Strava Live Segments
Today was a bitterly frustrating experience. This article started out as a detailed look at Hammerhead Karoo’s pretty new implementation of STRAVA Live Segments but got a bit out of hand as the introduction of other devices wasted a whole day.
In essence, STRAVA Live Segments are usually just your favourite ‘tiny routes’ that are copied to your bike computer. As you approach your nearest, favourite ‘tiny route’ you are warned; once you are on the segment you are given in-segment performance stats and some further stats when you’ve finished it a few 10’s of seconds later. Your GPS device manufacturer has to copy the tiny routes from a 3rd party service using published APIs but…hey…it’s 2020 and America put a man on the moon 50 years ago. Compared to that it’s definitely simple.
I spent a whole day doing this with a Garmin Edge 820, Polar Grit X, Wahoo Elemnt Bolt and Hammerhead Karoo using my STRAVA Premium Account.
Test Methodology
I decided to get everything working on 4 GPS devices for a starred segment on my local street. Then I planned to go to nearby Bushy Park (home of parkrun) for a 1km segment where I just happen to be 4secs off the KOM.
Problem: I just couldn’t get the Garmin 820’s Live Segments to work. Indeed the sole cause of my frustration was the Garmin. The other devices worked well. First time. C’mon Garmin. Sort out your expensive devices, please.
Background
Garmin was the first to introduce STRAVA Live Segments on the 520/820 in 2015. Perhaps Garmin’s flavour of STRAVA Live Segments was then left to fester in a dusty cupboard? Less than a year later, Wahoo rolled out a similar service (2016), others followed suit. IIRC Polar had it on the V800, removed it for the Vantage launch and then re-introduced it to the Vantage at the end of 2019, finally carrying the feature over to the similar Polar Grit X a few weeks ago.
Differences
All the vendors implement STRAVA Live Segments in a broadly similar way. You authorise the STRAVA connection either online or on your bike computer’s smartphone app and then pretty much the same information is displayed on the bike computer. It’s just precisely HOW that information is displayed which differs. For example:
- Is your PR displayed, a recent PR, your PR from the last 5 attempts?
- Is your target the one you set in STRAVA or that of a buddy or the next person up on the STRAVA leaderboard?
- A slightly inaccurate GPS can miss the start of a segment, a segment-within-a-segment might not be handled well or a segment summary might be displayed for too long before another segment is encountered.
Strava Live Segment on the Hammerhead Karoo
The Karoo has a nice map view of all your favourited segments. Perhaps you had been tasked with a specific Segment-hunting and beating experience by a friend and didn’t know how to get to the segment? Well, once you’ve favourited it you can tap on it with the Karoo and be routed to the start.
Karoo’s presentation of the whole favourite segment challenge experience is very pretty. Easily the prettiest of ANY implementation from ANY manufacturer. However, the in-segment experience needs to be more performance focussed and ‘in your face with the key stats’. At least that’s my opinion.
A REALLY cool performance feature lets you change which targets are displayed on the map as you race the segment. You can choose to show your PR/PB, the KOM, your recent best effort, and even the best effort ahead/behind you of your followers. That last one would be handy for those of us competing over chosen club segments.
Strava Live Segments on the Wahoo Elemnt Bolt
I’ve used the Wahoo quite a lot for Live Segments, especially over the last year. It does the job. It just works. It sometimes starts the segment in the wrong place (GPS inaccuracy) but STRAVA sorts that out at their end in any case. Perhaps my criticism of most of the implementations of STRAVA Live Segments, including that from Wahoo, is that the athlete is just simply trying too hard for those 10 or 60 seconds of eye-popping segment craziness to look at the screen.
Strava Live Segments on the Polar Grit X
It’s trickier using the Grit X both when running and when cycling, simply because of the small screen size. Either it’s on your wrist and the wrist needs raising and turning when you are going flat out OR you have to take your eyes off the road to find that tiny screen strapped to your handlebars. To be fair to Polar, I do find the in-segment info reasonably good.
STRAVA Live Segment on the Sigma Rox 12.0
My experience with the STRAVA Live Segments on the Rox 12.0 in 2019 impressed me the most at the time. It just seemed to be able to do everything I could think STRAVA Live segments should do.
STRAVA Live Segments on the Garmin Edge 820
This almost worked…eventually. The Edge did correctly recognise the nearest/chosen segment and did correctly show me the distance to the end of the segment. Well, except when I actually got ONTO the segment, then it simply showed me the entire distance of the segment regardless of where I actually was on it, nor did it alert me to the start of the segment. #ItShouldBeSimple
STRAVA Live Segments on the Garmin Edge 530
These images are from the newer Edge 530 where I got things working much more easily with STRAVA Live Segments last year. ONLY POPS UP FOR YOUR favourites.
XERT Segment Hunter
XERT dynamically paces you through the segment based on your instantaneous maximum power available which changes as you fatigue. A very useful alternative to standard STRAVA Live Segments and does not require a STRAVA premium account.
Wahoo Elemnt ROAM
Segments on the ROAM look better than the earlier ELEMNTs but work in the same way.
Opinion
This is a very nice implementation from Hammerhead. It certainly looks the best and works very sweetly. However, I would say that perhaps I prefer the visual simplicity and ‘just works’ nature of the Wahoo Bolt’s offering yet my favourite for a ‘proper’ performance-orientated attempt on a segment PR would favour XERT’s segment hunter which also has the advantage of not requiring a STRAVA premium account.
The perennial problem for me remains “How do you get proper, non-visual feedback on your performance?” I simply can’t keep looking at a screen and a ‘too fast’ beep doesn’t tell me how much ‘too fast’ I am.
Lots & LOTS more STRAVA-Related Content here: list of STRAVA posts.
