-long riding trip in the Alps – but for day-to-day usage, especially commuting, it’s a near-useless feature.

But don’t knock it just because you/I don’t like it…someone will. We’re all different.

I had difficulty in getting the MP4 videos to auto-upload to the Xplova online system. So I manually uploaded them to my poor effort at a YouTube Channel. Here’s a playlist, the best 3-second highlight is later on as I appear to catch a car whilst going up Sawyer’s Hill (Pru Ride London route). The video might have been a bit more fun to watch if it were a group ride with friends in the Alps! The video has NOT been smoothed by YouTube to take out the bumpiness of cycling – it’s shown as-is AFAIK.

In theory you could set a low threshold trigger similar to cadence=20rpm and then you would get a very long series of 9 second videos recorded. The X5 device (not manual) suggests 652 x 3 second videos can be created. I strongly suspect that isn’t a good idea to follow through with.

ALTIMETRY

There’s an onboard barometric altimeter. I’ve been unable to anywhere near-properly test its accuracy, sorry. I don’t live close to any real hills, let alone mountains.

However, here is one test result that compares the X5 to the Edge 820 AND to a properly corrected route profile. No pre-ride calibration was performed for either device. As you can see the ascent/descent profiles all look similar and the summary ascent/descents are

• (Correct) adjusted X5: ascent 117.6, descent 112.7
• X5, unadjusted: ascent 113.4, descent 133.4
• Edge 820: ascent 118.8, descent 126.3

The elevation correction has been completed using GPS+altitude corrections ie I have access to a data base where the exact altitude of a GPS point is known. Of course that assumes that the GPS point is accurate in the first place and there are also some issues with this method where gradients are very steep.

The blue line is the ‘most likely to be correct’ line.

So the X5 looks to be ‘probably at least alright’ and at least had me NOT starting out underground, like the Garmin.

Heads Up

A great calibration feature of the X5 is that you can assign known elevations to selected (up to 5) known points. Typically you might choose your home location’s elevation and, if on holiday, you would add the altitude of your base as another. That means you can start out on a ride with the correct elevation.

That’s a pretty cool feature and is available on a smallish number of other devices, for example the Garmin Fenix 3 in a similar form.

MAP

Good integration with free global OSM maps is provided. We love OSM maps.

Downloading the OSM maps is super-simple via the X5’s menus.

You can select maps for one or more areas to be downloaded. An area can be an entire country or part of it. For example I could select all 3 of these; Wales, Greater London and France. The X5 has 2.5Gb of space. After loading England and Wales I had well over 1Gb of space left.

My general experience with OSM maps in the past is that they are better if you want to follow trails/paths as well as roads.

The loading time of a large 270km map was about 20 seconds. That’s broadly comparable to the MIO 505 but vastly superior to the Edge 820 which can take MINUTES to load large maps.

GPS ACCURACY

You can ‘just’ use GPS for accuracy. But higher accuracy is supposedly possible when used in conjunction with Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The latter requiring the SIM card.

Guide: My superficial ‘tests’ against the Edge 820 suggest that the X5 is better than the 820 in plain GPS mode.

[Test Results to follow in April, I have to analyse the routes, takes time]

NAVIGATION – ROUTE CREATION

The X5 has proper turn-by-turn navigation and re-routing in the event of a wrong turn. It’s a BIKENAV, if you like.

It works well, in my experience

You can create a route online and sync to your X5. My preferred method is to create a route from an existing TCX/FIT/GPX file and first run that file through Fit File Repair Tool (FFRT). Then save it in whatever format the destination device requires, usually GPX. FFRT always fixes a fixable file and indeed can import your tcx/fit/gpx, PROPERLY FIX IT and save it as a fixed GPX.

Garmin’s route creation process sometimes requires mastery of the dark arts; with the X5 it was straightforward.

In XPLOVA’s language, you create and follow a route and your route can consist of segments. Laps are made within segments (manually or autolap). These are not STRAVA segments. The only STRAVA linkage is to send your completed workout files to STRAVA. You could create your own segment to match a STRAVA segment but that kinda defeats the whole point of STRAVA unless, maybe, only a small number of REAL STRAVA segments are of interest to you?

The whole process of manually drawing a route online is pretty good, albeit through a dated-looking online interface. The interface ‘draws’ well and smoothly (unlike some competitor equivalents). Syncing to the X5 is automatic and seamless. Better than most. Not as good as some. Good enough for me.

You can create parts of a route that go as the crow flies or that follows paths/tracks/roads. I know some people want that.

Manually drawn routes do tend to follow roads BUT some very minor tracks I found can be followed when sufficiently zoomed-in.

You can incorporate “Smart Signs” essentially these are custom POIs which also can reflect specific issues to you like ‘refuelling stop’ or ‘surface changes to trail’ or ‘steep hill’ or ‘Disneyworld’…ie real POIs too. That’s a nice idea.

