21 June 2023
Eurobike kicked off today with plenty of new products, and Magene was at the show announcing a number of new sports tech items, including a new bike computer, new smart lights, and an entire ‘connected bike’ light system that can even vibrate their optical heart rate arm band when their bike radar detects an approaching car.
As usual with ‘First Look’ style posts, this is just a quick look at things from the show floor. Any sort of full review would come later down the line once the products are actually shipping and available.
The Magene C606 Bike GPS Computer:
So, diving right into it is the new C606 GPS bike computer, which is roughly the same size as something like a Garmin Edge 540/840, maybe a touch bit heftier (I didn’t have an 540/840 with me to compare). The touch-screen enabled C606 is aiming to compete with those units, by having full routing/navigation and maps, full ANT+ & Bluetooth sensor connectivity, and WiFi for uploads of workouts (and downloads of maps):
You can customize up to 10 data pages, with up to 10 items per page. In playing with the unit a bit at the show, the backlight certainly goes pretty darn bright, but it’s unclear that that higher backlight setting might do to the battery life claim, which is 20-25 hours (still being finalized).
The GPS on it isn’t dual-frequency/multiband, but I don’t really expect that to be a big deal. It tends to be more important in running/trail scenarios, than road cycling applications (certainly, it’s more useful in MTB forest-type scenarios).
The unit features a standard Garmin quarter-turn mount on the bike, and USB-C charging on the lower portion between the two bottom buttons. Thus, like their competitors they can use either buttons or touchscreen for interacting with the unit.
Maps can be downloaded via WiFi for your country/region, for free via the Magene platform. You’ll be able to pull in routes from files, as well as 3rd party services including Strava Routes & Komoot Routes. As for features like showing upcoming climb profiles (ala ClimbPro/etc), that’s a bit more fuzzy. They said they do show the upcoming profiles, but how exactly that’s being implemented is being lost in translation a bit.
Now as usual the Magene angle here is price. They’re aiming to be “very competitive” when they start sales in October (2023). When asked about price, they said “definitely below $300”, but got sly when I asked if that meant $200 or $250ish price buckets. Again, just re-iterating that they felt their position in the marketplace was to offer very competitively priced products (which, has been true).
And to that end, we’ll have to see what other features it has with it software-wise in October. One of the things to keep in mind is that even at a $250 price point, it’ll still actually have to compete with more full-featured units from Garmin/Wahoo/Hammerhead that might be older/previous generation. After all, while a ‘model year 2023’ is a nice-to-have, well implemented features generally beat newness (at least, in my technical brain). So again, those are key things I’ll be looking at in a review down the road.
Magene Connected System:
This next bit is less ‘product’, and more ‘software feature’. Essentially, Magene is starting to create an ecosystem out of their various products. And the first example they showed off was using a bike computer combined with their OnelapFit App, their radar, their front light, and then their optical HR heart rate band.
The most notable example they gave was using their cycling radar for an approaching (overtaking) vehicle. The bike computer paired with the bike radar would detect the vehicle, and then tell the optical HR band to vibrate, alerting the rider. They’ve had the optical HR band out a few years, but this is effectively repurposing it for notifications.
Beyond that, they’re also doing more common-place things like automatically turning on the bike lights when you starting pedaling and reach a given speed (e.g. 2KPH). But that’s already somewhat common in the bike smart light industry today.
L308 Intelligent Bike Lights:
Finally, we’ve got these little bike lights. This rear light can be used as both a bike light with 15 light modes, but also with custom emoji, animated GIF’s, and more. Obviously, this isn’t quite at the the intersection of high performance cycling, but it was still somewhat entertaining. I’d love to be able to send a poop emoji to the rider behind me. Kinda like Zwift Power-Ups, but real-world.
Using their app you can just use your finger to draw what you want to show up on the bike light. Or, you can import files to render. And finally, you can create multiple-frame sequencies (thus creating an animation).
These lights are controllable using their smartphone app, though don’t appear to be ANT+ light compatible – so that’d limit accessibility by other brands. Still, that’s not likely their
Today, the lights and app are already available in China, and the remaining piece for Magene is getting the light control app ported to English, which they said will happen later this year. The goal is for a single light to sell for about $35, though the exact price might vary slightly.
But again, I’m here for sending poop emoji.
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With that – thanks for reading, and stay tuned for plenty more Eurobike news over the coming days!