Oct 27

Pioneer’s Bike GPS Costs More Than Your Phone, Does Much Less

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, gps, Today's Chili

Contrary to the promise of its name, Pioneer’s Potternavi will not help you find platform 9 3⁄4

What sits on the handlebars of your bike, has GPS, an accelerometer, and LCD screen and ten hours of battery life? Nope, it’s not your smartphone — it’s the Potternavi, a specialized bike GPS from Pioneer.

The trouble is, it’s worse than your phone in almost every way. If we ignore the fact that you can’t do anything with it other than navigation and bike computering, and it still looks bad. The display is a tiny 2.4 inches, with 240 x 320 resolution, and the battery life isn’t much better than you get from a phone. Worse, when it launches in Japan next February, it’ll cost over $500.

On the plus side, it has built-in ANT+ support for hooking up wirelessly to cadence and power meters, and the price includes two years of cellular network access.

But the best part is the name, Potternavi. It’s not, as you would be forgiven for thinking, a device to navigate the Harry Potter universe. The name comes from the activity of “pottering,” or “puttering” as you call it across the pond. Who can’t love a device devoted to “occupying oneself in a desultory but pleasant way”?

Potternavi press release [Pioneer via AVWatch]

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