But…

In terms of actually following a route and being directed, I have nothing particularly unusual to report. Except maybe these two minor points:

1. When the map is fully zoomed out to a large region it draws slowly. But otherwise is fine.
2. Tapping the heading/compass icon toggles between a variable ‘pointing forwards’ view of the map and an ‘always North’ view of the map. So when you stop at a crossing the ‘pointing forwards’ view should know your orientation based on an internal compass-heading. It doesn’t seem to do that, so I assume it hasn’t got an inbuilt compass and instead uses some other sort of sensor/algorithm that isn’t quite as good.

EVENTS – ROUTES – ROUTE SHARING

You could also create an ‘event’. That’s a route with time, ‘other locational’ and people information built into it. Perhaps that’s a Sunday group ride based on a route you’ve just created? You can then invite your mates to join the ride electronically. The event has details like meeting point and time. Which is nice enough. If, however, you are all already at the start of the route/event then the X5 will create and display a QR code for the ride which your mates can scan and follow with their installed version of MOMENT. So that’s a potentially neat mechanism for route sharing either in advance or instantaneously.

This is similar to Garmin’s Group Track and, just like Garmin’s Group Track, you can see everyone in your ride on the navigation/map screen. [Not tested].

Like Garmin, the X5 also has a Live Track feature. Here someone sitting in front of a screen at home can check your progress.

The great thing with what the XPLOVA does here is that NO PHONE IS REQUIRED – JUST THE X5 and a working SIM 3G CARD. With a Garmin you need a smartphone as well.

All the location transmission/receiving is done through the onboard SIM card. That IS really cool. That should work fantastically well for the Live/Group tracking functionality [not tested].

Unfortunately

• For Group Track to work everyone either needs an X5 (unlikely) or, more likely, they need to run the MOMENT app on their smartphone – fine if you have compliant friends with a fully charged battery and 3G access.
• If the person is running the MOMENT app then the app can use their phone’s camera and to scan a QR code that you produce for the ride and which can be shown to your friends on your X5.
• The QR code equates to a unique event number  “987843”, or similar. That event number can probably be input or sent in other ways. It took me quite a while to figure all that out!
• There seems to be restrictions within the app on sending the code to people who are not friends, yet you can create public events. I was getting confused in the detail of what is probably a seldom-used feature. So I stopped.

DATA INTEGRATION & SHARING

Your smartphone may have the MOMENT app. That app links to the XPLOVA.com cloud system. NOT TO YOUR X5.

Your smartphone is absolutely NOT required.

Your X5 also links and syncs to XPLOVA.com.

XPLOVA.com is linked to your STRAVA account. But this merely pushed your FIT files out to STRAVA. That means, with a bit of research, you can probably get your data automatically sent anywhere else. There was no inbound stuff like STRAVA segments and no STRAVA integration on the X5 with Suffer Scores and the like.

There are also links to Facebook. I tried to a post video but the videos were not sync’d to the online XPLOVA.com cloud and so there was no way they could be sent from there to Facebook. At that point my interest in the facebook functionality waned.

Interestingly the X5 is actually an Android smartphone on steroids that runs a flavour of Xplova’s MOMENT app. The X5 DEFINATELY runs Android – as I got to a screen for the moment app that runs on the X5 and tried to disable/Force restart (as you do). I tried to find the screen again to show you guys but to no avail…trust me! It’s Android.

When you open Windows Explorer, the X5 appears like a smartphone.

But android is a PITA for syncing data to my other PC software. With Garmin I connect my Garmin device as a mass storage device with a USB cable and access it as if it were a Windows Drive (not folder). With Android (AFAIK) you can’t quite do that. So every time I had to find and drag the FIT files from the X5 to my desktop. It was not possible to map to, or create, a shortcut to an Android folder. Grrrrr. One of you clever people will no a solution here I am sure.

LANGUAGE

Whoever translated from the original language to English did a GOOD job.

However it is not good enough.

If someone is spending over £400/$500 on the X5, I would imagine they would expect it to be perfectly readable. I would.

At times Asian language characters are used in various places online and on the smartphone app. I find that acceptable when I am browsing the internet. But not when somebody wants, or has just got, my money.

The same applies to the manual; the English is good but needs improving. Furthermore, the manual essentially describes, in order, all of the menu items. A manual should NOT be “What a menu option does” but rather it should be “How to do X” – there is a difference. This is a common fault, to be fair to XPLOVA, but it is a fault that tends to indicate when a product has been designed by technical people, rather than by marketing people thinking of the user experience.

BATTERY LIFE

The battery life is a useful 12 hours.

The XPLOVA can be charged whilst using.

XPLOVA.COM and the MOMENT APP

The MOMENT app that you might install on your smartphone is OK. A few glitches; but it does what it should, replicating functionality and workflow from elsewhere.