Last Updated on 28 May 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Are you interested in pictures and Text about the new Edge Generation? Could do it on the Edge 830.
you mean SLS on the Edge 1030 or do you mean images of the Edge 1030+ from June 2020 😉
** thank you for the very kind offer. **
you reminded me so I’ve added some of my own images in from last year for the 530. If you have any good ones to hand for the 1030 that would be great but please don’t go to any trouble for this. Hopefully, I’ve already given a good flavour of Garmin here and the article is supposed to be hammerhead focussed.
I meant SLS (has to think about it) on the Edge 830 because I think it looks a bit different compared to the Edge 820.
But you have some of the 530 and I didn’t get the focus on the Hammerhead, so now I’m silent 😆
To me it seems Polar have implemented this very nicely
yes its nice.limited by the form factor
It looks better on Wahoo ROam than Bold.
true (added ROAM images, thank you for the reminder)
Hi,
on the Polar watch you can only compete against your PR, but not against the KOM. Is that right?
On my V800 I am not able to switch between PR and KOM.
Also the implementation is poor, because the is uses the average speed the segment was ridden and not the actual one. You can check this when riding a longer segment that is flat in the beginning and steep in the last part. In the beginning you‘re thinking „wow, I am super fast“, but that‘s a fault, because your speed is much greater than the average, but in the end you‘re caught. We have many up‘n‘down segments here so the Polar implementation is useless for me.
Garmin and Wahoo are doing a better job, because they use the real speed data on any part of the segment. Maybe on Grit X Polar learned the lesson?
Also you forget to mention the LEDs on Wahoo devices. They a very useful for a quick look during the segment battle. At a glance you can see if you‘re ahead or behind.
good points
yes i believe only against your PR. where I live the KOMs are meaningless to me, there’s no way for me to get any of them (except 1 i have my eye on that i’m close to 😉 … the one in the article, i almost had a go an hour ago with a 20mph tailwind )
on your second point, yes garmin and wahoo are doing a better job BUT Xert is DOING AN EVEN BETTER JOB as it takes into account physiological fatigue – unlike wahoo/garmin who effectively ‘only’ gives some form of normalized speed/pace. it’s a MASSIVE shame that xert segment hunter can’t work on wahoo (incidentally it is supposed to be able to be installed/side-loaded on hammerhead karoo – i plan to try that out at some point this year…maybe)
agreed on the wahoo lights (to a degree)-against that I would point out that I have bolt LEDs set for zones and for nav so their frequent flashing and flashing for SLS becomes somewhat of a mixed blur in my mind as to their meaning (my problem i know)
Indeed Garmin edge 820 strava live segment is not functional… I have been noticing garmin about bugs , sending files for more than a year and they did not provide any firmware update for that. I don’t know about 830 but certainly not give anymore money to a company that is not able to provide functional software for something that was ok before, like edge 810
I am kinda glad to hear that.
I knew the SLS was broadly OK from my usage on the Edge 530 a while back. So I spent so much time with the 820 trying to get it to work jsut assuming that it was me and would be the same on another Garmin device
oh well.
In some ways the best version of strava live segments comes from the strava app on a phone. If you revisit this you might want to include that.
I disagree. Funnily the Strava App also takes into account only average speed on strava segments. So if you ride a segment that is flat in the beginning and steep in the last part, you‘ll think your the best in the first part, because you‘re riding much faster than the average speed on that segment‘s KOM time is. But in the end you are caught.
Garmin and Wahoo do a much better job, using the real time data stream of the KOM ride.
So in my example: High speed in the beginning and low speed in the end. Not just the average speed all the way.
Note: I haven‘t checked the Strava App recently (this year), because since they dropped support for BLE sensors I never use it for recording anymore.
I didn’t say it was the best in every way. The Strava app doesn’t have a 100 segment limit, it’s segment list is always up-to-date, you don’t have to make sure to do a long sync at home before your ride, it properly handles if you use private activities, it is much more robust in matching segments (over thousands of segment efforts my Wahoo misses about 1 in 10 segments, it’s been reported to Wahoo in detail many timesbut they don’t care). The display is very easy to decipher whilst you are very physically taxed (wahoo’s ahead/behind looks sooo similar, garmin is a little better here, but the Strava app is by far the easiest to see). Either Garmin or Wahoo fail on each of these points.
And if you know about the average speed thing you can manage (knowing that your lead will dwindle or knowing that you’ll catch up based on the segment ahead) but if the segment doesn’t match or if the segment isn’t even on your device due to a 100 segment limit there is nothing you can do.
Hope someone finds this info useful.
a very good point
i’m one of those people blinded by bike computers. too blind too see the app. and yes i appreciate there are lots of app users so i should do what you say.
Never used strava app for segment racing. Was very happy with edge 810, its virtual partner and lately strava segment racing. Eith edge 820 things got really bad. As mentioned here it is the avg speed that is taken into account now, for both segment or course racing. Been in contact with garmin for more than a year. They acknowledged their mistake, said it may take some time to correct … still waiting….
Hi
Just bought a Karoo and agree with you that for a performance oriented rider my Wahoo gave me at a glance visual informations quicker.
My only trouble was the Wahoo is that once a segment starts you need to press the central button to view your time compared to the KOM. Do you know if there is a way to modify this setting?
If not, do you know if there is a possibility to control the central button of the Wahoo by programming the hoods buttons of the DI2?
Thanks for your help 😉
i have a similar problem. q1 no q2. i dont know but maybe. ask this guy and report back please: https://bettershifting.com/learn-how-to-update-your-di2-component-firmware/
Do any of these allow you to find non-favourited segments while out on a ride ie just taking an unplanned ride and it pops up and says popular segment nearby or something similar