The XPLOVA.COM website is feature rich but dated-looking. Presumably this was one of the reasons why ACER bought XPLOVA a couple of years ago? They bought the online platform? It’s doesn’t look great and is a bit confusing to work with at times. But with some familiarization you could probably get a lot of what you want out of it  for post-ride analyses.

My recommendations: Use the MOMENT app when you have to and use the link to STRAVA to send your data anywhere else other than XPLOVA.com. But you will probably still need to play with XPLOVA.com for navigational/route-related stuff. It’s not too bad at the route creation/syncing side of things.

THE ISSUES:

• 720p video is REALLY not going to be liked by some people, although 4k at present integrated into a cycling computer must be a way off. 1080p would have silenced most doubters.
• 3, 6, 9 secs of video just doesn’t sound great even though the auto-video-record triggers are neat
• ACER brand name
• 2 Gb total space. SD card anyone? It’s enough for the maps and data files but would need upping for an improved video functionality
• A LOT more could be done with the video functionality
• The 3G connection offers lots more potential that has not been used to introduce one or two headline-grabbing bits of functionality
• The general flow of the device, app and online platform is not always intuitive.

ISSUETTES

• Why can’t the novel main screen with dials be configured?
• Why can’t I create an indoor bike profile with GPS automatically off?

SUMMARY/ALTERNATIVES

Hey it’s nice. A couple or three years ago it would have blown everyone’s socks off.

It really HAS got lots of great features.

But it’s got some underpowered headline features and some missing features. It hasn’t got Garmin written all over it; and people are jumping on the flaws and THAT will kill the product.

The way I see it in March 2017 is that you need to compete against the market-leader (Garmin): by price; and/or by multiple niche/novel functionalities; and/or by ONE novel functionality covered in-depth. Let’s look at those:

• Price – it doesn’t compete on price. It will sell some units as it’s nice. But it won’t sell in volume as-is;
• In-depth – it does navigation and training metrics to a good degree of breadth and depth BUT those metrics/functionalities are NOT NOVEL. Lots of other people do them as well; and
• One novel functionality – a half-baked video camera OR a SIM port could superficially convince some people. But these potentially great headline bits of hardware are not followed through to implementation sufficiently well.

The sort of person that might buy something like this would be someone, like me, who has another training computer but wants a competent unit for a bit of occasional navigation as well. I have an Edge 820 and genuinely would & have used the X5 in preference in some navigational scenarios.

Or it would fit with a keen cyclist who is perhaps not so performance-orientated as some and who wants some sound electronic and social support for the weekend & holiday rides.

Unfortunately, for XPLOVA, this means that the competition is something like MIO’s 505HC. It probably wins over the MIO (dated and also currently over-priced)  in that the X5 seems well-powered for what it does. You could, instead, stack it up against an Edge 1000 but on a straight features comparison the Edge would always win (as Garmins always do).

However the X5 does have some bits of functionality that might tempt you. You could stack it up against an Edge 820 and if a “working touchscreen” and a “properly powered device” were important factors to you then you MAY WELL GO FOR THE X5 :-).

But the elephant-in-the-room is the price. It’s too expensive. You can see how the marketeers justified the price based on the X5’s sound performance functions and adding on a price for the unusual features and then comparing that to what Garmin charge and thinking ‘yeah, that’s about right’. But the unusual features haven’t been properly thought through:

• Group functionality: your mates all have Garmins or smartphones running STRAVA they will need to use their smartphone for you;
• Camera: medium-spec, low/medium features. Lots of POTENTIAL but needs a headline-grabbing better spec and a few more day-to-day features; and
• SIM Card: medium spec, replaces your smartphone (awesome) but adds no real extra functionality other than little-used ‘connectivity’ to the internet. Lots of POTENTIAL.

I’m being a bit negative. I do like the X5. It is quite good. I will use it. But you lot are quite discerning in your choice of cycling computer. For those of you who are in the target market you’d probably also like:

• A better-quality and more feature-full video;
• A bit more screen customisation, especially the cool dial one;
• More integration with STRAVA’s eg their segments or RidewithGPS eg their group functionality; and
• Some real usefulness made of the SIM card eg call notifications, incident notification.

MY SUGGESTIONS

1. Lower the price for this model. Don’t pretend to be a top-end product. The X5 is not quite there yet.
2. Get cracking on an XPLOVA X5.5 … a bit of an upgrade. The X5 is basically almost there but it needs at least the following to make it great
   • Properly integrate with STRAVA Segments
   • Find a non-proprietary way to provide open-tech group tracking eg RidewithGPS or Garmin’s (hmmm)
   • Get a 1080p video camera just to keep people quiet.
   • Add an SD slot
   • Enable custom-length video footage
   • Enable a ‘commuting video functionality’ to capture ‘incidents’ in some way
   • Add a 3G weather widget and weather-warning widget
   • Add some form of incident detection notification
   • Slicken up the flow of the entire UI
   • At least enable SMS notifications via the SIM

But then I’m starting to describe a smartphone…

SPECIFICATIONS